Joseph J. Szczur, PE is the Director of the IRISE Consortium. Before joining the University, Mr. Szczur served as District Executive for PennDOT’s Engineering District 12 in Southwest Pennsylvania for 16-years— a region with 787 employees, nearly 3,700 miles of state highways, and 2,350 bridges in four county areas. While serving in this role, he oversaw the administration and delivery of nearly $2.5 billion of capital improvement projects, including the replacement of more than 700 structurally deficient bridges.
Dr. Amir Alavi is an Assistant Professor whose research interests include structural health monitoring, smart civil infrastructure systems, deployment of advanced sensors and engineering informatics.
Dr. Daniel Bain is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science. His research interests focus on the comprehensive assessment of human driven changes in environmental systems. Hydrology, geomorphology, biogeochemistry, ecology, and spatial analysis are combined to focus on fundamental landscape components, particularly fluvial (stream) and urban systems, over the last several centuries.
Dr. Melissa Bilec is an Associate Professor and is the Deputy Director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and Faculty Advisor to the Graduate Women Engineering Network. Dr. Bilec’s research program focuses on the built environment, life cycle assessment and sustainable materials.
Dr. John Brigham is an Associate Professor. His research interests include Computational mechanics, engineering inverse problems/inverse mechanics, computational diagnostics, reduced-order modeling and surrogate modeling, shape and kinematic analysis, biomechanics, optimal design, smart adaptive/morphing structures, quantitative nondestructive evaluation.
Gary Euler is the IRISE Associate Director. After 40 years in transportation in both the public and private sectors, he is now serving as an adjunct faculty member and managing IRISE's day-to-day activities.
Dr. Alessandro Fascetti is an Assistant Professor research interests revolve around the physical processes that contribute to the degradation of civil infrastructure systems at different length and time scales.
Dr. Brian Gleeson is a Professor and Head of the Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science Department. Dr. Gleeson’s research interests include the structure/property relationships of materials with particular emphasis on the active and passive high-temperature oxidation of alloys and coatings.
Dr. Joel Haight, PE is a Professor. Intervention Effectiveness research for safety and loss prevention systems is an area that Dr. Haight has currently underway. Dr. Haight's research interests include Human Factors Engineering, and Human Error, Intervention Effectiveness, and Safety Engineering.
Dr. Kent Harries, P. Eng. is a Professor and the Bicentennial Board of Visitors Faculty Fellow. His research interests include the use of materials in civil infrastructure and the performance of bridge structures.
Dr. Anthony Iannacchione, PE, PG is an Associate Professor whose experience includes civil engineering, mining engineering and geology. He is a registered professional engineer and geologist in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. His research interests include assessing the surface impacts caused by longwall mining subsidence and designing underground facilities with minimal risk of environmental or workplace harm.
Dr. Lev Khazanovich is a Professor who has been involved in various aspects of concrete pavement research, design and evaluation, including performance prediction modeling, non-destructive testing, and finite element modeling.
Dr. Mark Magalotti, PE is a Professor of Practice and the Coordinator of the Graduate Program for Transportation Engineering for the university. Dr. Magalotti conducts research in the areas of transportation planning and operations.
Dr. James Martin, Vice Chancellor for STEM Research and Innovation, is an expert on risk-based decision making as well as multi-organizational alliances and partnerships and risk management of large scale infrastructure systems. His civil engineering research interest is in geotechnical and foundation engineering.
Dr. Piervincenzo Rizzo is a Professor with expertise in nondestructive evaluation and structural health monitoring using acoustic emission, ultrasonic testing, guided waves, electromechanical impedance, and thermography.
Dr. Steven Sachs is an Assistant Professor whose research interests include pavement design and analysis, finite element modeling, and experimental characterization of structures and materials.
Dr. Eitan Shelef is an Assistant Professor. His current research activities focus on linking climate-change with hillslope and riverine processes in Arctic regions, modeling of landscape evolution by various types of erosive processes, and deciphering environmental information from the geometry of channel networks.
Dr. Aleksandar Stevanovic, PE is an Associate Professor whose research interests include traffic signal control systems, intelligent transportation systems, multimodal and sustainable operations and transportation simulation modeling.
Dr. Julie Vandenbossche, Director of Research, PE. Her research interests pertain to the design, analysis and rehabilitation of concrete pavements and cementitious materials. Her experimental work includes material characterization and the instrumentation of laboratory and in-service pavements. She also serves as a liaison between the Director and other faculty on research matters.