Dan M Frangopol

Education, Career, and Academic Positions

Dan M. Frangopol received his Diploma in Engineering from the Institute of Civil Engineering, Bucharest, Romania, in 1969. He received his doctorate of Applied Sciences from the University of Liège, Belgium, in 1976. His doctoral thesis, entitled Probabilistic Study of Structural Safety, was supervised by Charles E. Massonnet and J. Ferry-Borges.

After receiving his diploma, from 1969 to 1974 Frangopol held a position as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering in Bucharest. In 1974, he moved to Belgium, where he was a Research Structural Engineer (structural reliability, analysis and design of inelastic structures, structural optimization) at the Department of Mechanics of Materials and Structural Engineering, University of Liège. In 1977 he went back to Romania to become an Associate Professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering in Bucharest. From 1979 to 1983 he was a Project Engineer at A. Lipski Consulting Engineers in Brussels, Belgium. In 1983, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder as Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, in 1988 he became Full Professor, and in 2006 an Emeritus Professor. In 2006 he moved to Lehigh University as Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the inaugural holder of the Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture. Since January 2008 he is a Visiting Chair Professor of the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology in Taipei (Taiwan) and since September 2009 he is an Honorary Professor at Tongji University in Shanghai (China). Dr. Frangopol is an experienced researcher and consultant to industry and government agencies, both nationally and abroad. His work has been funded by NSF, FHWA, ONR, NASA, USACE, AFOSR, ARDEC, ASCE, and by numerous other agencies including the U.K. Highway Agency and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. He has left an indelible legacy of work, having authored or co-authored 2 books, 40 book chapters, 350 articles in archival journals (including 9 prize winning papers from ASCE, IABSE, and Elsevier), and more than 600 papers in conference proceedings. As of February 2017, his H-index is 62, i10 is 300, and total citations 16,000 (on Google). He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, a peer-reviewed journal. He is also the Founding Editor of the Book Series Structures and Infrastructures. He is a pioneer in the field of life-cycle civil engineering and is widely recognized as the leading educator and creator in this field

According to ASCE (2010) "Dan M. Frangopol is a preeminent authority in bridge safety and maintenance management, structural systems reliability, and life-cycle engineering. His contributions have defined much of the practice around design specifications, management methods, and optimization approaches. From the maintenance of deteriorated structures and the development of system redundancy factors to assessing the performance of long-span structures, Dr. Frangopol's research has not only saved time and money, but very likely also saved lives."

Honors and awards

Frangopol is a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea, Foreign Member of the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium, and an Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy of Technical Sciences. He has received four Honorary Doctorates (from Polytechnic University of Milan (Politecnico di Milano), Italy; University of Liège, Belgium; Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest, Romania; Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, Romania) and several prestigious national and international awards, including the OPAL Award (ASCE), the Nathan M. Newmark Medal (ASCE), the T.Y. Lin Medal (T.Y. Lin International), the J. James R. Croes Medal (twice, ASCE), the Alfredo Ang Award (ASCE), the Fazlur R. Khan Life-Cycle Civil Engineering Medal (IALCCE), the OPAC Award (IABSE), the Alfred Noble Prize (ASCE), the Arthur M. Wellington Prize (ASCE), the Ernest E. Howard Award (ASCE), the Munro Prize (Elsevier), and the IASSAR Senior Research prize, to name a few.

He is the founding president of the International Association for Bridge Maintenance and Safety (IABMAS) and of the International Association for Life-Cycle Civil Engineering (IALCCE). He is an Honorary Professor at 12 universities and an inaugural Fellow of SEI and EMI, Fellow of ACI, IABSE, ISHMII and JSPS, Honorary President of both the IABMAS-Italy Group and the IABMAS-Brazil Group, Honorary Member of the Portuguese Association for Bridge Maintenance and Safety, and Honorary Member of IABMAS-Australia Group and of IABMAS-China Group. His honors include: