About Authors

Dr. Darrell W. Pepper is presently Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Nevada Center for Advanced Computational Methods at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). He was the 2004 ASME Congressional Fellow and worked in the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) where he handled science and engineering issues. He previously served as Interim Dean of the College of Engineering and was Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNLV from 1996 - 2002.  Dr. Pepper obtained his BSME, MSAE, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Missouri-Rolla and has worked at the Savannah River Laboratory for DuPont, served as Chief Scientist of the Marquardt Company, an aerospace propulsion company in Van Nuys, CA, and was CEO and cofounder of Advanced Projects Research, Inc.  He has published over 200 technical papers in the areas of fluid flow, heat transfer, and environmental transport and is the coauthor of the book Intermediate Finite Element Method: Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer Applications, with J.C. Heinrich (Taylor & Francis, 1999). Dr. Pepper is a Fellow of ASME and an Associate Fellow of AIAA.

Dr. Juan C. Heinrich received his undergraduate degree from Universidad Católica de Chile and his Ph.D. in Mathematics/Numerical Analysis from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Fellow of the ASME and member of the ASEE, and acts as a consultant to several international institutions and major corporations. He is currently editor, advisor and reviewer for a variety of technical journals, including Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering and Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics. He began his academic career at the University of Arizona, where he became Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and served as Associate Head of the department from 1995-1997. He is currently Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of New Mexico. He has published over 100 technical papers in the area of finite element analysis and is the coauthor of two textbooks on the finite element method.