Zhou Selected as Mavis Fellow

Congratulations to Siang (Sunny) Zhou for being selected as one of the Mavis Future Faculty Fellows (MF3) for the 2022-2023 academic year!  Sunny is co-advised by Prof. Larry Fahnestock and Prof. James LaFave, and she is studying superstructure response and load distribution in skewed steel girder bridges under thermal and traffic loading as part of a project sponsored by the Illinois Center for Transportation.

The MF3 program is designed to prepare Ph.D. students for becoming the next generation of engineering professors through instruction and mentorship in teaching, research and service.  This program is made possible by a generous bequest of Frederic T. and Edith F. Mavis. Prof. Mavis received B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois.  During his career, he was a Civil Engineering faculty member at several universities and Dean of Engineering at the University of Maryland from 1957 until 1967.

Deierlein Delivers Newmark Lecture

This week the structures faculty hosted Prof. Greg Deierlein, Blume Professor of Engineering at Stanford University, as he delivered the Newmark Distinguished Lecture, “Informing Strategies to Promote Earthquake Resilience through Performance-based Simulations.”  Thanks to Prof. Deierlein for visiting and giving an excellent talk!

Illinois Structures Faculty, Staff and Students with Prof. Greg Deierlein during his Newmark Lecture Visit (photo by Prof. Bill Spencer via Drone)

Best Paper Award

The paper “I-5 Skagit River Bridge Collapse Review” has been selected as the best paper for 2016 by vote of the Associate Editors of the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities.

Stark, T.D., Benekohal, R., Fahnestock, L.A., LaFave, J.M., He, J. and Wittenkeller, C. “I-5 Skagit River Bridge Collapse Review,” Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, ASCE, 04016061.  dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CF.1943-5509.0000913

Fahnestock Named Fellow of SEI

Larry Fahnestock has been named a Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE). The 2017 SEI Fellows, who were recognized at the ASCE/SEI Structures Congress in Denver, Colorado earlier this month, are: Fabio Biondi, Larry Fahnestock, John Finke, Maria Garlock, Eric Hines, Ron Klemencic, Mary Kay Knight, Lance Manuel, Cheryl Rishcoff, Bradford Russell, Halil Sezen, Peggy Van Eepoel, Scott Wallace and Eric Williamson.

2017 SEI Fellows with SEI President Andrew Herrmann

Fahnestock Receives Dean’s Award

Larry Fahnestock has received one of the 2017 Dean’s Awards for Excellence in Research. The College of Engineering presents this award annually to the assistant professors and associate professors who have been judged by their colleagues to have conducted the best research during the previous academic year(s).  The award will be formally conferred at the Engineering Faculty Awards Ceremony on April 24, 2017.

Fahnestock Receives Epstein Faculty Award

Prof. Fahnestock has received the 2016 Raymond and Sidney Epstein Structural Engineering Faculty Award. This award is given annually to a Structural Engineering Faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for outstanding instruction. Awards are based upon the highest average ICES scores in both the Fall and Spring semester from the previous year.

Fahnestock Receives AISC Special Achievement Award

Fourteen leaders from across the structural steel design, construction, and academic community will receive distinguished awards from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) at the 2016 NASCC: The Steel Conference (April 13-15 in Orlando). Prof. Fahnestock is being recognized for his work on the reserve capacity of low-ductility steel braced frames in areas of moderate seismicity, in which he quantifies the effects of reserve capacity in non-ductile frames, which may preclude the need for strict seismic retrofit requirements in moderate seismic regions.