Editor’s Note

In this issue, I wish to introduce Amjad Aref and Marv Halling, who handle papers in Seismic Effects, Kurt Gurley who is responsible for most of the papers on Wind Effects, Dat Duthinh, Khalid Mosalam, and Yan Xiao who oversee papers in Concrete and Masonry Structures, Mohammed Hjiaj who handles papers in Analysis and Computation, and finally Sankaran Mahadevan, one of two Associate Editors in the area of Safety and Reliability.

Amjad J. Aref (Fig. 1) is a professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at University at Buffalo (UB)—The State University of New York. He received his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997, and joined UB the same year. Dr. Aref teaches and conducts research in structural engineering, mechanics, finite elements, computational mechanics, earthquake engineering, blast and multi-physics problems. He has served as the PI on numerous research projects and has received research funding from a variety of competitive peer-reviewed organizations and agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), Federal Highway Administration, and the New York State Department of Transportation (DoT). Dr. Aref has published extensively in the area of structural engineering and mechanics, including more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and technical reports. His articles have been published in many of the premier journals of his field, including the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Journal of Structural Engineering, Bridge Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, and International Journal of Solids and Structures. In addition, Dr. Aref has delivered over 60 presentations and contributed articles at national and international conferences. He is a member of the ASCE, American Academy of Mechanics (AAM), and the International Association of Computational Mechanics (IACM). His professional activities include membership on six ASCE technical committees, and serving on the editorial board of several international conferences.

Marvin W. Halling (Fig. 2) is an associate professor of civil engineering at Utah State University (USU) and is Head of the Structural Engineering division since August 2001. He is a licensed Professional and Structural Engineer and ASCE Fellow. His professional career includes four years in structural consulting and $15\text{years}$ as a university professor. He has made significant contributions to the profession at both national and local levels. He received a BS from Utah State University in 1985, an MS from Stanford University in 1986 and, a PhD from Cal Tech in 1995. He is actively involved as a member of the ASCE Seismic Effects and the Methods of Monitoring Committees. He is also a member of the TRB Committee on Dynamics and Field Testing of Bridges. He served as the ASCE student chapter advisor for the USU from 1996 to 2006, where he was involved in many service and professional activities. He also served as advisor to the USU Student Chapter of Tau Beta Pi (1995–2000) and serves on the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) Regional Advisory Board. Halling has been honored for his contributions in teaching and advising. He has been nominated four times as the Utah Engineering Educator of the Year by the Utah Section of ASCE (2004) and the Structural Engineers Association of Utah (2002, 2005, and 2007). In addition, he has been selected by the College of Engineering as the Outstanding Teacher (2001) and Outstanding Advisor (1997) and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Outstanding Teacher (2001, 2000, and 1997), Outstanding Advisor (2007, 1997) and Outstanding Researcher (2009 and 2000). He has authored and coauthored over 75 scholarly publications.

Kurtis R. Gurley (Fig. 3) is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida. His primary areas of research are wind effects on residential structures, and stochastic modeling of extreme winds and structural resistance. Dr. Gurley has largely focused on in-field measurement and modeling of ground-level hurricane winds and wind loads, working with colleagues, students, and partnering universities to capture full-scale hurricane wind velocity and the resultant dynamic pressures on occupied coastal residential structures. The field data are coupled with post-storm residential damage assessments, laboratory evaluations of component capacities, and wind tunnel studies to model the vulnerability of typical residential structures to hurricane wind damage. The research output from Dr. Gurley and his colleagues contributes to a variety of hazard preparation and response efforts including storm intensity ratings, damage assessments, mitigation, building science, and codes and standards. Dr. Gurley is a member of the Board of Directors for the American Association for Wind Engineering. He is the recipient of the 1997 Alumni Association Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Research and the winner of the Munro Prize in 2000 for the best paper published in Engineering Structures. He received the National Science Foundation Career Award for his proposed research on “Modeling and Simulation of Wind Loads for Wind Hazard Mitigation.”

Dat Duthinh (Fig. 4) is a Research Structural Engineer with the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Over the last several years, he has developed methodologies and computational tools to (1) improve the design of buildings to resist multiple hazards, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, for greater efficiency and risk consistency; (2) advance the state of the art of fire-structural analysis of buildings, in particular, the use of adiabatic surface temperatures to model the heat flux to structural surfaces, and the transfer of temperature results from thermal analysis to structural analysis, which typically uses different types of finite elements; and (3) advance the state of the art of design of buildings to resist high winds with direct use of wind tunnel measurements (database assisted design) and explicit accounting of wind directionality and probability of occurrence. He has also contributed to the development of the technical basis for standards for high-strength concrete (HSC) structures, especially in the area of shear strength, and for the use of fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) in infrastructure (repair of concrete structures and connections of FRP members). Prior to government service, he worked on the design and construction of the Hibernia Gravity Based Structure, a massive concrete platform offshore Newfoundland, Canada, designed to resist the impact of icebergs and the onslaught of waves. One of the most exciting projects during his decade spent studying ice-structure interaction was an Antarctic expedition he led to measure the pressure and force of impact of icebergs against cliffs. Dat Duthinh holds a BS from Princeton University, an MS from the University of Delaware and a PhD from Cornell University, all in civil engineering. He is the author or coauthor of more than 50 journal papers, conference articles and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) reports, and the recipient in 2007 of the United States Department of Commerce Silver Medal for Scientific/Engineering Achievement.

