Armin Mehrabi, Ph.D., P.E., MBA, F.ASCE, an associate professor at Florida International University as well as president and principal engineer of bridge evaluation at Bridge Engineering Solutions, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Mehrabi’s research interests are bridge evaluation and inspection, risk-based maintenance, NDT, FRP, and cable-stayed supported bridges. His professional path has crossed the most into civil engineering, having worked in several countries. In 1996, he was recruited by the Construction Technology Laboratories Inc., where he began his applied research work and participated in a variety of state and federally funded research projects. There, he managed the largest privately owned structural laboratory in the U.S.
As PI and Co-PI he has secured and managed research projects budgeted at over $10 million. In 1997, he was awarded by Engineering News-Record as one of Top 25 Newsmakers of the Year. It was in 2004 that Mehrabi established the Bridge Engineering Solutions (BES) and served as its president. He has worked on several national and international multimillion-dollar projects related to evaluation of more than 25 monumental long-span bridges around the world.
Thirty years after earning his master’s degree and traveling a full circuit from academia to industry, engineering practice, and research, Mehrabi decided to go back where he started to share his knowledge and passion for engineering by joining the civil and environmental engineering department of Florida International University. He was the graduate program director, receiving his tenure in 2023. He also held the position of research director at Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC) until 2023. At FIU, he is faculty advisor for ASCE SEI graduate students and AISC student chapters. He has served in numerous FIU committees and professional committees within ASCE and elsewhere.
Mehrabi has published 46 journal papers, 65 conference proceedings papers, and numerous articles in professional magazines. He recently published a book on bridge engineering, and he holds six U.S. patents. He also serves as guest editor for several journals. Since joining FIU in 2017, he has graduated four Ph.D. and more than 10 master’s students, and currently serves as major advisor for five Ph.D. and eight master’s students; he has served on dissertation committees for 19 Ph.D. students.
He graduated in the top 2% of his undergraduate and graduate classes at the highest-ranking school in Iran and entered industry as a designer and field engineer in 80s. During that time, he taught civil engineering courses in various universities for five years. In 1990, he received a full scholarship from the University of Colorado at Boulder, graduating in 1994 and his doctoral dissertation winning the Outstanding Dissertation Award by the TMS in 1997. He then moved to the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, for postdoctoral studies. He earned an MBA from Niagara University in 2010.
