Amr Elnashai

Harold and Inge Marcus Dean, College of Engineering, Penn State

Abstract

Welcoming Address

Career Summary

Fellow of the British Royal Academy of Engineering Amr Elnashai is the Dean of Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, and the Harold and Inge Marcus Endowed Chair of Engineering. He is responsible for all academic and administrative affairs of the college, which has 11 departments and 2 schools, 305 professors and research expenditure of over $160M per year. He is member of the Academic Leadership Council of Penn State. He was previously head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA and the Bill and Elaine Hall endowed professor. He was Director of the NSF multi-institution interdisciplinary Mid-America Earthquake Center (2004-2009). He was also Director of the NSF Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulations (NEES) Laboratory at Illinois (2002-2009). Amr obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Cairo University, followed by MSc and PhD degrees from Imperial College, University of London. Before joining the University of Illinois in June 2001, Amr was Professor of Earthquake Engineering and Head of Division at Imperial College (1985-2001). He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey, UK, since 1997. Other visiting professor appointments include the University of Tokyo, the University of Southern California, and the European School for Advanced Studies in Reduction of Seismic Risk, Italy. His technical interests are multi-resolution distributed analytical simulations, network analysis, large-scale hybrid testing and field investigations of the response of complex networks and structures to earthquakes. He has produced more than 250 research publications, comprising over 140 refereed journal papers and many conference papers, keynote and prestige lectures, research reports, 3 books and several book chapters, magazine articles and earthquake field investigation reports. Amr has supervised 45 Doctoral and over 100 Master of Science theses.