SEMM Faculty
The following is the list of faculty associated with Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Materials Engineering.
The list is organized displaying full time tenure and tenure track faculty, research and other general faculty and faculty associates that contribute to the programs mission.
Full time Tenure and Tenure track Faculty
Baker,Nelson C - Vice Provost and Associate Professor
Research Interests: Intelligent learning environments for engineering; applications of artificial intelligence and other computer-based techniques to solve engineering problems; robotic applications to civil engineering.
DesRoches,Reginald - Associate Chair and Professor
Research Interests: Auto-adaptive materials; earthquake engineering; structural dynamics; impact dynamics; design and analysis of bridge structures; protective systems; structural applications of smart materials.
Doyoyo,Mulalo - Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Ultralight and ‘green’ materials, structures, and systems; micro-assembled structures, including lattice materials; development of lightweight materials with non-equilibrium microstructures.
Ellingwood,Bruce R - Raymond Allen Jones Chair
Research Interests: Structural reliability; probability-based design; structural loads; natural hazards; load combinations analysis; abnormal loads and progressive collapse; and probabilistic risk analysis.
Emkin,Leroy Z - Professor
Research Interests: Matrix analysis; numerical methods; design of steel structures; structural optimization; computer applications; advanced computer programming; large-scale application software development; and computer-aided engineering.
Goodno,Barry - Professor
Research Interests: Earthquake engineering; structural dynamics; mechanics of materials; hybrid control of structures; influence of nonstructural components on building response; vibrations; finite element analysis.
Haj-Ali,Rami M - Professor
Research Interests: Computational mechanics; nonlinear structural analysis; damage mechanics; constitutive models; micromechanics of composite materials; fracture mechanics; nonlinear finite elements; and artificial neural networks in engineering applications.
Jacobs,Laurence J - Associate Dean and Professor
Research Interests: Quantitative nondestructive evaluation of civil engineering materials; wave propagation in solids, emphasizing guided waves, nonlinear methods and heterogeneous materials; signal processing techniques applied to nondestructive evaluation; and development of acoustic sensors for condition monitoring of structural components.
Kahn,Lawrence F - Professor
Research Interests: Structural concrete and masonry; high performance concrete for prestressed concrete bridges; self-compacting concrete; repair and rehabilitation of bridges and buildings; earthquake resistant design and retrofit.
Kurtis,Kimberly E - Associate Professor
Research Interests: Nano/microstructure, properties, and durability of cement-based materials; development of novel methods for multiscale characterization of infrastructure materials; high performance concrete; fiber-cement composites; applications of nondestructive evaluation methods to cementbased materials.
Leon,Roberto T - Professor
Research Interests: Behavior and design of steel and composite connections; seismic design of steel-braced frames and frames with partially restrained connections; seismic behavior of bridges; serviceability of composite floors; high performance materials.
Lindsey,Stanley - Professor of the Practice
Research Interests: Concrete and steel structural analysis; structural design; distributed education.
Muhanna,Rafi L - Associate Professor
Research Interests: Computational solid and structural mechanics; uncertainty modeling; reliable engineering computing; structural reliability; finite elements.
Scott,David W - Associate Professor
Research Interests: Design of structures constructed using high performance materials; repair and strengthening of structures using advanced materials and technologies; blast response of structures strengthened using FRP materials; viscoelastic characterization of polymeric materials; structural monitoring and damage detection.
Wang,Yang - Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Structural health monitoring and damage detection; decentralized structural control; smart materials and structures; wireless sensor networks; structural dynamics and earthquake engineering.
White,Donald W - Professor
Research Interests: Computational mechanics; numerical methods; structural stability; steel structures; computer-aided engineering.
Will,Kenneth M - Associate Chair and Associate Professor
Research Interests: Finite element analysis; structural stability; numerical techniques; computer graphics and visualization; offshore structures; computer-aided engineering; and high-performance computing.
Yavari,Arash - Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Solid mechanics in small scales; ferroelectrics; magnetoelastic and electroelastic interactions; lattice theories of solids; geometric continuum mechanics; configurational forces; and fractal fracture mechanics.
Professor Yavari's interests are in developing systematic theories of discrete mechanics for crystalline solids with defects. Defects play a crucial role in determining the properties of materials. The development of atomistic methods including density functional theory, bond-order potentials and embedded atom potentials has enabled a detailed study of such defects. However, much of the work is numerical and often with ad hoc boundary/far-field conditions. Specifically, a systematic method for studying these discrete yet non-local problems is lacking. Design in small scales requires solving inverse problems and this is not possible with purely numerical techniques. From a mechanics point of view, defective crystals are modeled as discrete boundary-value problems. The challenging issues are extending the existing techniques from solid state physics for non-periodic systems, new developments in the theory of vector-valued partial difference equations, existence and uniqueness of solutions of discrete boundary-value problems and their symmetries, etc. The other efforts in this direction are understanding the geometric structure of discrete mechanics and its link with similar attempts in the physics and computational mechanics literatures and investigating the rigorous continuum limits of defective crystals.
It has been known in physics for quite some time that the configuration spaces of physical phenomena, in general, are not linear, i.e. Euclidean, and instead they are manifolds (finite or infinite dimensional). Modeling physical theories on manifolds has been pursued for several decades in the theoretical physics literature and ideas from differential geometry have led to many profound advances in physics, the most celebrated one being Einstein's general theory of relativity. In engineering, and in particular in mechanics, manifold theory has not been appreciated perhaps mainly because engineering scientists have been involved in solving many specific technological problems in the last few decades and this has forced them to work with the simplest possible mathematical models. This need of working with simple models formulated in Euclidean spaces has resulted in a disconnect between different methods and a lack of deep understanding of the connections between different numerical methods, structure of governing equations of discrete and continuous systems, etc. One of Dr. Yavari's interests is to use ideas and techniques from differential geometry, exterior calculus, and algebraic topology in several problems in continuum and discrete mechanics in order to advance the understanding of different aspects of mechanics of continuous and discrete systems and their connections, differences and similarities.
Zureick,Abdul Hamid - Professor
Research Interests: High-performance fi ber-reinforced polymeric composite materials and structural systems; structural stability; design of steel structures; structural optimization; bridge structures; anisotropic elasticity.