The Department of Mechanical Engineering welcomes new chair Professor Guanshui (Alex) Xu. Xu received a Ph.D. from Brown University, completed his postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and joined UCR in 1998 after working as a project engineer in the oil and gas industry. Over the years, Xu has collegially served a broad range of the department, college, and campus committees and made considerable contributions to the development of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Xu’s work on the mechanical behavior of crystalline materials, earthquake mechanisms, and hydraulic fracturing have been supported by a variety of funding agencies including the National Science Foundation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Army Research Office, Southern California Earthquake Center, and the oil and gas industry.