Early life and education
He earned his B.Sc. (Mechanical Engineering), M.A. Sc. (Mechanical Engineering) and Ph.D. (Mechanics and Materials Science) degrees, respectively, in 1968, ’69 and ‘72 from Thapar University (India), University of Waterloo (Canada) and the Johns Hopkins University (USA). ''His Ph.D. degree was under the tutelage of the eminent elastician, Professor J. L. Ericksen''. After a year of Post-doctoral experience with Professor Ericksen at the JHU and another year with Professor Mark Levinson at the McMaster University, Canada, he joined the Missouri University of Science and Technology (MUST), Rolla, USA as a visiting assistant professor in 1974 and was promoted to full professor in 1981. He joined Virginia Tech as the Clifton C. Garvin Professor in 1994, and was honored as a University Distinguished Professor in 2019.Teaching and research
Dr. Batra has been teaching courses on the Finite Element Method, Continuum Mechanics and Nonlinear Elasticity to M.Sc. and Ph.D. students since 1974. His lectures for the 1st graduate level course on Continuum Mechanics are available on ''youtube.com''. Nearly a dozen out of his 40 former Ph.D. students hold faculty positions in India, China, Chile, Taiwan, S. Korea, France, Canada and the USA. Several other former Ph.D. students hold leadership positions in civilian industries and research laboratories. Graduate Student Mentoring: His Ph.D. students are listed on the website: http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=105522 Research Areas: His research group has worked in several areas of applied mechanics such as adiabatic shear bands (these are narrow regions of intense plastic deformation that form during high strain-rate deformations of most metallic alloys and generally precede fracture), composite structures, functionally graded materials/structures, nanostructures, smart materials/structures, micro-electro-mechanical systems, and computational mechanics including the finite element and meshless methods. Software Development: Dr. Batra’s group has developed software based on the finite element and meshless methods for analyzing contact problems for rubber-covered rolls, adiabatic shear bands, crack propagation in functionally graded materials, damage evolution in fiber-reinforced laminated composites, and transient deformations of structures made of thermo-elasto-visco-plastic materials and fiber-reinforced composites. Professional Affiliations: He is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and a Fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics, American Society of Engineering Education, Society of Engineering Science, and the US Association of Computational Mechanics. He is a founder and editor of the journal: Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids Professional Service: He served for two 5-year terms on the National Research Council Panels to review and advise areas of research in the Warhead Mechanics and the Lethality/Survivability Directorates of the Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen, MD, USA; for one year as President of the Society of Engineering Science; for 3 years as Secretary of the American Academy of Mechanics; and for 5 years as Chair of the ASME Elasticity Committee. Recognitions: * As of 27 June 2021, his works have received more than 21,000 citations with an H-index of 76 on GooglSee also
* List of University of Waterloo peopleReferences
{{DEFAULTSORT:Batra, Romesh Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Indian mechanical engineers Virginia Tech faculty University of Waterloo alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni Missouri University of Science and Technology faculty