Editor’s Note

Since joining the ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering in January 2003, Dr. Sreenivas Alampalli has served as the Associate Editor specializing in nondestructive testing and structural health monitoring areas of bridge engineering. Dr. Alampalli is very active in the area of infrastructure management, bridge inspection and management, nondestructive testing, structural health monitoring, and the use of innovative materials and practices for infrastructure applications. Dr. Alampalli is a Fellow of ASCE and The American Society of Nondestructive Testing (ASNT). He has been a long-time member and past-chair of the ASCE Committee on Methods of Monitoring and Evaluating Structural Performance and has been a cochair in the development of the New York Sessions that led to publication of the papers in this issue of the Journal of Bridge Engineering. He is a member of several technical committees of ASCE, Transportation Research Board (TRB), and ASNT. He served as one of the Board of Directors of ASNT for the past 3 years and currently serves on the Industry Advisory Board Executive Committee of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research. Dr. Alampalli is also a corecipient of the Charles Pankow Award for Innovation, awarded by the Civil Engineering Research Foundation in 2000. Currently, Dr. Alampalli is the Director of the Bridge Program and Evaluation Services Bureau at the New York State Department of Transportation. He is a registered Professional Engineer, coauthor of over 175 technical publications in the areas of his interest, and received his Ph.D. and MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Dr. John T. DeWolf’s primary research focus during the past 2 decades has been in the development of different techniques for bridge monitoring and in the use of these to evaluate the bridge’s structural integrity. Presently, he is involved in a long-term project to install permanent monitoring systems on a series of bridges in Connecticut. He has been a long-time member of the ASCE Committee on Methods of Monitoring and Evaluating Structural Performance and has been a cochair in the development of the New York Sessions that led to publication of the papers in this issue of the Journal of Bridge Engineering. Dr. DeWolf is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, Connecticut, where he was recently made a Teaching Fellow. Prior to joining the University of Connecticut, he was a structural engineer with the firm of Albert Kahn Associates in Detroit, Michigan. He is also a coauthor with F. P. Beer and E. R. Johnston Jr. of Mechanics of materials, published by McGraw-Hill. His efforts in the use of writing in steel design courses have been recognized by the American Institute of Steel Construction. Dr. DeWolf is also a registered Professional Engineer and is a member of Connecticut’s Board of Examiners for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors.

Masoud Sanayei is Professor of Structural Engineering at Tufts University. His role is in the development of new research and educational programs in structural engineering at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Dr. Sanayei is currently the Chair of the ASCE/SEI Committee on Methods of Monitoring and Evaluating Structural Performance. His committee developed a 1-day track on “Bridge Testing and Health Monitoring” for Structures Congress 2005 that was held in New York. Dr. Sanayei has been a cochair in the development of the New York sessions that led to publication of the extended version of the invited papers in this issue of the Journal on Bridge Engineering. Dr. Sanayei is a leading researcher in the field of condition assessment of structural systems using parameter estimation for finite-element model updating. He is experienced in a number of fields within the realm of structural condition assessment including design of nondestructive tests, full-scale nondestructive testing and data acquisition, optimization, parameter estimation, and structural identification. Dr. Sanayei has also developed a mobile floor vibration testing laboratory for real-time monitoring and evaluation of floor vibrations for human comfort and sensitive equipment. Dr. Sanayei holds a B.S. in civil engineering from Arya-Mehr University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering specializing in structural engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles.