James M. LaFave holds a B.S. (1986) and M.S. (1987) in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and a Ph.D. (1997) in civil (structural) engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Illinois since 1999. Dr. LaFave was previously a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst for two years before coming to Illinois. During the 2007-08 academic year, Prof. LaFave is on sabbatical leave as a visiting associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a licensed Professional Engineer with over four years of consulting engineering experience at Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. in Princeton, NJ and Sargent & Lundy Engineers in Chicago, IL.

Prof. LaFave has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of structural design, including courses on the behavior, design, and assessment of reinforced concrete, structural steel, and prestressed concrete structures. He also works with student organizations in his capacity as Faculty Advisor to the Chi Epsilon Civil Engineering Honor Society and the ASCE Steel Bridge Team.

Prof. LaFave is a member of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). He is Chair of Joint ACI-ASCE Committee 352 (Joints and Connections in Monolithic Concrete Structures) and a Member of ACI Committee 374 (Performance-Based Seismic Design of Concrete Buildings) and ACI Committee 439 (Steel Reinforcement).

In 2002 and again in 2005, Prof. LaFave received the University of Illinois ASCE Student Chapter Outstanding Instructor Award, and he was named a 2005 UIUC College of Engineering Xerox Award recipient for Faculty Research. In 2006, Prof. LaFave was presented with the ASTM Alan H. Yorkdale Memorial Award by the American Society for Testing & Materials, and in 2007 he received an Outstanding TMS Journal Paper Award by The Masonry Society.