Ethics and Integrity in Science and Engineering

Professional Development Track

with Mark Stremler, Professor and Engineering Mechanics Graduate Chair
Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering

 November 14, 2025, 2:30 PM, Torgersen Hall 2150

Responsible conduct in graduate school (and beyond) includes maintaining a strict code of academic integrity. We will discuss key components of the Virginia Tech Graduate Honor Code, including cheating, falsification, plagiarism, and academic sabotage, with additional discussion of the related topics of reproducibility, self-plagiarism, using AI, and “salami slicing”. Examples from the literature and popular press will be used for illustration. Consideration will be given for both what to do and what not to do. Several supporting resources will be covered.

Mark A. Stremler is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, where he also serves as the director of the Engineering Science & Mechanics programs. His research interests cover a range of topics in fluid mechanics, including reduced-order mathematical, numerical, and experimental models of fluid flows, with an emphasis on fluid-structure interaction, flows dominated by coherent vortical structures, fluid dynamics in biological systems, and connections to dynamical systems theory, particularly applications to fluid mixing. His prior administrative roles include PI of the MultiSTEPS NSF IGERT Program and founding director of the BIOTRANS IGEP program. He was previously an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN, USA) and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC; Urbana, IL, USA). He earned MS and PhD degrees in theoretical and applied mechanics from UIUC and BS degrees in mechanical engineering and mathematics from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT; Terre Haute, IN, USA).