People

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.