Abieyuwa “Abi” Osemwegie Aghayere, Ph.D., P.Eng, F.ASCE, a professor of structural engineering in the department of civil, architectural, and environmental engineering at Drexel University, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Aghayere has been cited as a structural failure analysis expert on CNN, CTV News (Canada), Voice of America, and local TV affiliates in Philadelphia and New York City. He has been featured in numerous articles in the Miami Herald, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. His contributions on the structural failure analyses of the Champlain Towers South condominium have been included in thousands of media stories (including syndication), including the coverage that earned a team of reporters at the Miami Herald the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in the Breaking News category.
He has been featured in several TV documentaries and podcasts, among them the Discovery Channel’s documentary When Buildings Collapse – Disaster in Surfside, the BBC documentary on Surfside titled Why Buildings Collapse, and International Code Council’s (ICC) Region I Radio podcast Understanding Structural Failure: Analysis, Types, Causes, and Prevention.
Aghayere was invited to deliver several lectures and seminars on the Champlain Towers South (Surfside) Condominium collapse, as follows:
- The keynote lecture to the 2022 Annual Convention of the Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC) in August 2022.
- A “special invited seminar” in September 2022 to the National Construction Safety Team (NCST) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal agency charged with investigating the Surfside condominium collapse.
- A seminar to the Cornell University Department of Civil Engineering.
- A seminar to the Construction Specialties Group of Zurich Insurance North America.
On January 16, 2024, Aghayere authored an article in The Conversation (a nonprofit news organization) titled “How to Prevent America’s Aging Buildings from Collapsing – 4 high-profile disasters send a warning.” The article has since been republished by more than 150 media outlets and websites, including Yahoo! News, Yahoo Canada, Yahoo UK, msn.com, and Discover Magazine. The article has also been featured in ASCE’s Civil Engineering Source and NCSEA News.
Aghayere has authored or co-authored three structural design textbooks – Reinforced Concrete Design (6th to 10th Editions), Structural Steel Design (1st to 3rd Editions), and Structural Wood Design (1st and 2nd Editions) – that are used in colleges and universities and which can be found in hundreds of libraries around the world. The 2nd edition of Structural Steel Design was translated into Turkish. The unique feature of his textbooks is the blend of theory with practical applications that bridges the gap between academia and professional engineering practice.
Aghayere is an ABET program evaluator for civil engineering programs, representing ASCE.
He holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in civil engineering from the University of Lagos, MIT, and the University of Alberta, respectively. Aghayere is a licensed professional engineer in Ontario, Canada, and worked as a structural design engineer and peer reviewer for many years.
