1423 Powhatan St., Suite 1
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
Phone (703) 836-6727
Fax (703) 836-7491
Email: asnehq@navalengineers.org

 

ASNE is the leading professional engineering society for engineers, scientists and allied professionals who conceive, design, develop, test, construct, outfit, operate and maintain complex naval and maritime ships, submarines and aircraft and their associated systems and subsystems.  ASNE also serves the educators who train the professionals, researchers who develop related technology, and students who are preparing for the profession.  Society activities provide support for the U.S. Navy; U.S. Coast Guard; U.S. Marine Corps; U.S. Merchant Marine and U.S. Army.

ASNE is the seventh oldest technical society in the United States.  It was founded in 1888 by a group of naval engineering pioneers, most of them officers of the U.S. Navy's Engineering Corps, who sought a unified approach to their profession in order to make the most of new advances in technology. The purposes of ASNE are:           

  • to advance the knowledge and practice of naval engineering in public and private applications and operations,
  • to enhance the professionalism and well-being of members, and
  • to promote naval engineering as a career field.

For 125 years, the Society’s objectives have been strengthened and preserved to meet the changing needs of a time-honored profession. Today ASNE conducts a variety of technical meetings and symposia, publishes the highly regarded Naval Engineers Journal and a number of other technical proceedings and publications, and fosters professional development and technical information exchange through technical committees, local section activities and cooperative efforts with government organizations and other professional societies.

The Society's annual meeting, ASNE Day, is typically held in February of each year in the Washington, DC, area. The meeting features major addresses by high level industry and government leaders and panel discussions by leading members of the profession.  It also includes presentation and discussion of technical papers on a variety of timely naval engineering topics, presentation of the Society's prestigious annual awards and a large exposition with government and industry exhibits covering the full spectrum of naval engineering technology. ASNE Day is highlighted by the Society’s annual Honors Gala, attended by hundreds of executives and senior managers from both government and industry.

Our website is designed to not only serve our members, but also to support scholars, students and others interested in the varied field of naval engineering.  We welcome your suggestions on ways we can improve your experience. 

Dr. Alan J. Brown, CAPT, USN (Ret.)

Award: Solberg Award
Year: 2007
Recipient:
Dr. Alan J. Brown, CAPT, USN (Ret.)
Reason:
For his significant engineering research and development accomplishments in the field of multi-disciplinary warship design optimization as set forth in the following:

Dr. Alan Brown has pioneered a new and critical area of naval engineering research in developing advanced multi-objective analytical and statistical optimization methods for rigorously exploring the entire design solution space and has contributed more to the understanding of multi-objective warship design optimization than anyone since the original design optimization research of the 1970s.

Dr. Brown set the direction for research in ONR’s “Naval Surface Ship Design Optimization for Affordability” project, and has led the development of powerful multi-objective warship design optimization methods that are now being employed in new ship acquisition programs. Over a naval and academic career spanning 33 years, Dr. Brown has become one of the world’s leading experts on the military effectiveness and affordability of warship designs using multi-objective optimization techniques and crashworthiness and damage assessment probabilistic methods. His research results are being rapidly implemented within the naval ship design community and are influencing the direction of research in other universities.

His newest area of research in ship survivability builds on his related work in design for collision and grounding. Recent world events have made design to reduce the vulnerability of naval and commercial ships to air and underwater explosions an important research area. He is applying his ship survivability research results to the total ship design and this new research is already resulting in important Design for Survivability benefits.

Dr. Brown’s outstanding research in Multi-disciplinary Design Optimization is filling an important void in the naval ship design process. Additionally, he is applying his exceptional skills as an educator to teach these innovative methods to a future generation of naval engineers. For this outstanding work he is truly worthy of the Society’s 2007 Solberg Award.