ABSTRACT
William P. Schonberg, PE, is professor and chair of the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly known as the University of MissouriRolla). Dr. Schonberg has over 20 years teaching and research experience in the areas of shock physics, spacecraft protection, hypervelocity impact, and penetration mechanics. He received his BSCE from Princeton University in 1981, and his MS and PhD degrees from Northwestern University in 1982 and 1986, respectively. The results of his research have been applied to a wide variety of engineering problems, including the development of orbital debris protection systems for spacecraft in low Earth orbit, kinetic energy weapons, the collapse of buildings under explosive loads, insensitive munitions, and aging aircraft. Since 1986, Dr. Schonberg has published over 60 papers in refereed journals on these topics, and has presented nearly 60 papers at a broad spectrum of international scientific and professional meetings, including several invited papers. In 1995 Dr. Schonberg received the AIAA’s Lawrence Sperry Award for his work on the design of spacecraft protection systems. In 1998, Dr. Schonberg was promoted to the membership rank of Associate Fellow in the AIAA and in 2000 was selected to receive the Charles Beecher Prize for one of his recent papers on orbital debris protection systems from
the Aerospace Sciences Division of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in England. In 2004 and 2005 he was promoted to the member rank of Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, respectively. In 2009 he was asked to join another NASA Independent V&V Committee to review the MMOD risk assessment process for NASA’s new Constellation program. In 2007 Dr. Schonberg received a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany. This award enabled him to spend 7 months at the Fraunhofer Ernst Mach Institute in Freiburg, Germany working on advanced MMOD protection systems for satellites and developing preliminary designs for safe lunar habitats using in-situ materials for protection against meteoroid impacts.
