Amr S Elnashai

Primary Research Area

• Structural Engineering

Research Areas

• Structural Engineering

Biography

Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering Amr Elnashai is Dean of Engineering at Penn State and the Harold and Inge Marcus Chair in Engineering. Before going to Penn State Amr was Head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, and Bill and Elaine Hall Endowed Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. 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 MSc and PhD from Imperial College, University of London. Before joining the University of Illinois in June 2001, Amr was Professor of Earthquake Engineering and Head of Section 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 (1990-1995) and the European School for Advanced Studies in Reduction of Seismic Risk, Italy.

As Dean of Engineering at Penn State, Amr is responsible for all aspects of the College including 300 professors, 10,000 students, 500 employees, a total budget of $350M, a research budget of $150M, and an endowment of over $200M. He oversees the operation of ten academic departments, including one school, and the relationship with the Penn State institutes and other colleges. As Head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Amr is responsible for all academic and administrative affairs of the top-ranked department comprising 49 tenured and tenure-track faculty, 10 non-tenure track faculty, 47 staff, 1300 students, a research budget of $20M, and a total budget of over $30M per year (FY12). Amr developed the College of Engineering Strategy for Global Engagement in 2008, and continued to report to the Dean of Engineering as Director and Chair of the Council on Global Engineering Initiatives until 2010.

He is founder and co-editor of the Journal of Earthquake Engineering and editorial board member of several other journals, a member of the drafting panel of the European design codes, past chair of the UK earthquake engineering association, UK delegate to and past senior Vice-President of the European Association of Earthquake Engineering. He is the winner of the Imperial College Unwin Prize for the best PhD thesis in Civil and Mechanical Engineering (1984), the Oscar Faber Medal for best paper in the Institution of Structural Engineering, and two best paper medals from the International Association of Tall Buildings, Los Angeles.

Amr’s 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, including over 130 refereed journal papers, many conference, keynote and prestige lectures (including the Nathan Newmark Distinguished Lecture), research reports, 2 books and several book chapters, magazine articles and earthquake field investigation reports. He has been ranked top in the CEE Department at Illinois in terms of research funding for five consecutive years (2004-2009), with a total research income of about $25M over 9 years. Amr has successfully supervised 44 Doctoral and over 100 Master of Science theses. Many of his students hold significant positions in industry, academia and government in over 12 countries.

He has contributed to major projects for a number of international companies and other agencies such as the World Bank, GlaxoWellcome (currently GSK), Shell International, AstraZeneca, Minorco, British Nuclear Fuels, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Mott MacDonald, British Airport Authority, Alstom Power, the Greek and Turkish Governments and the National Geographic Society. He has recently completed research projects for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), State Emergency Management Agencies, Istanbul Municipality, US AID, Governments of Pakistan and Indonesia, among others. He has given interviews to CNN, Sky News, BBC, BBC World and the US Weather Channel. He has also contributed to a large number of newspaper articles in the UK (e.g. The Times, The Guardian, The Royal Institute of International Affairs) and the USA (e.g. St. Louis Observer and Chicago Herald). Amr enjoys scuba diving and reading on history, the history of painting and film-making.