Associate Professor Elected to Board of Directors of the Structural Engineers Foundation

Associate Professor of Civil and Architectural Engineering Mehdi Modares has been elected to the board of directors of the Structural Engineers Foundation (SEF), advancing the foundation’s initiatives to educate students and the public regarding building a safer and stronger community and inspiring future generations of structural engineers.

The board of directors is composed of several individuals from the SEF community who are dedicated to the service and growth of the foundation and its community. To reach the organization’s goals, as stated on its website, “the SEF has committed itself to sponsoring and funding scholarships, lectures, awards, publications and research—all aimed at improving structural engineers and structural engineering.”

Advisory board members are proven industry and thought leaders within the field, which combines science and art to design infrastructure—such as buildings, bridges, stadiums, and other civil facilities—that define the traditional core focus of structural engineers.

The foundation’s vision is for structural engineers to be leaders in innovation of the built environment while advancing the impact of the structural engineering profession, encouraging education to advance the art and science of structural engineering, and promoting public awareness to inspire confidence in the field.

As a part of the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois, the SEF is an independent, nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to the advancement of the structural engineering profession.

Modares’s research focuses on the condition assessment and reliability of aging infrastructures in order to increase their service lives, maintainability, sustainability, and cost effectiveness. His research also involves advanced computational techniques needed to handle the analysis of such infrastructures.