Beginning in 1996, Foecke has been involved in the forensic examination of the structure and mechanical properties of metals recovered from the wreck of the
RMS Titanic, and has been involved in expeditions in 1996, 1998, and 2004. He performed experiments on several hull fragments and definitively disproved the theory that the steel used to construct the hull of the Titanic was inferior and brittle. He was the originator of the "rivet theory" to explain the rapid sinking of the
Titanic. His initial report on the hull steel and rivets was published in 1998. This study was greatly expanded in collaboration with Dr.
Jennifer Hooper McCarty in her Ph.D. thesis work at
Johns Hopkins University and was published in 2008 in the book "What Really Sank the Titanic - New Forensic Discoveries" (Citadel Press) and has been published as a German translation "Warum sank die Titanic wirklich?: Neue forensische Erkenntnisse (Springer Vieweg) (2012)". Foecke was a member of the National Construction Safety Team that analyzed the collapse of the
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and was responsible for all failure analysis and fractography of steel components, forensic image analysis of images and video footage contributed by the public and media organizations to identify damage and failure mechanisms of the steel components impacted by the aircraft and ascertain the integrity of the fireproofing on the steel, and investigations looking into evidence of maximum temperatures reached by recovered building components. Foecke led a project at
NIST that created a finite element model of the wreck of the
USS Arizona, attempting to estimate the remaining lifespan before the collapse and to provide a mechanism to test remediation techniques before implementing them on the monument. Foecke is also a consultant on conservation efforts on the wrecks of the
CSS Hunley and
USS Monitor. Foecke has been involved in a project attempting to stabilize and conserve the
Inconel components of the
Apollo 11 first stage
Rocketdyne F-1 engine recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. He has been involved in several television science productions as an interviewee and consultant, including Titanic - Anatomy of a Disaster (Discovery Channel), Titanic Live (Discovery Channel), Titanic - Answers from the Abyss (Discovery Channel), Collapse of the World Trade Center (Discovery Canada), Seconds from Disaster - Sinking of the RMS Titanic (National Geographic Channel), Living in a Material World (Discovery Science Channel), Return to Titanic (National Geographic Channel), Science of Superhuman Strength (Discovery Channel), and Humanless Earth (NOVA). Foecke's work has been covered in the media extensively, with front-page articles in
The New York Times and
The Washington Post, as well as interviews with TV, radio and print media around the world. He was the first "mystery guests" on the NPR series ''Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me'' who was not employed by NPR, appearing on the 5th ever broadcast on January 31, 1998. Foecke was asked to contribute to Time Magazine's "60 Second Symposium" on the topic of metallurgy in 1999. Foecke helped the Science Museum of Maryland in Baltimore develop the exhibit "Science of the Titanic", which tours children's museums in the US and has delivered over 200 presentations to school groups from elementary to college on various forensic topics, including "What Sank the Titanic" and "Cool, Old, Famous Broken Stuff", attempting to interest kids in
STEM field careers. Foecke is the founder and past director of the NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting, the mission is helping the US auto industry get lighter, next-generation materials into vehicle bodies. A $4M, congressionally-funded project, current work involves complex, multipath, and high-rate testing of materials such as carbon fiber composites and advanced high-strength steels and using the data to generate constitutive models used in finite element design of car bodies and the needed manufacturing tools. Foecke was a consultant to the National Capital Planning Commission on materials selection and durability for the
Eisenhower Memorial on Maryland Avenue in Washington, DC and was part of the NIST team that assisted the Architect of the Capital with issues welding 150 year old cast steel frame components during the remediation of the Capital Dome. From 2001-2012, Foecke was an adjunct professor of materials science and engineering at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and since 2010 has been an adjunct professor of materials science and engineering at the
University of Maryland - College Park, teaching courses in thermodynamics/kinetics of materials, structure/property relationships in materials and he developed a new course in engineering materials selection, which after one year as an elective was moved by the department to be a required core class. In 2017 he expanded the curriculum with a class on high-strength metallic materials and a University Honors seminar course on the root causes of historic engineering failures. Foecke retired from federal government service after 28 years in November 2019 and joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland - College Park full-time as a lecturing professor until May 2022. Foecke has a
Bacon Number of 2 (
Martin Sheen having been the narrator of the Discovery Channel documentary
Titanic-Anatomy of a Disaster, and co-starred in the movie
JFK with
Kevin Bacon), and an
Erdős number of 4 (via Robb Thomson to
Peter Bergmann To
Ernst G. Straus to
Paul Erdős), giving him an
Erdős–Bacon number of 6. ==Patents==