Teng Wu, assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at the University of Buffalo, and Ahsan Kareem, the Robert Moran Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, have been selected by the Joint Prize Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to receive the 2016 Alfred Noble Prize. The award will be presented at the organization’s annual convention in Portland, Ore., on September 30.
Established in 1929, the award is given in honor of Alfred Noble, past president of the ASCE. It is for a technical paper of exceptional merit prepared by not more than two authors of specific engineering societies — which include the ASCE; American Society of Mechanical Engineers; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.;and the Western Society of Engineers — the lead of which must be under 35 years of age.
Wu and Kareem were selected for the paper “Revisiting Convolutional Scheme in Bridge Aerodynamics: Comparison of Step and Impulse Response Functions,” which appeared in the May 2014 issue of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics. The selection committee specifically called out the paper’s “mathematical elegance and critical contribution to the issue of aerodynamics of bridges.”
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and former student of Kareem, Wu’s research addresses the effects of extreme winds on the built environment, with an emphasis on bridges. His interests encompass buffeting and flutter analyses, vortex-induced vibration, rain-wind induced vibration, nonlinear aerodynamics, Volterra theory, hurricane hazard modeling, reduced-order modeling, and computational fluid dynamics.
The director of the NatHaz Modeling Laboratory, Kareem has made profound contributions to the knowledge base as well as immediate applications to engineering analysis and design tools. He 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.
Kareem’s other recent honors include the 2015 Theodore von Karman Medal from the 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. He 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. 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, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Central South University in Changsha, Hunan Province.
Originally published by Nina Welding at conductorshare.nd.edu on September 01, 2016.