Samantha (Sam) Hayes Daly is an American mechanical engineer whose research topics include the failure analysis of novel materials including shape-memory alloys and ceramic matrix composites, and the calibration of the scanning electron microscopes used in this analysis.
She is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
[1] Daly was an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where she earned a double bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and mathematics in 2001.
She went to the California Institute of Technology for graduate study in mechanical engineering, earning a master's degree in 2002 and completing her Ph.D. in 2007,[2] under the joint supervision of Kaushik Bhattacharya and Guruswami Ravichandran.
[2] Daly was the 2011 recipient of the Orr Early Career Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME),[4] the 2015 recipient of the Eshelby Mechanics Award for Young Faculty,[2] the 2016 recipient of the James W. Dally Award of the Society for Experimental Mechanics,[5] and the 2022 recipient of the Materials Division Centennial Mid-Career Award of the ASME.