Khalid Mosalam (Fig. 5) obtained his BS (Honors) and MS from Cairo University in 1988 and 1991, respectively, and his PhD from Cornell University in 1996 with a major in structural engineering and a minor in theoretical and applied mechanics. He joined the Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Material program of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997 where he is currently a professor and CEE Vice-Chair. He teaches structural analysis, finite element methods, and behavior and design of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. He conducts research in several topics related to the performance and health monitoring of structural systems made of reinforced concrete, masonry, earth, wood and composites subjected to severe loading due to earthquakes or blasts. He also conducts research on essential facilities such as bridges and electric substations. His research approach covers large-scale simulations, both deterministic and probabilistic, and large experimentation. He was a visiting professor at Kyoto University and Middle East Technical University in 2004 and 2005, respectively. He is the recipient of 2006 ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize with the citation “For advanced computational research integrated with large experiments to solve practical structural engineering problems” and the recipient of the R.G. Drysdale Best Paper Award at the 11th Canadian Masonry Symposium for the paper “Modeling of Unreinforced Masonry Infill Walls Considering In-Plane and Out-of-Plane Interaction.”

Yan Xiao (Fig. 6) is a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California. He also holds the Cheung Kong Scholar Professorship and serves as the Supervisory Dean of the Civil Engineering College at Hunan University of China. He is the founding director of the China Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Building Safety and Energy Efficiency. He received his bachelor of engineering degree from Tianjin University, China, in 1982, his master of engineering degree and doctor of engineering degree from Kyushu University, Japan, in 1986 and 1989, respectively. Prior to joining to the faculty of the University of Southern California, he worked as research engineer at Aoki Corp., Tokyo for one year and the University of California at San Diego for four years. His research interests include earthquake-resistant design and retrofit of structures, structural concrete, steel, hybrid or composite systems, and structural materials. His recent research and industrial development efforts are focused on developing modern bamboo structures for buildings and bridges with the goal of promoting environment and eco-friendly construction.

Mohammed Hjiaj (Fig. 7) is head of the Structural Engineering Research Group at INSA de Rennes (France). He graduated with honors from Ecole Centrale des Arts and Métiers (Brussels) in 1990 with a BS in civil vngineering. He obtained an MSc in Mechanics of Solids and Structures from Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (Belgium) in 1992. In 1994, he joined the Civil Engineering Department at Ecole des Mines de Douai in France as a lecturer. There, he conducted research on computational plasticity, error analysis and adaptive strategies. After receiving his PhD from Faculté Polytechnique de Mons in 1999 with the highest distinction (2% of the PhD degrees awarded), he joined the CNRS as a research scientist, where he pursued research on computational mechanics dealing with non-smooth problems. In Fall 2000, he moved to the University of Newcastle (Australia), where he pursued research on computational limit and shakedown analysis with application to foundation engineering and soil-structure interaction. In 2002, he was awarded the Australian Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the Australian Research Council to work on a variety of topics related to computational geomechanics. In September 2004, he was appointed professor at INSA de Rennes, where he conducts experimental and computational research on steel and composite steel-concrete structures, including seismic behavior and robustness. He serves on two technical committees, including TC11 (Composite Structures) and TC13 (Seismic), of the ECCS and is on the editorial board of the French journal Construction Métallique.

Sankaran Mahadevan (Fig. 8) is professor of civil and environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University, where he has served since 1988. His research interests are in reliability and uncertainty analysis methods, structural degradation modeling, structural health monitoring, design optimization, and model uncertainty. His research has been funded by NSF, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Dept. of Energy, U.S. DoT, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, General Motors, Chrysler, Union Pacific, Transportation Technology Center, and the Sandia, Los Alamos, Idaho and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. Prof. Mahadevan has developed and directed an NSF-IGERT multidisciplinary graduate program in Reliability and Risk Engineering and Management at Vanderbilt University, since 2001. He has directed 24 PhD dissertations and 20 MS theses, taught several industry short courses on reliability methods, and authored more than 300 technical publications, including two textbooks and 100 peer-reviewed journal articles. Prof. Mahadevan’s service activities include Technical Chair and General Chair of the AIAA/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Dynamics and Materials (SDM) Conferences (2005, 2010); Technical Chair and General Chair of the AIAA Non-Deterministic Approaches Conferences (2007, 2008); Chair, Executive Committee, Aerospace Division, ASCE (2004-2005); Chair, Probabilistic Methods Committee, Engineering Mechanics Institute, ASCE (2008-2010); Chair, Fatigue and Fracture Reliability Committee, Structural Engineering Institute, ASCE (2001-2005); and Associate Editor, International Journal of Reliability and Safety (2005-present). Prof. Mahadevan obtained his PhD in Civil Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, in 1988. In 1992, he won the Outstanding Paper Award at the SDM conference. In 2003, he received the Distinguished Probabilistic Methods Educator Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers. In 2006, he received one of Vanderbilt University’s highest honors, the Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished Professor Award. In 2008, he received the Outstanding Professional Service Award from the Aerospace Division, ASCE.