Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 2 Summer 2018 | Page 31

In 1990 he became Associate Dean for Re-
search and Graduate Studies for the College of
Engineering.
O’Brien was a founding Associate Dean of
the Virginia Consortium of Engineering and
Science Universities, a cooperative involving
four universities. From 1993-2004 he was
head of the department. In 2002, he chaired a
multi-university effort to found the National
Institute of Aerospace (NIA), a NASA-affiliated
research institute in Hampton, VA, where he
now serves as the Virginia Tech Liaison Profes-
sor to NIA.
Walter F. O’Brien
BSME ’60 and PhD ’68. O’Brien spent nine
years in industry before joining the depart-
ment in 1970 an assistant professor.
In 1985 he was named J. Bernard Jones
Professor, becoming the first departmental
faculty member with a named professorship.
O’Brien has supervised the work of 130 MS
and Ph.D. students and published more than
150 papers and journal articles. He is a Life
Fellow of ASME, and a Fellow of the AIAA. In
2003 he received the Virginia Joint Engineer-
ing Society’s Pletta Award as the Outstanding
Engineering Educator in the State of Virginia.
MOMENTUM
SUMMER 2018
PAGE 31