Marcus Dersch, RailTEC Principal Research Engineer, successfully defended his PhD dissertation on Monday, 4 April. His dissertation is titled “Railroad Track Fastening System Demands and Response: Implications for Mechanistic Design“. The dissertation advances the M-E analysis and design of fastening systems through the deployment of field instrumentation, execution of experiments in the laboratory, and development and validation of multiple analytical models. Members of his committee were Illinois faculty Chris Barkan, Riley Edwards, Erol Tutumluer and John Popovics. Rounding out the committee was Professor Dr.-Ing. Stephan Freudenstein from the Technical University of Munich who participated via Zoom. Congratulations, Marcus!
