Shawn Chester is currently the Associate Vice Provost for Research Collaborations and Partnerships and an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Shawn was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Prior to that he obtained his PhD in solid mechanics from the Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and obtained both his BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from NJIT.

As the inaugural position holder for the Associate Vice Provost for Research Collaborations and Partnerships, Shawn's role is to enhance research collaborations and partnerships, bringing investigators and institutions together to conceptualize and develop large-scale multidisciplinary research initiatives and translate them into compelling funding opportunities.

Shawn’s research focus in the past few years has been the development of experimentally validated continuum level constitutive theories for large-deformation multiphysics behavior of polymeric materials and the associated numerical implementation. His work spans most aspects of mechanics; experimental characterization, theoretical modeling, numerical imple- mentation, and experimental validation. Shawn has been recognized by young investigator awards through the ASME AMD Thomas J.R. Hughes Award, an NSF CAREER, and the ASME AMD Haythronthwaite award.