Air Force honors service of ASU professor

Posted: January 06, 2011

Werner Dahm (left) receives the U.S. Air Force’s Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service from Secretary of the Air Force Michael B. Donley at the Pentagon.

The U.S. Air Force recently bestowed its highest award for civilians on Arizona State University engineering professor Werner Dahm.

Dahm served as chief scientist for the Air Force from October 2008 to September 2010. His work in that role earned him the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service.

The award proclamation cited Dahm for “visionary leadership, superb organizational skills, and unsurpassed technical brilliance in conceiving, designing, and executing a year-long study of the long-term implications of science and technology for the United States Air Force.”

Working with a team of some of the nation’s foremost scientists and technologists, Dahm authored the “Technology Horizons” document that will guide Air Force science and technology objectives over the next two decades.

He collaborated with military leadership to begin work at the Air Force Research Laboratory toward meeting goals set forth in “Technology Horizons” plan.

Dahm is an ASU Foundation Professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the School for the Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

He is leading an effort to establish a security and defense science institute at ASU that will focus on finding solutions to national and global security challenges.

Drawing on the expertise of ASU researchers in a variety of fields, the university-wide institute will address issues related to national defense, homeland security, border security, counterterrorism, cybercrime and related areas.