A confluence of transformative opportunities and national and international grand challenges are influencing current directions for research, education, and practice in civil and environmental engineering. Projects in practice are often increasingly diverse, whereby a focus on traditional core engineering solutions remains vital but are often complemented by interdisciplinary approaches needed to provide more comprehensive solutions.  Innovations in commoditized technologies; supply and demand complexities in a global economy; and new design approaches integrating objectives such as sustainable resource engineering, infrastructure resilience, risk and reliability; and interdisciplinary project collaborations involving urban landscape, public policy, environmental science, material design, and related disciplines are all driving a shifting paradigm for civil and environmental engineers.  This presentation discusses Urban Engineering, in which we focus on developing a new generation of integrated solutions for complex urban regions. The presentation includes examples from the research and education programs underway at Northeastern University for evolving themes that are tied to engineering practice in a changing world, and highlights our work in resilient and sustainable structural systems.  

Jerome F. Hajjar is the CDM Smith Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University.  He is also the Director of the Laboratory for Structural Testing of Resilient and Sustainable Systems (STReSS Laboratory).  He has served as Chair of the Structures Faculty and Deputy Director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota; and was a structural engineer and Associate at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. His research and teaching interests include analysis, experimental testing, and design of steel and composite steel/concrete building and bridge structures, regional modeling and assessment of infrastructure systems, and earthquake engineering, and he has published over 200 papers and edited three books on these topics.  Hajjar serves on the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Committee on Specifications and several of its task committees, including chairing Task Committee 5 on Composite Construction, and is the past-chair of the Executive Committee of the Technical Activities Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Structural Engineering Institute (SEI). He was made a Fellow of ASCE in 2007 and of SEI in 2013, and was awarded the 2016 ASCE Moisseiff Award, the 2010 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award, the 2009 ASCE Shortridge Hardesty Award, the 2005 AISC T. R. Higgins Lectureship Award, the 2004 AISC Special Achievement Award, the 2003 ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, and the 2000 ASCE Norman Medal for his research on steel structures, composite construction, structural stability, and earthquake engineering. He has also won several teaching awards at the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota.  Dr. Hajjar is a registered professional engineer in Illinois and Minnesota.