Bassem Andrawes, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, a professor of structural engineering in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Andrawes has over 27 years of experience as an engineer, educator, and researcher in the area of infrastructure resilience and durability. He is known for his pioneering work in the emerging application of shape memory alloys (SMAs) in civil infrastructure. Andrawes teaches classes at the University of Illinois on the design and behavior of reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete structures as well as the design of highway bridges. He served for five years as the organizer and chair of the Annual Illinois Structural Engineering Conference, which attracts practitioners from across the Midwest region. He also served as director of the Newmark Structural Engineering Laboratory (NSEL) at the University of Illinois, where he led many large-scale experimental projects.
In 2011 he received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for his work on developing innovative SMA-based technologies for seismic retrofitting of civil infrastructure. In 2023, he received a $10 million award from the US Department of Transportation (DOT) to establish and lead a new University Transportation Center (UTC) that focuses on advancing the durability and extending the life of transportation infrastructure. The center is a consortium of five universities working closely with industry partners and state DOTs on projects related to promoting the durability of transportation infrastructure built with precast concrete.
Since his early career, Andrawes has been engaged in ASCE committee and journal activities. In 2012, he received a Best Reviewer award for his role as a reviewer for the ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering. He was later appointed as an associate editor for the same journal. He also served as the founding chair of the ASCE committee on Retrofit of Structures Under Dynamic Loads. He organized and chaired several technical sessions at the ASCE Structures Congress.
Andrawes received his doctoral degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. After completing his Ph.D. and before joining the University of Illinois as an assistant professor in 2006, he worked as a design engineer at Englekirk Partners Consulting Structural Engineers in Santa Ana, California.
