People

Professor Oliver M. O’Reilly

Curriculum Vitae
Google Scholar
ResearchGate

Oliver M. O’Reilly is the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a former Chair of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate and a former Associate Dean for Graduate Education in the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society.

O’Reilly received his BE in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). Subsequently, he received his MS and PhD degrees in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University, where he studied under Phil Holmes and Frank Moon. After spending two years as a postdoc at the Institut für Mechanik at ETH Zürich under Jürg Dual, he joined the faculty in Mechanical Engineering at Cal in 1992. His interests span the fields of continuum mechanics and nonlinear dynamics.

He has a broad range of specializations including directed (or Cosserat) theories of deformable bodies, constrained rigid body dynamics, contact mechanics, linear and nonlinear vibrations and linear and nonlinear dynamics of deformable bodies. He has applied these interests to a range of applications including MEMS resonators, brake squeal, soft robots, flexible ocean risers, the dynamics of toys, motorcycle navigation, axially moving media, artificial and natural satellites, spinal kinematics and vehicle collision dynamics.

O’Reilly has published over 100 archival journal articles, written three textbooks, coauthored a recent book on discrete elastic rods and is a co-inventor on two patents. He has also received several teaching awards including UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1999, the Pi Tau Sigma Professor of the Year Award in 2003, and the Tau Beta Pi Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award in 2013. In 2021, he was a recipient of the Berkeley Faculty Service Award.

Graduate Students

Ryan McAvoy

Contact: rynomcavoy@berkeley.edu

Ryan McAvoy received his BS in Engineering Physics and BA in Applied Mathematics from University of California, Berkeley in 2022, his MS in Mechanical Engineering from the same institution in 2023, and his MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 2025. His research interests span theoretical and computational mechanics with a particular focus on the development and analysis of models for materials with microstructure. Ryan is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and is co-advised by Professor David Steigmann.

Collaborators

Chrystal Chern

Contact: cchern@berkeley.edu

Chrystal Chern received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2016 and her PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2024 as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley with a focus on system identification, anomaly detection, and finite element modeling for structural health monitoring. Projects span digital twin frameworks for civil infrastructure, human-object motion coupling from IMU sensor networks, and open-source Python tools for system identification. Before graduate school, Chrystal practiced as a building enclosure engineer specializing in thermal modeling and non-destructive testing. She also serves as Program Strategist for Research Mentorship and Student Impact at Berkeley Discovery. Personal website: https://chrystalchern.com

Theresa Honein

Contact: th72@aub.edu.lb

Theresa Honein is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department and a fellow at the Center of Advanced Mathematica Sciences at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. She earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in Summer 2024 under Professor Oliver O’Reilly. Theresa is interested in utilizing tools from dynamics and mechanics to create physically accurate simulations of seemingly simple yet actually difficult to model phenomena. You can learn more about her research on here.