TAREK H. ABDOUN
Associate Professor & Associate Director, Center for Earthquake Eng. & Simulation,
Civil & Environmental Eng. Dept., JEC 4049, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY, 12180-3590, Phone: (518) 276-6544, Fax: (518) 276 4833,
E-mail: abdout@rpi.edu, Web page: www.nees.rpi.edu
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Modeling, 3D Advanced Field Sensors, Centrifuge & Full-scale Testing, Soil-Structure Interaction, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Modeling of Blast & Hurricane loading, Soil Remediation, Wireless Data Acquisition Systems, 3D Data viewer and Visualization.
SELECTED HONORS & AWARDS
- Recipient of NEES Award for “Best IT Innovation” for 2007.
- Recipient of RPI’s Institute 22nd Early Career Award for Outstanding Contribution in Teaching & Research for 2007.
- Recipient of RPI’s School of Engineering Excellence in Collaborative Research Award for 2007
- Member, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) panel of experts to explore tunnel hardening and blast mitigation strategies for under water tunnels.
- Recipient of RPI’s Trustee Board Recognition of Faculty Achievement for 2006.
- Member, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Evaluation Task Force of the Hurricane Katrina Interagency Performance (IPET). The mission of IPET was to provide credible and objective scientific and engineering answers to the performance of the hurricane protection and damage reduction system in the New Orleans metropolitan area (2005-2006).
- Led RPI’s physical modeling research activities for New Orleans Levees. RPI’s research findings were shown on national networks (CNN, NBC, Discovery, ASCE News, Times, etc.) and featured in the National Academy of Engineering’s Spring 2007 issue of The Bridge, in John Christian’s article, “Lessons from Hurricane Katrina.”
- Recipient of RPI’s Trustee Board Recognition of Faculty Achievement for 2005.
- Recipient of CSCE’s (Canadian Society for Civil Engineering) Casimir Gzowski Medal for best journal paper for 2004.
- Recipient of RPI’s School of Engineering Excellence in Research Award for 2004.
- Patent for “Shape-Acceleration measurement Device and Method for Real-Time Field Monitoring” Danisch, L.A., M.S. Lowery-Simpson and T. Abdoun, June 2004.
SELECTED INVITED LECTURES / PRESENTATIONS
- Testified to American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), on the physical modeling of New Orleans floodwall and levee performance during Hurricane Katrina.
- Testified to National Academies review committee (NRC) that advises the US Congress, on the physical modeling of New Orleans floodwall and levee performance during Hurricane Katrina.
- Invited Speaker, Modeling of New Orleans levee failure during Hurricane Katrina, Intl. Conf. on Physical Modeling in Geotechnics, ICPMG, Hong Kong, August 4-6, 2006.
- Invited Speaker, "Innovative Technologies for Earthquake Disaster Mitigations" Symposium for the 10th Anniversary Earthquake Engineering Society at Korea (EESK), Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, September 21-22, 2006.
- Dinner Guest Speaker, Hurricane Katrina Floodwall and Levee Performance Analysis, New York State Association of Transportation Engineers (NYSATE), November 29, 2006
- Dinner Guest Speaker, Modeling of Civil Infrastructure Systems, RPI’s Board of Trustees, Troy, December 7th, 2006.