Congratulations to Marissa Miller, CEE Office Manager, for winning a CEE Staff Award for Excellence! Ever since she joined CEE in spring of 2018, Marissa has provided outstanding support to the Structures Group. Thanks Marissa!
Welcome to new MS candidate Lauren Schissler, who is joining the research team for the project Strength and Serviceability of Damaged Steel Girders (sponsored by the Illinois Center for Transportation)! This project is a collaborative effort including Professors Elbanna, Fahnestock and LaFave and graduate students Ahmed Ibrahim and Sanjana Ahershinge. In May, Lauren graduated with a BS in CE from Illinois and was awarded a first-place Ira O. Baker Prize and a Lewis Graduate Fellowship for study in the field of structural engineering.
Larry Fahnestock has been awarded a CEE faculty scholar appointment. The Siess Faculty Scholar position is funded by the Chester P. and Helen K. Siess Endowed Fund in Civil Engineering, which honors the legacy of former CEE faculty member and Head, Chester P. Siess (MS 1939, PhD 1948).
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.
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)
Larry Fahnestock has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction. This honor is held by 3% of ASCE members and it recognizes significant contributions and creative engineering solutions that change lives around the world.
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
On May 1, Prof. Anil Chopra (UC Berkeley) delivered the 2017 Newmark Distinguished Lecture, titled “Earthquake Analysis and Response of Concrete Dams,” and he also shared remarks about his professional interactions with Nathan Newmark. Congratulations to Prof. Chopra on this honor!
Prof. Chopra with University of Illinois Structures Faculty
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
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.