Rate My Professor Michael Khonsari

Michael M. Khonsari holds the Dow Chemical Endowed Chair and serves as Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at Louisiana State University. He earned his Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983. Before joining LSU, Khonsari was a faculty member at Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, and Southern Illinois University. He also held faculty research fellow positions at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the Department of Energy in Pittsburgh, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. Currently, he directs the NSF Center for Innovations in Structural Integrity Assurance (CISIA) and the Center for Rotating Machinery (CeRoM). Khonsari served as Editor-in-Chief of the ASME Journal of Tribology from 2012 to 2022, sits on the editorial boards of 10 scientific journals, and is the Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering. Additionally, he acts as Associate Commissioner for Research at the Louisiana Board of Regents and is a Governor appointee to the Louisiana Innovation Council.

Khonsari's research specializations encompass tribology—including friction, lubrication, and wear—fatigue and fracture, materials degradation, mechanical fatigue, rotating machinery, and irreversible thermodynamics. His influential publications include the books Applied Tribology: Bearing Design and Lubrication (3rd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2017, with E.R. Booser) and Introduction to Thermodynamics of Mechanical Fatigue (CRC Press, 2012, with M. Amiri), as well as key papers such as 'An experimental investigation of dimple effect on the Stribeck curve of journal bearings' (Tribology Letters, 2007, with X. Lu), 'On the thermodynamic entropy of fatigue fracture' (Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 2010, with M. Naderi and M. Amiri), and 'On the thermodynamics of degradation' (Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 2008, with M.D. Bryant and F.F. Ling). His scholarship has amassed over 23,000 citations on Google Scholar. Khonsari is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), National Academy of Inventors (NAI), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE). Major awards include the ASME Mayo D. Hersey Award (2014), ASME Burt L. Newkirk Award, NLGI Clarence E. Earle Memorial Award, LSU Distinguished Research Master Award (2018), Boyd Professor designation (2025, LSU's highest faculty honor), and LSU Presidential Laurels (2025).