Curriculum vitae of John Sanders

1. JOHN W. SANDERS
1206 W Green St ♦ Urbana, IL 61801
(314) 957-8291 ♦ jsandrs2@illinois.edu
linkedin.com/in/johnwsanders
EDUCATION
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ♦ Champaign, IL
Ph.D. ♦ Theoretical & Applied Mechanics ♦ June 2017 (expected) ♦ M.S. August 2013
• Dissertation Title: “Modeling and Simulation of High-Temperature Creep and Damage in
Generation-IV Nuclear Reactor Alloys” ♦ Dissertation Adviser: Petros Sofronis
Sapienza University of Rome ♦ Rome, Italy
Visiting Scholar ♦ Dept. of Structural & Geotechnical Engineering ♦ Spring 2012
Saint Louis University ♦ St. Louis, MO
B.S. ♦ Engineering Physics and Mathematics ♦ May 2011 ♦ GPA: 3.99 / 4.00 (Summa Cum Laude)
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ♦ Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Graduate Teaching Fellow ♦ Champaign, IL ♦ Summer 2014, Summer 2015, Summer 2016
• Served as the Instructor of Record for an undergraduate-level Introductory Dynamics course
• Emphasized high-level comprehension of the material by presenting concepts in order, ab initio
• Engaged students by illustrating advanced concepts (such as angular momentum) with in-class
experiments, demonstrations, and activities
• Helped students develop better technical and communication skills by designing an open-ended,
semester-long, project-based learning exercise on air resistance in sports
• Supervised one teaching assistant, who helped with grading and held office hours
• Consistently received positive student feedback (rated 4.2/5.0 on overall teaching effectiveness)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ♦ Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Graduate Teaching Assistant ♦ Champaign, IL ♦ Fall 2013 / 2015 / 2016, Spring 2016 / 2017
• Served on a team of several TA’s for an undergraduate-level Introductory Dynamics course with
anywhere from 250-500 students per semester
• Helped students develop better technical and communication skills by facilitating hour-long
discussion sections on a weekly basis
• Used interpersonal and communication skills to help students understand difficult concepts during
weekly office hours and through an online class forum
• Consistently added to university’s “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students”
based on the results of student evaluations (rated 4.8/5.0 on overall teaching effectiveness)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ♦ Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Graduate Teaching Assistant ♦ Champaign, IL ♦ Spring 2015
• Helped students in a graduate-level Solid Mechanics course understand difficult concepts by
providing detailed feedback on graded assignments and holding office hours on a weekly basis
• Received positive student feedback (rated 4.0/5.0 on overall teaching effectiveness)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ♦ Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Graduate Teaching Assistant ♦ Champaign, IL ♦ Spring 2015
• Served on a team of several TA’s for an undergraduate-level Heat Transfer Laboratory
• Assisted students in applying what they had learned in lecture to real-world thermodynamic
systems by facilitating laboratory experiments on a bi-weekly basis
• Helped students develop better technical communication skills by providing detailed feedback on
graded laboratory reports
• Added to university’s “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students” based on the
results of student evaluations (rated 4.6/5.0 on overall teaching effectiveness)

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Saint Louis University ♦ Dept. of Physics
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant ♦ St. Louis, MO ♦ Spring 2010, Fall 2010
• Served on a team of several TA’s for an undergraduate-level Engineering Physics Laboratory
• Assisted students in applying what they had learned in lecture to real-world mechanical systems
by facilitating laboratory experiments on a weekly basis
• Helped students develop better technical communication skills by providing detailed feedback on
graded laboratory reports
Saint Louis University ♦ Dept. of Academic Support
Academic Tutor ♦ St. Louis, MO ♦ August 2008-December 2010
• Offered tutoring in over thirty engineering, physics, mathematics, and computer science courses
ranging from the 100-level to the 400-level as part of a university-wide tutoring center
• Used interpersonal and communication skills to help students understand difficult concepts
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ♦ Dept. of Nuclear, Plasma, & Radiological Engineering
Graduate Research Assistant ♦ Lab of Petros Sofronis ♦ Champaign, IL ♦ May 2013-present
• Enable engineers to predict the lifetimes of next-generation nuclear reactor components by
modeling and simulating the constitutive behavior and rupture of high temperature alloys
• Solved a long-standing problem within the nuclear engineering community by applying
micromechanical models of rupture to data for high temperature alloys
• Personally designed a method to calibrate the six material parameters of a combined transient
and steady-state creep constitutive model to alloys 230 and 617 at 800°C and 900°C using
experimental creep test data provided by colleagues
• Implemented said model in Abaqus (via UMAT) and used it to simulate the fields ahead of a
stationary crack tip in the presence of transient and steady-state creep
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ♦ Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Graduate Research Assistant ♦ Lab of Harry Dankowicz ♦ Champaign, IL ♦ August 2011-May 2013
• Showed that a mathematical paradox in contact mechanics called “reverse chatter” is exhibited
by realistic mechanical systems, and investigated its possible applications
Saint Louis University ♦ Dept. of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering
Undergraduate Research Assistant ♦ Lab of Arif Malik ♦ St. Louis, MO ♦ November 2010-May 2011
• Wrote several Matlab programs to apply reliability-based design optimization to the metal sheet
rolling process, supplementing existing code
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
DRS Technologies, Inc. ♦ DRS Marlo Coil
Engineering Intern ♦ High Ridge, MO ♦ June 2010-August 2010
• Identified the algorithms used in an undocumented (and long-dormant) Visual Basic program that
did computations for refrigeration coil design using knowledge of thermodynamics
• Incorporated algorithms for three additional refrigerants, making the program up-to-date
• Enabled other engineers to update the program in the future by writing a manual (17 pages)
detailing the process, and created an Excel spreadsheet to do all of the necessary calculations
DRS Technologies, Inc. ♦ DRS Marlo Coil
Engineering Intern ♦ High Ridge, MO ♦ June 2009-August 2009
• Improved quality by writing a C++ program (6,114 lines) to assess whether a given product
complies with the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code and to print a written report
• Enabled other engineers to modify the program in the future, if necessary, by writing a detailed
manual (40 pages) on the C++ programming language

