August 12, 2024
During his 62-year career at the UW, Professor Emeritus Ashley Emery made a significant impact on the ME community.
Professor Emeritus Ashley Emery at his desk. Photo provided by Julia Jones.
Emery was chair of the ME department, Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, President of the UW Faculty Senate, National Science Foundation program manager, Puget Sound Engineer of the Year and was elected an American Society of Mechanical Engineers Fellow and Chief Editor for the ASME Journal of Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification.
After receiving his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1961, Emery began his career at the UW, where he worked until retiring in 2024. Emery was “one of the early key faculty members who put the department on the national and international research map,” said Professor Per Reinhall in a 2011 article commemorating his 50 years of service as a UW faculty member. Emery passed away in spring 2024 at the age of 89.
As many faculty members in the ME department can attest, Emery made numerous research contributions in the fields of heat transfer, scientific computing and many other subdisciplines within ME. In 1993 and 2004, his research was recognized with best paper awards from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Research highlights included highly cited publications on inviscid fluid flow, convective heat transfer, optimal control of an HVAC system, finite-element computational methods, uncertainty quantification in engineering simulations and more.
According to colleagues, Emery always looked for new challenges. Active in many UW committees as well as societies and journals, he was a fellow of ASME, the chair of the ASME Applied Mechanics Review editorial board and a fellow for the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. At the age of 80, Emery became the founding editor of the ASME Journal of Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification. He served in that capacity for five years.
In addition, Emery co-authored the law book “Forensic Metrology: Scientific Measurement and Inference for Lawyers, Judges, and Criminalists,” providing his expertise in studying possible uncertainties when measurements were being made with instruments. Colleagues say that the book provided insight to a subset of lawyers who are integrating engineering practices with legal statutes and their implementation.
Emery’s colleagues emphasize how much he valued collaboration, loved teaching and considered working at UW to be “enjoyment, not work.” He cared deeply about his students and even visited former students in Russia and Egypt. For more than 20 years, he also served as faculty adviser for the Formula Motorsports student organization.
An avid biker, Emery rode the Seattle to Portland bicycle ride for more than 25 years, including a final ride in 2017 with his three grandsons. He loved working on his classic cars: an MG and a Jaguar. Reading was his favorite after-work pastime, and he kept a spreadsheet of all the mystery novels he read. He will be greatly missed by family, friends, colleagues and students.