Larry A. Fahnestock, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, an associate professor and chair of the Structures Group in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Fahnestock’s specialty is structural engineering, and he uses large-scale experiments and numerical simulations to study topics in earthquake-resistant design, seismic stability, steel structures, progressive collapse mitigation, and bridge performance under service and extreme loading. His research funding includes grants from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), Illinois Department of Transportation, Illinois Tollway and National Science Foundation.
His research awards include the ASCE Raymond C. Reese Research Prize (2009), an ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (2014), an AISC Special Achievement Award (2016), a University of Illinois College of Engineering Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research (2017) and a Best Paper Award from the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities (2017). He was selected to be a Fellow of the ASCE Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) in 2017.
Fahnestock is also an excellent educator who teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on behavior and design of steel structures. His awards for teaching include the University of Illinois ASCE Student Chapter Outstanding Instructor Award (2007), the University of Illinois College of Engineering Rose Award for Teaching Excellence (2010) and the Chi Epsilon Central District Excellence in Teaching Award (2013). He is interested in educational advancements and served for one year as an Education Innovation Fellow in the University of Illinois College of Engineering.
He is currently an associate editor for ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering and is past-chair of the Methods of Design Committee under the Metals Technical Administrative Committee of the ASCE SEI. He is a member of AISC Task Committee 3 on Loads, Analysis and Stability, and serves on the executive committee of the Structural Stability Research Council (SSRC) and is SSRC’s incoming chair in 2019.
Fahnestock has been on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign since 2006, and is CEE Excellence Faculty Fellow. He holds a B.S. (Drexel University, 1996), M.S. (Lehigh University, 1998) and Ph.D. (Lehigh University, 2006) in civil engineering, in addition to a B.S. (Drexel University, 1996) in architectural engineering. From 1998 to 2000, Fahnestock worked as a structural engineer for the architectural and engineering firm KlingStubbins, and he is a licensed professional engineer in California and Illinois.
