Aref elected Fellow of ASCE and SEI

by Peter Murphy

ASCE members elected to Fellow status have made celebrated contributions and developed creative solutions that have enhanced lives.

According to ASCE, Aref’s significant accomplishments and professional distinction in the industry have been recognized by his peers and panel of expert reviewers. Aref is “among the elite top four percent of ASCE’s professional membership,” the organization says.

The Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) is an Institute within ASCE dedicated to improving every aspect of the structural engineering profession. To advance to SEI Fellow, members must meet several criteria, including that they are actively involved in an SEI committee or chapter, a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) or Structural Engineer (S.E.) in the United States or equivalent, be nominated by an organizational entity of SEI, and have at least ten years experience in the structural engineering field.

“Amjad’s contributions have raised the research profile of the department,” says Alan Rabideau, professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering. “This honor is well-deserved, and we are proud that he has been recognized in this way.”

For over 20 years, Aref has worked on and published research in structural engineering, mechanics, computational mechanics, earthquake and blast engineering, and multiphysics problems. Many of his more than 90 peer-reviewed articles have been published in premier journals in the fields of structural and civil engineering, including ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering, Journal of Bridge Engineering, the Journal of Engineering Mechanics and the International Journal of Solids and Structures.

Aref has received over $4.2 million in funding for his research from prominent national and international agencies, including the National Science Foundation, Qatar National Research Fund, National Research Council of Canada, and Federal Highway Administration, among others.

Aref was part of a team led by the New York State Department of Transportation that received ASCE’s Charles Pankow Award for Innovation in for the economical rehabilitation of a steel truss bridge using a fiber reinforced polymeric deck system in 2000. He also received UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Riefler Award, which recognizes outstanding junior faculty.

Aref 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.

In addition to his impact as a researcher, Aref has provided service to the University at Buffalo in several different capacities. He was graduate studies director for the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering from 2018 to 2021 and deputy director of the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL) from 2012 to 2013.

Professor Aref joined UB in 1997 after receiving his PhD in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.