CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The Structural Stability Research Council (SSRC) came together for its Annual Stability Conference last week and took advantage of the occasion to celebrate some remarkable people.
Construction Engineering Professor Roberto Leon received the Beedle Award, named for the late Lynn S. Beedle, for his structures research at Virginia Tech. In addition to testing full-scale and model structures in the laboratory, Leon conducts research on composite and hybrid steel-concrete structures, including their dynamic behavior, design, and field instrumentation. The Beedle Award is the highest honor bestowed upon contributing SSRC members. He was the 2022 recipient of AISC’s Geerhard Haaijer Award for Excellence in Education, a rarely bestowed honor that recognizes truly exceptional educators.
Hannah Blum, PhD, received the McGuire Award for Junior Researchers (or MAJR) Medal. Blum is an assistant professor and Alain H. Peyrot fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UW-Madison. She was a former recipient of the Yoon Duk Kim Young Researcher Award in 2023 and the Vinnakota Award in 2016. The SSRC Annual Stability Conference is incorporated into NASCC: The Steel Conference, where Blum also received a Terry Peshia Early Career Faculty Award.
SSRC also presented a MAJR Medal honorable mention certificate to Ali Imanpour, PhD, an assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept at the University of Alberta.
Cheng Huang, a research associate at Imperial College London, received the Vinnakota Award for “Flexural behavior of wire arc additively manufactured tubular sections,” a paper published in the SSRC Annual Stability Conference proceedings. This award recognizes the best student-authored paper presented at the Annual Stability Conference.
SSRC also presented an honorable mention for the Vinnakota Award to Andreas Muller, a PhD candidate studying steel and composite Structures at ETH Zurich, for "Prediction of the deformation and local buckling behavior of structural systems using the deep neural network direct stiffness method (DNN-DSM,)" also published in the 2023 SSRC Conference Proceedings.
Sivaganesh Selvaraj, a postdoctoral fellow at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, received the Yoon Duk Kim Researcher Award, which recognizes students or early career professionals who have already made a noteworthy contribution to the advancement of structural stability. He presented the paper "Interactive failure mode and Design of Cold-formed Steel Closed Cross-section Built-up Columns," also available in the 2023 SSRC Conference Proceedings.