Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Reston, Va. — Jacobo Bielak, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, NAE, university professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn., was recently named a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The Society’s highest accolade, active distinguished membership is comprised of approximately only 200 of its 140,000 members worldwide. Bielak will be presented the award, in honor of his pioneering research, demonstrating the use of high performance computing in civil engineering practice and for educating the next generation of engineers, on October 20-22, 2011, at ASCE’s Annual Civil Engineering Conference in Memphis, Tenn.
Bielak has created revolutionary discoveries in seismic engineering through his work on three-dimensional models simulating earthquake impacts on the Earth’s surface and how they impact buildings, bridges and other structures. He developed numerous simulations to pinpoint the effects of earthquakes on these structures and carried this knowledge both in his career and in his professorial position. His doctoral thesis at the California Institute of Technology which discussed earthquake response of building-foundation systems and the formulas to explain soil-structure interaction in the aftermath has contributed greatly to the field of civil engineering.
Bielak’s research has landed him under the guidance of the National Science Foundation, where his propagation of seismic waves has allowed for more realistically modeling of earthquake motion to be uncovered. His work is one of the most advanced and complex mechanisms of seismic ground motion research in the field. For his achievements, he has been honored accordingly. Aside from achieving the highest ranking one can achieve as a university professor, he has also received multiple ground-breaking research awards including the Gordon Bell Prize.
Bielak’s contributions to society are unmatched. He has been recognized for advancing knowledge and methods in earthquake engineering and in area-specific seismic motion simulation. He is an engaged member of ASCE and frequently contributes to seismology societies and the National Science Foundation’s Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation in which universities perform real-time studies of seismic performance of large structures. He is a registered professional engineer and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Bielak received a doctorate’s degree in civil engineering from the California Institute of Technology and teaches at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn. He currently resides in Pennsylvania.
Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) represents more than 140,000 civil engineers worldwide and is America’s oldest national engineering society.
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