Academy of Distinguished Alumni
Y.R. (Joe) Rashid Ph.D., P.E.
Inducted to the Academy of Distinguished Alumni on
Y.R. (Joe) Rashid received his Ph.D. (1965) degree, M.S. (1962) degree, and B.S. (1960) degree in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. His career after UC Berkeley began in the fall of 1964 in the gas-cooled reactor industry at General Atomic (GA), where he developed the first application of large-scale three-dimensional finite element computation for pre-stressed concrete reactor vessels. This was followed by the development of the smeared crack model for concrete and other brittle materials, which became the standard model in commercial finite element codes. After six years at GA, Dr. Rashid was offered a position at the Nuclear Energy Division of General Electric Company to apply the finite element method to the analysis of nuclear fuel. In 1978, he founded ANATECH where he has served as Chairman and CEO until 2013 when ANATECH became part of Structural Integrity Associates (SIA). Under Dr. Rashid’s leadership and direction, ANATECH became a world leader in the finite element modeling and analysis of complex systems, with unique capabilities in the analytical simulation of severe damage and failure of critical structures subjected to aircraft and missile impact, and with renowned expertise in nuclear fuel performance through its long-term research in the field supported by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).
During his long professional career, Dr. Rashid has served on expert panels and in an advisory capacity for many national and international organizations, including EPRI, USNRC, DOE National Laboratories, OECD, Paul Scherrer Institute, and others. He has been a prolific contributor to the technical literature, spanning a wide range of topics, including large-scale non-linear finite element computations, irradiated materials characterization, computational damage mechanics, constitutive modeling of ceramics and metals, behavioral modeling and analysis of nuclear reactor fuel, failure analysis of reactor vessels and containments, and behavioral modeling and analysis of used nuclear fuel systems. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 publications in these areas, most appearing in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He is a Fellow of the ASME, a member of ANS, a voting member of ASTM and a Founding Member of the International Association for Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology.
Over the years, Dr. Rashid has contributed to the CEE program at Berkeley by presenting invited seminars to SESM graduate students, promoting UCB at Engineering Societies meetings, and through his annual support of the College of Engineering and the California Alumni Society.