John Michael McCarthy

Picture of John Michael McCarthy
Professor, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
The Henry Samueli School of Engineering
PH.D., Stanford University
Phone: (949) 824-6893
Fax: (949) 824-8585
Email: jmmccart@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
S4203 EG
Mail Code: 3975
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Machine Design, Kinematic Synthesis of Robotic Systems, Project-based Learning
Academic Distinctions
J. Michael McCarthyis a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and has received the 2008 ASME Outstanding Service Award and the 2009 ASME Machine Design Award. In 2011, he received the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Award for his research contributions, and in 2013 he received Robert E. Abbott Lifetime Service Award from the Design Engineering Division of ASME International. His contributions in teaching were recognized by the Henry Samueli School of Engineering’s 2009 Faribor Maseeh Teaching Award and in 2010 by the UCI Teaching Excellence in Undergraduate Engineering Award.
Research Abstract
J. Michael McCarthy is the Director of UCi’s Performance Engineering Program, having completed a seven year term as the Henry Samueli Professor and Director of the Center for Engineering Science in Design at the University of California, Irvine, which supports the design and execution of team engineering projects across the School of Engineering. He is also Associate Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He recieved his Ph.D. at Stanford University, and has taught at Loyola Marymount University and the University of Pennsylvania before joining UCI in 1986.

He has over 150 publications and three books including The Geometric Design of Linkages (Springer 2000, 2nd Ed. 2010). He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design (2002-2007) and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics (2007-present).

His research team is responsible for the Sphinx, Synthetica and MecGen software packages, which extend computer-aided design to spherical and spatial linkage systems and integrate this process with geometric modeling. He has presented tutorials on the design of linkages and robotic systems at ASME and IEEE conferences, including the NSF sponsored 2012 Workshop on 21st Century Kinematics.

He is an industrial consultant in the area of machine and robotic system design, and provides testimony on intellectual property and product liability. He served as Chief Technical Officer of Accuray Incorporated to assist the transition of a robotic radio-surgery system from research to market. In 2010 and 2011, he served two terms as Chair of the Board of Governors for the Southern California Section of SAE international and is the 2012 Secretary for the Orange County Engineering Council.
Available Technologies
Publications
M. Plecnik and J. M. McCarthy, “Numerical Synthesis of Six-bar Linkages for Mechanical Computation,” ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, Vol. 6, August, 2014.
D. Li, Z. Zhang and J. M. McCarthy, “A Constraint Graph Representation of Metamorphic Linkages,” 46(2):228-238, Mechanism and Machine Theory, 2011.
J. M. McCarthy, Kinematics and Polynomials in Brief, MDA Press, available on iPad through iBookstore, 2013.
J. M. McCarthy, An Introduction to Theoretical Kinematics, MDA Press, available on iPad through iBookstore, 2013.
J. M. McCarthy (Editor), 21st Century Kinematics: 2012 NSF Workshop, Springer Press, New York, 2013.
Grants
A Design Environment for Kinematic Synthesis of Defect Free Linkage Systems (1066082)---National Science Foundation, $340,000 (36 mon.) awarded June 2010.
Workshop on 21st Century Kinematics; Washington DC (1068497)—National Science Foundation, $49,900 (12 mon.), awarded April 2011.
Collaborative Research: A Design Methodology for Multi-fingered Robotic Hands with Second-order Kinematic Constraints," under the direction of J. Michael McCarthy, Nina P. Robson, in collaboration with Alba Perez Gracia, Idaho State University (IIS-1208412), $399,997, awarded September 2012
EAGER: Computational Machine Design: The Eight-bar Linkage (1346738), National Science Foundation, $88,883, awarded August 1, 2013.
Professional Societies
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Research Centers
Robotics and Automation Laboratory
Last updated
09/07/2018