CEE Professor Paolo Gardoni has been named the Alfredo H. Ang Family Endowed Chair, effective February 16, 2026. The Alfredo H. Ang Family Civil Engineering Faculty Fund was established by Dr. Alfredo Ang and his wife, Mae, in 2019 to support faculty members in the field of reliability engineering and risk management of civil infrastructure.
Ang earned his M.S. in 1957 and Ph.D. in 1959 from CEE at Illinois and served on the faculty from 1959 until 1988. He then joined the faculty at the University of California, Irvine, where he retired as professor emeritus.
His main area of research was on the application of probability and reliability in civil and structural engineering, with emphasis on the safety of engineering systems, including seismic risk and earthquake engineering, quantitative risk assessment, life-cycle cost and performance, and sustainability of green buildings and infrastructure. In 1976, he was made a member of the National Academy of Engineering. On October 14, 2024, Ang passed away at the age of 94.
Receiving the title of Endowed Chair in Ang’s honor is particularly meaningful for Gardoni, who is himself a part of Ang’s teaching legacy. Gardoni’s graduate advisor at the University of California, Berkeley, Armen Der Kiureghian, earned his Ph.D. from CEE at Illinois under Ang's tutelage in 1975. As a member of Ang's academic family tree, Gardoni's success demonstrates the enduring impact Ang's mentorship has had on his students and beyond.
Gardoni joined the CEE at Illinois faculty in 2012, where he is Director of the MAE Center and an Excellence Faculty Scholar in Civil and Environmental Engineering, in addition to his position as Alfredo H. Ang Family Endowed Chair. He also serves as a professor in the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and is a Fellow of the Office of Risk Management and Insurance Research in the University of Illinois Gies College of Business.
His career has been marked with numerous professional awards and recognitions, the ASCE Ang Award on Risk Analysis and Management of Civil Infrastructure, a prestigious award given to an individual who has made significant technical or technological contributions to the field of risk analysis and management of civil infrastructure. Gardoni was also recently named a Fellow of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute in recognition of his contributions to the organization and engineering mechanics field.
Before his elevation to Alfredo H. Ang Family Endowed Chair, Gardoni previously held the Alfredo H. Ang Family Professorship in Civil Engineering, which he received in 2022. His investiture as Endowed Chair marks a new chapter in his research and leadership in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois.