Faculty

Joseph J. Szczur, PE serves as the IRISE Consortium Director.  His leadership reflects a unique perspective on challenges facing the industry based having worked for over 35 years for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and served for over 16 years as the District Executive for PennDOT’s Engineering District 12 in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  Mr. Szczur served as faculty lead for the Landslide Best Practices project. 

Dana Vidic serves as the IRISE Associate Director with day-to-day management responsibilities.   

Julie Vandenbossche, PhD, PE serves as the IRISE Director of Research serving as a conduit between IRISE and Pitt faculty members.  She is the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Joint Design Optimization and the Dowel Corrosion projects.  Her research interests are concrete pavement analysis, design, evaluation, rehabilitation, and construction, including Instrumentation and advanced material characterization. 

Amir Alavi, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Bioengineering and Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His multidisciplinary scientific studies are organized around three research thrusts: 1) mechanics and electronics of multifunctional materials and structures, 2) embedded self-powered sensing systems, and 3) data-driven characterization, design and discovery of engineering systems.

Daniel Bain, PhD 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.

Melissa Bilec, PhD is an Associate Professor and is the co-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.

John Brigham, PhD 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.

Eshan Dave, PhD is a Professor and Graduate Coordinator and the University of New Hampshire. His research interests include performance evaluation of pavements and materials, performance-based specifications, resilient design, climate variability impacts and life cycle assessment.

Alessandro Fascetti, PhD 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.

Brian Gleeson, PhD 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.

Joel Haight, PhD, PE is a Professor in the Industrial Engineering Department. 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, Human Error, Intervention Effectiveness, and Safety Engineering.

Kent Harries, PhD, 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. 

Anthony Iannacchione, PhD, 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.

Lev Khazanovich, PhD 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. 

Mark Magalotti, PhD, 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.

James Martin PhD is 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.

Piervincenzo Rizzo, PhD is a Professor with expertise in nondestructive evaluation and structural health monitoring using acoustic emission, ultrasonic testing, guided waves, electromechanical impedance, and thermography. 

Steven Sachs, PhD is an Assistant Professor whose research interests include pavement design and analysis, finite element modeling, and experimental characterization of structures and materials.

Lucio Salles de Salles, PhD is an assistant professor at the Department of Civil Engineering Technology, Environmental Management and Safety at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His research interests include full-scale and non-destructive pavement testing, finite element modeling and simulation, road markings, and pavement design and performance. He is currently 

Eitan Shelef, PhD 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.

Aleksandar Stevanovic, PhD, PE is an Associate Professor whose research interests include traffic signal control systems, intelligent transportation systems, multimodal and sustainable operations and transportation simulation modeling.