William S. Klug

William S. Klug, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, died June 1, 2016. Professor Klug, a beloved and committed scholar, conducted life-saving research that also involved colleagues from UCLA's engineering, science and medical faculty. He specialized in computational biomechanics and the mechanics of biological systems, such as cancer cells.

Professor Klug had been a member of the UCLA community since his days as a graduate student, from 1998 through 1999, when he earned a master's degree in civil engineering. He went on to earn a doctorate from Caltech in 2003, and then returned to UCLA that year as a faculty member of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Professor Klug held appointments in mechanical and aerospace engineering and in bioengineering, and he was promoted to full professor in 2015.

Among his recent research projects, Klug was collaborating with colleagues at the David Geffen School of Medicine in running the UCLA Cardiac Modeling Group. Funded by a $4.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the researchers were applying biomechanics to cardiology research with the goal of better understanding the electromechanics of the heart.

His previous research provided a clearer picture of the physics of cells and their organelles, which had applications for understanding the life cycles of viruses like HIV. He was also director of the Klug Research Group, which studied computational biomechanics, including how biological structures' shape and mechanics affects their function.

Klug received a number of prestigious awards, including a 2008 National Science Foundation Career Award of $475,000 over five years and his department's Samueli Teaching Award in 2007. In his career, he used that and other grants to support research by a number of doctoral and post-doctoral scholars whom he worked with or mentored. In 2012, he was honored by Westmont College, his undergraduate alma mater, as a distinguished alumnus.

While on sabbatical in 2012, he served as a visiting scholar at both Caltech and USC. He was engaged in the UCLA community, serving as a member of numerous campus committees, as a reviewer on a dozen academic journals and as an organizer for a half- dozen conferences.

Klug was born on June 19, 1976, and lived in El Segundo, California. He is survived by his wife, Mary Elise, a fellow graduate of both Westmont and UCLA, and their children, ages 9 and 7.