The Robert Moran Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, Ahsan Kareem has been appointed an honorary professor in the School of Civil Engineering at Central South University in Changsha, Hunan Province, China.
Kareem is globally recognized for his expertise in wind and structural engineering, including monitoring of hurricane winds and their load effects; development of innovative structural systems for tall buildings and analyses procedures for offshore drilling and production platforms; monitoring performance of coastal construction, deep-water offshore structures, tall buildings, bridges and industrial structures; risk modeling; and development of cyber-based collaborations for research and education in wind effects. As director of the NatHaz Modeling Laboratory he has made profound contributions to the knowledge base as well as immediate applications to engineering analysis and design tools.
His most recent honors include the 2015 Theodore Von Karman Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the 2015 Croes Medal and the Distinguished Research Award by the International Association for Structural Safety and Reliability, and election as an inaugural fellow of the Engineering Mechanics Institute of the ASCE.
A longer look at his career, however, includes many more accolades. Kareem is a distinguished member of the ASCE, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a foreign fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. In 2012 he was inducted to the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) Hall of Fame for his papers, which were presented in early years of the OTC and offered innovation, direction and lasting impact on the design, construction or installation of offshore infrastructure.
He has also received the ASCE’s State-of-the-Art Award for scholarly contributions to full-scale monitoring of tall buildings, was selected the inaugural recipient of the Alan G. Davenport Medal, and was awarded the Robert H. Scanlan Medal for outstanding original contributions to the study of wind-load effects on structural design, as well as the Jack E. Cermak Medal in recognition of his contributions to the study of wind effects on structures. His receipt of the Davenport, Scanlan, and Cermak medals is unmatched in his field.
In addition to the many national honors he has garnered, Kareem has participated in numerous international collaborations and programs to promote innovation in science and technology, such as the 2014 Foreign Experts Symposium in Shanghai. Appointed by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China as a high-end consultant to Tongji University — the highest level of appointment given to a foreign expert in China — and designated as honorary professor at Tongji University in Shanghai, he holds honorary professorships at Southwest Jiao Tong University in Chengdu and Hong Kong Polytechnic University and frequently serves as a guest professor at other universities throughout China, such as the keynote lecture he presented in May at the International Top-level Forum on Engineering Science and Technology Development Strategy in Chongqing, which was organized by the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Note: Central South University (CSU) is a highly regarded university in civil engineering for its role in the development of high-speed railways in China. The National Engineering Laboratory (NEL) for High-speed Railway Construction Technologies housed at the university consists of seven specialized laboratories: Wind Tunnel Laboratory, Shaking Table Laboratory, Statics Laboratory, Roadbed and Track Laboratory, Material and Structure Durability Laboratory, Advanced Construction Equipment’s Laboratory and Digital Virtual Reality Laboratory. A new wind tunnel with full-scale train capability is under construction to assess effects of wind on the future 500 Km/hour trains. The honorary professorship ceremony and the following lecture by Professor Kareem was chaired by Professor Hongqi Tian, the vice chair of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the director of the NEL.
Originally published by Nina Welding at conductorshare.nd.edu on June 01, 2016.