3. Curriculum Vitae, John W. Sanders, page 3
DRS Technologies, Inc. ♦ DRS Marlo Coil
Engineering Intern ♦ High Ridge, MO ♦ May 2008-August 2008
• Increased efficiency by enabling batch processing of tedious Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire tasks with
the use of Distributed Pro/BATCH, a built-in batch processing tool
• Wrote a detailed manual (25 pages) on Distributed Pro/BATCH for future reference
• Modeled, using Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, a hardware casing for a certain product, and was able to
see the finished product the following summer
CONSULTING EXPERIENCE
Midcoast Aviation, Inc.
Consultant ♦ Cahokia, IL ♦ March 2010-April 2010
• Enabled engineers to simulate the mechanical response of a proprietary material by modeling,
pro bono, its constitutive behavior in Pro/ENGINEER Mechanica
• Conducted a finite element analysis validation test on the actual material in Saint Louis
University’s Structures Laboratory to check the results
MENTORING EXPERIENCE
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ♦ Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Research Mentor ♦ Champaign, IL ♦ January 2017-present
• Coordinate and supervise the research of an undergraduate student as part of an Undergraduate
Research Opportunity (URO) sponsored by the Department
• Showed my mentee how to formulate the standard boundary-value problem of solid mechanics
• Enabled her to solve said boundary-value problem by teaching her how to use the general-
purpose finite element program Abaqus and to apply it to problems of interest
International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (I
2
CNER)
Research Mentor ♦ Champaign, IL ♦ February 2016-March 2016
• Chosen by the Director of I
2
CNER to host an undergraduate student from Kyushu University in
Japan during a five-week exchange program with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Showed my mentee how to formulate the standard boundary-value problem of solid mechanics
• Enabled her to solve said boundary-value problem by teaching her how to use the general-
purpose finite element program Abaqus and to apply it to problems of interest
PUBLICATIONS & MANUSCRIPTS
J. Sanders, M. Dadfarnia, J. Stubbins, and P. Sofronis, “On the fracture of high temperature alloys by
creep cavitation under uniaxial or biaxial stress states,” Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of
Solids, vol. 98, pp. 49-62, 2017
J. Sanders, H. Dankowicz, and A. Nordmark, “The reverse chatter paradox: generalizations and
implications for mechanical systems,” 2013 (unpublished)
J. Sanders, “An easy way to determine the sense of rotation of phase plane trajectories,” The Pi Mu
Epsilon Journal, vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 491-494, 2013
A. Malik, J. Sanders, R. Grandhi, and M. Zipf, “Reliability-based optimal cluster mill pass
scheduling,” in Proceedings of the ASME 2011 International Mechanical Engineering Congress &
Exposition, Denver, CO, USA, November 11-17, 2011
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
J. Sanders, G. Herman, and M. West, “Scaling-up project-based learning for a large introductory
mechanics course using mobile phone data capture and peer feedback,” in Proceedings of the ASEE
2016 Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, LA, USA, June 26-29, 2016

4. Curriculum Vitae, John W. Sanders, page 4
J. Sanders, H. Dankowicz, and W. Lacarbonara, “Design and analysis of a microelectromechanical
device capable of testing theoretical models of impact at the microscale,” in Proceedings of the ASME
2012 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in
Engineering Conference, Chicago, IL, USA, August 12-15, 2012
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
• American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) ♦ 2012-present
TECHNICAL SKILLS
Programming Languages: Matlab ♦ C++ ♦ Fortran ♦ R ♦ some Visual Basic ♦ some HTML
Software: Abaqus ♦ PTC Creo ♦ Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint ♦ LaTeX ♦ MathType
♦ Mathematica ♦ Tecplot
LANGUAGES
English (fluent) ♦ Spanish (proficient) ♦ Latin (proficient) ♦ Italian (limited) ♦ Ancient Greek (limited)
SELECTED HONORS, AWARDS, & FELLOWSHIPS
• Robert Miller Teaching Excellence Award ♦ University of Illinois ♦ 2017
• Graduate Teaching Fellowship ♦ University of Illinois ♦ Summer 2014, 2015, 2016
• List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students ♦ UIUC ♦ Fall 2013/15, Spring 2015/16
• Student Marshal for Parks College at Saint Louis University’s Commencement ♦ Spring 2011
• Pi Mu Epsilon National Mathematics Honorary Society member ♦ 2011-present
• James Collins Award for Student Academic Excellence in Physics ♦ Saint Louis University ♦ 2011
• First Place in Mechanical Engineering ♦ MESCON ♦ University of Evansville ♦ 2011
• The University Physics Competition ♦ First Place (as a team of one) ♦ 2010
REFERENCES
Petros Sofronis James Stubbins
Professor Professor and Chair
Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering Dept. of Nuclear, Plasma, & Radiological Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(217) 333-2636, sofronis@illinois.edu (217) 333-2295, jstubbin@illinois.edu
Huseyin Sehitoglu Elif Ertekin
Professor Assistant Professor
Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(217) 333-4112, huseyin@illinois.edu (217) 333-8175, ertekin@illinois.edu