10/25/2010
Award recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of eminent engineers to the profession, ASCE or the public.
Written by
Wright was cited, “For his leadership and support of sustainability in civil engineering through his service on ASCE’s Technical Activities Committee, Sustainability Committee, and involvement in the creation of the PERSI initiative, for his work with the Founder Societies in related collaborative efforts.”
Wright is former Director of the Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering (1953, 1955) from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in civil engineering (1962) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
As a member of the civil engineering faculty at Illinois from 1957 to 1974, Wright developed and taught advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in the analysis and design of structures, and contributed to modifications of the curriculum to take advantage of the opportunities provided by electronic computation. He conducted and supervised field, laboratory and analytical research on the response of structures to dynamic loads, the behavior and design of highway bridges, computer aided design, and techniques for the formulation, expression and application of standards.
In 1974, he joined the National Bureau of Standards (NBS, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST) as director of the Center for Building Technology. He retired in 1999 as director of its Building and Fire Research Laboratory.
Among his numerous awards and recognitions include election to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003. He is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (2002), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was recognized in 1988 with the Presidential Rank of Meritorious Executive and as Federal Engineer of the Year by the National Society of Professional Engineers. In 2006, he received the University of Illinois College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service. In 1989, he received the department’s Distinguished Civil Engineering Alumnus Award.