We share the heartbreaking news of the passing of Dr. Sony Mathew, a CALCE alumnus and former research faculty. Sony was a devoted husband, loving father of three young children, and a person of warmth, integrity, and quiet strength.
On July 16, 2025, while returning home from work on the road between Houston and Dallas, Sony was involved in a devastating car accident. Despite the dedicated efforts of the medical team at Methodist Dallas Medical Center, he passed away on July 23, surrounded by his family.
Sony earned his Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland in 2004, working on the life extension of space shuttle hardware through virtual remaining life assessment. His work received recognition with a best publication award from the IEST. After his Master’s degree, he worked as a research faculty member at the Center and concurrently worked on his PhD. As part of his PhD work, he developed an analytical model for solder joint fatigue failure in leadless surface mount components, which accounts for the solder attachment area. His work showed the potential of using canary devices for predicting solder joint fatigue failure.
In addition to his PhD work, he devoted time to tin whisker risk, remaining life assessment, applications of failure modes, mechanisms, effects analysis, and supporting the Prognostics and Health Management Consortium at the University of Maryland. He published more than ten articles on the research he performed while at CALCE.
Sony served as a Senior Reliability Engineer at Schlumberger (now SLB), where he brought unmatched technical leadership in Prognostics and Health Management (PHM), FMEA, and system reliability.
He had been active in the professional societies with a focus on prognostics and reliability prediction. He had been contributing to a series of IEEE standards with the Reliability Society in leading roles, and was on the editorial board of the International Journal of Prognostics and Health Management.
His positive and kind personality and his dedication to the cause of the advancement of science and engineering will be missed by us all.
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