Eric Brian Williamson, Ph.D., P.E., F.SEI, F.ASCE, the J. Hugh and Betty Liedtke Centennial Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Williamson has made significant contributions to advancing the understanding of structural response under extreme loading conditions. His research has included both large-scale experimental testing as well as advanced computational simulation. He is well-known for his work on the response of bridges subjected to blast loads, and has served as a primary author on the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Bridges Security Guidelines (both the first and second editions).
Williamson was the principal investigator on the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project that tested large-scale bridge columns under a wide range of blast loads, and he then served as the PI on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) / U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to develop the software "AT-Planner for Bridges," which is a fast-running program used to predict structural response of different bridge components to a variety of terrorist threats.
In 2009, he was awarded the ASCE Walter L. Huber Research Prize for his contributions to the analysis and design of bridges subjected to blast loads. In addition to his research on structural response of bridges to blast loads, Williamson is recognized for his research on structural collapse. He was the PI on a DHS-sponsored international project to study this topic. The research involved two large-scale tests of steel composite floor systems to complete collapse, and it also introduced advanced modeling techniques to accurately predict load capacity following the loss of a critical column.
