We mourn the passing of Professor Kuen Y. Lin on January 19, 2017. Professor Lin served on the A&A faculty for 33 years as a dedicated professor, mentor and colleague. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from National Taiwan University and master’s and doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, Professor Lin spent six years in industry, working for Deere & Co. and The Boeing Company. Professor Lin was an expert in the areas of composite materials, finite element methods, and fracture mechanics, and co-creator of the Mar-Lin Fracture Model, which is used by the aerospace industry for the damage tolerant design of composite aircraft structures. He also developed a singular hybrid finite element method for the accurate analysis of bi-material fracture problems. His recent research efforts have direct applications to the critical technologies needed in developing the next generation of aerospace vehicles.

In addition to teaching structures and composites classes to hundreds of our undergraduate and graduate students, Professor Lin was a co-founder and co-director of the UW FAA Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials in Transport Aircraft Structures (AMTAS). He also developed the UW-Boeing Certificate Program in Aircraft Composite Structural Analysis and Design (ACSAD), and for this effort and the teaching assignments he undertook to make the certificate program a success, he was awarded the prestigious 2014 University of Washington Distinguished Contributions to Lifelong Learning Award. More recently, Professor Lin co-developed an online course on Composite Materials with Boeing, UWEO and edX, which enrolled more than 12,500 students from 154 countries.

Professor Lin’s contributions in industry and academia were many and will leave a lasting legacy. He greatly enriched the lives of his students and colleagues, and will be missed but always remembered by all whose lives he touched