Honors & Awards

• NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award (CMMI-1752400). National Science Foundation, 08/01/2018
• Young Investigator Award. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), 01/2015
• Early Career Teaching Award. University of Utah, 04/03/2018
• Outstanding Teaching Award, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah. 08/2017
• AFRL Summer Faculty Fellow. Air Force Research Laboratory, 05/2016
• ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Young Professional Award. ASTM, 11/2020
• Top Performer Award: AFRL Additive Manufacturing (AM) Modeling Challenge. U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, 09/2020
• Department of Mechanical Engineering Outstanding Researcher Award. University of Utah, 08/2020
• DOD NDSEG Fellowship awarded to PhD student, Karen DeMille. Acceptance rate in 2019: 5.7%. National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Program, 08/2019
• TMS Early Career Faculty Fellow Award. Top award given to early-career faculty by the society, TMS. Awarded annually to two faculty members. The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS), 03/2019
• College of Engineering Outstanding Teaching Award. University of Utah, 08/2018
• Department of Mechanical Engineering Outstanding Teaching Award. University of Utah, 08/2018

In the Media

• Research on infant skull fracture featured on episode of “Just Science” podcast. Collaborative work with Dr. Brittany Coats was featured on an episode of the podcast Just Science in May 2019. Just Science is a podcast hosted by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCoE), which “is committed to improving the practice and strengthening the impact of forensic science through rigorous technology corroboration, evaluation, and adoption; effective knowledge transfer and education; and comprehensive dissemination of best practices and guidelines to agencies dedicated to combating crime.” . 05/2019. https://forensiccoe.org/2019rd-e2/
• Young Professional Highlight in JOM - Spear featured in the August 2018 issue of JOM, the journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS). According to the journal, “the article is the latest in an occasional feature series highlighting the scientific interests and professional accomplishments of an early career TMS member who has contributed to the technical content of a recent issue of JOM.”. 08/2018. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs1...
• Article from Spear’s lab recognized as Editor’s Choice - Graduate student, Kyle Pierson, was the lead author of an article that was selected as the Editor’s Choice article for the July issue of JOM (out of 45 research articles published in that issue). The selection was publicized on Facebook and Twitter. 07/2018. https://springeropen.altmetric.com/details/4542791...
• Recognized in The Key magazine - Spear mentioned in the Summer 2018 issue of The Key for receiving the NSF CAREER award. The Key is the official publication of Kappa Kappa Gamma (a women’s fraternity) and is circulated to approximately 180,000 readers, mostly women. 06/2018. https://wiki.kkg.org/images/c/cf/THE_KEY_VOL_135_N...
• "Cracking Under Pressure". Research featured in the University of Utah College of Engineering Winter 2015 Newsletter. 12/2015. https://www.coe.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...
• Cracking the Puzzle of Material Failure - Recent work featured as a Science Highlight by the Advanced Photon Source, a facility operated by Argonne National Laboratory. 12/2014. https://www1.aps.anl.gov/APS-Science-Highlight/201...