Brian Moran is Professor and Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He has been at Northwestern for fourteen years. His research interests are in continuum and computational mechanics with an emphasis on mechanics of fracture, and mechanics of materials and bioengineering. He is developing new computational techniques in solid mechanics including the natural element method (a meshless method based on nearest neighbor coordinates) and the extended finite element method (which permits the incorporation of cracks without the need for explicit meshing of the crack surfaces). His Institute work deals with the structural integrity assessment of bridge pin-hanger connections.