MIT Professor Markus J. Buehler has been named the recipient of the 2025 Washington Award, one of many nation’s oldest and most esteemed engineering honors.
The Washington Award is conferred to “an engineer(s) whose skilled attainments have preeminently superior the welfare of humankind,” recognizing those that have made a profound impression on society by way of engineering innovation. Previous recipients of this award embrace influential figures similar to Herbert Hoover, the award’s inaugural recipient in 1919, in addition to Orville Wright, Henry Ford, Neil Armstrong, John Bardeen, and famend MIT associates Vannevar Bush, Robert Langer, and software program engineer Margaret Hamilton.
Buehler was chosen for his “groundbreaking accomplishments in computational modeling and mechanics of organic supplies, and his contributions to engineering schooling and management in academia.” Buehler has authored over 500 peer-reviewed publications, pioneering the atomic-level properties and buildings of biomaterials similar to silk, elastin, and collagen, using computational modeling to characterize, design, and create sustainable supplies with options spanning from the nano- to the macro- scale. Buehler was the primary to clarify how hydrogen bonds, molecular confinement, and hierarchical architectures govern the mechanics of organic supplies by way of the event of a idea that bridges molecular interactions with macroscale properties.
His revolutionary analysis contains the event of physics-aware synthetic intelligence strategies that combine computational mechanics, bioinformatics, and generative AI to discover common design rules of organic and bioinspired supplies. His work has superior the understanding of hierarchical buildings in nature, revealing the mechanics by which advanced biomaterials obtain exceptional power, flexibility, and resilience by way of molecular interactions throughout scales.
Buehler’s analysis included the usage of deep studying fashions to foretell and generate new protein buildings, self-assembling peptides, and sustainable biomimetic supplies. His work on materiomusic — changing molecular buildings into musical compositions — has offered new insights into the hidden patterns inside organic techniques.
Buehler is the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering within the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Mechanical Engineering. He served because the division head of CEE from 2013 to 2020, in addition to in different management roles, together with as president of the Society of Engineering Science.
A devoted educator, Buehler has performed a significant position in mentoring future engineers, main Ok-12 STEM summer time camps to encourage the following era and serving as an teacher for MIT Skilled Training summer time programs.
His achievements have been acknowledged with quite a few prestigious honors, together with the Feynman Prize, the Drucker Medal, the Leonardo da Vinci Award, and the J.R. Rice Medal, and election to the Nationwide Academy of Engineering. His work continues to push the boundaries of computational science, supplies engineering, and biomimetic design.
The Washington Award was offered throughout Nationwide Engineers Week in February, in a ceremony attended by members of outstanding engineering societies, together with the Western Society of Engineers; the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers; the American Society of Civil Engineers; the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; the Nationwide Society of Skilled Engineers; and the American Nuclear Society. The occasion additionally celebrated practically 100 pre-college college students acknowledged for his or her achievements in regional STEM competitions, highlighting the following era of engineering expertise.
