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Research Interests

Dr. Bert Bras is a Professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology since September 1992. His research focus is on environmentally conscious design and manufacturing, design for de- and remanufacture, Activity-Based Costing and Environmental Management, Life-Cycle Analysis, and industrial ecology. His primary research question is how to reduce the environmental impact of companies while increasing their competitiveness, i.e., how to promote sustainable development. For his research, he has received funding and donations from institutions such as the National Science Foundation, the Georgia Research Alliance, AT&T, Motorola, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Lucent, Interface Flooring Systems, and the Army Environmental Policy Institute. He has authored and co-authored over 100 publications. He has developed and taught undergraduate courses related to Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing since 1993. He has won Georgia Tech’s 1995 Amoco and Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning Young Faculty Teaching Award, was named the 1996 Engineer of the Year in Education by the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers, received a NSF Young Faculty Career Award in 1996, and a Society of Automotive Engineers’ Ralph R. Teetor Award in 1999.  He has provided consulting services for the Chrysler Corporation, United Technologies Automotive, LG Electronics, and BFGoodrich. In 1999-2000, he was part of a group of experts charged by the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy through the WTEC - World Technology Evaluation Center with evaluating the state-of-the-art in environmentally benign manufacturing. He visited companies, universities, and governmental institutions in Europe, Japan and the US. In 2000, he co-authored with a former student a book titled “Integrated Activity-Based Cost and Environmental Management - A Different Approach to ISO 14000 Compliance”, published by Kluwer Academic Press. From 2001-2004, he served as the Director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development

Dr. Bras obtained his Master of Science (“Ingenieur”) degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Twente, The Netherlands, in August 1987.  After completion of his M.S. thesis he was hired as a full time research associate at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands’ (MARIN) Design Research department and sponsored by MARIN to complete a PhD study in the US. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Operations Research from the University of Houston in May 1992. On the completion of his Ph.D., he received a Post-Doctoral grant from the Institute of Space Systems and Operations at the University of Houston.

Publications

Books

• Emblemsvåg, J. and Bras, B.A, “Activity-Based Cost and Environmental Management - A Different Approach to the ISO 14000 Compliance”, ISBN 0-7923-7247-6, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.

Selected Journal Articles

• Mistree, F., Smith, W. F., Bras, B.A., Allen, J.K. and Muster, D., “Decision-Based Design: A Contemporary Paradigm for Ship Design”, in Transactions, Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. 98, pp. 565-597, 1990.
• Bras, B.A. and Mistree, F., “Designing Design Processes in Decision-Based Concurrent Engineering”, in SAE Transactions, Journal of Materials & Manufacturing, Vol. 100, pp. 451-458, 1991

• Scheuring, J., Bras, B.A. and Lee, K.-M., “Significance of Design for Disassembly on Integrated Disassembly and Assembly Processes”, International Journal of Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 21-33, 1994
• Bras, B., “Incorporating Environmental Issues in Product Realization,” Industry and Environment, United Nations UNEP/IE (invited contribution), Vol. 20, No. 1-2 (double issue), pp. 7-13, 1997.
• Hammond, R., Amezquita, T., and Bras, B.A., “Issues in the Automotive Parts Remanufacturing Industry: Discussion of Results from Surveys Performed among Remanufacturers”, International Journal of Engineering Design and Automation – Special Issue on Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 27-46, 1998.
• Newcomb, P.J., Bras, B.A., and Rosen, D.W., “Implications of Modularity on Product Design for the Life-Cycle”, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, Vol. 120, pp. 483-490, 1998.
• Coulter, S.L., Bras, B.A., Winslow, G., and Yester, S., “Designing for Material Separation: Lessons from Automotive Recycling”, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, Vol. 120, pp. 501-509, 1998.
• Bailey, R. R., Bras, B., and Allen, J.K., “Using Response Surfaces to Improve the Search for Satisfactory Behavior in System Dynamics Models,” Systems Dynamics Review, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 75-90, 2000.
• Coutee, A.S., McDermott, S.D. and Bras, B.,  “A Haptic Assembly and Disassembly Simulation Environment and Associated Computational Load Optimization Techniques”, ASME Transactions - Journal of Computing & Information Science in Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 113-122, 2001.
• Allen, D.T., Bauer, D.J., Bras, B., Gutowski, T.G., Murphy, C.F., Piwonka, T.S., Sheng, P.S., Sutherland, J.W., Thurston, D.L., Wolff, E.E., “Environmentally Benign Manufacturing: Trends in Europe, Japan and the USA”, ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science, Vol. 124, No.4, pp. 908-920, November 2002. (Bras corresponding author).

Selected Conference Papers

Under Construction

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