Alice Alipour, Ph.D., P.E., F.SEI, F.ASCE, an internationally recognized leader in structural engineering, renowned for her pioneering work in enhancing the resilience of infrastructure systems to natural hazards, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Alipour is widely known for her multifaceted contributions across research, education, professional service, and outreach. She has established herself as a national leader in multihazard resilience research. Her work integrates structural engineering, stochastic mechanics, and systems engineering to address resilience under multiple hazards. She has secured over $22 million in research funding. Her scholarly output includes more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, conference presentations, and technical reports – many co-authored with her students – demonstrating her exceptional commitment to mentorship.
In infrastructure resilience, her work has contributed to hazard characterization, asset-level vulnerability assessments, and evaluations of network-level functionality impacts. She is a leader in the testing, analysis, and design of transmission lines subjected to extreme weather events, developing innovative mitigation and recovery strategies to enhance the resilience of power grids. In the domain of transportation infrastructure, she has made pioneering contributions to multihazards resilience by developing system-level models that assess network vulnerabilities and provide preventive or responsive actions. Additionally, her research has advanced performance-based wind engineering and developed cutting-edge vibration control systems, including smart morphing facades for tall buildings.
Alipour is deeply committed to translating research into practice through direct collaboration with design engineers, infrastructure stakeholders, and public agencies. Her applied research informs design guidelines and actively shapes resilience planning across multiple sectors.
She serves as the elected chair of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) Technical Committee on Performance-Based Wind Engineering and the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Objective Resilience Committee. She contributes to several committees within ASCE and, as an associate editor for ASCE’s Journal of Bridge Engineering and the Journal of Structural Engineering, plays a pivotal role in advancing scholarly discourse on resilience and performance-based design.
Alipour’s impact goes beyond research and service. She is deeply passionate about mentoring and advancing engineering education. She has been a leader in implementing innovative teaching techniques to elevate student learning. Beyond teaching, she advises the EERI student chapter, for which she was recognized with the Outstanding Advisor of the Year award in 2024. She also holds public educational workshops to inform natural hazard safety. Through direct mentoring over more than 50 undergraduate researchers and supervising a growing group of MSc and Ph.D. students, Alipour is shaping the next generation of structural engineers and researchers with dedication, inclusivity, and vision.
Alipour’s outstanding contributions to research, education, and professional service have earned her numerous prestigious honors, including the NSF CAREER Award (2018), the ISU Excellence in Remote Instruction Award (2021), a Senior Fellowship at the Collegium Helveticum from ETH Zurich’s Institute for Advanced Studies (2022), the ISU Interdisciplinary Research Team Award (2023), the Outstanding Engineering Faculty Award (2025), and the Iowa Section Outstanding Civil engineer Award (2025).
