Riadh S. Al-Mahaidi, Ph.D., F.ASCE, a professor of structural engineering and director of the Smart Structures Laboratory at Swinburne University of Technology, in Melbourne, Australia, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Prior to joining Swinburne in 2010, he was the head of the Structures Group at Monash University. Over the past 20 years, Al-Mahaidi has focused his research and practice on the lifetime integrity of bridges, particularly in the area of structural strength assessment and retrofitting using advanced composite materials. He currently leads a number of research projects on strengthening of bridges using fiber-reinforced polymers combined with cement-based bonding agents, and fatigue life improvement of metallic structures using advanced composite systems and shape memory alloys. He recently started some projects on hybrid testing of structures using advanced six-degrees-of-freedom loading assembly combined with advanced computer simulations.
He also holds the position of vice president of international engagement at Swinburne. To date, he has published over 225 journal and 250 conference papers and authored/edited 10 books and conference proceedings. He was awarded the 2012 Vice Chancellor’s Internationalization Award and the RW Chapman Medals in 2005 and 2010 for best journal publication in Engineers Australia Structural Journal.
Al-Mahaidi and his research group won the 2016 Engineers Australia Excellence Award for Innovation, Research and Development (High Commendation) for the Multi-Axis Substructure Testing (MAST) System they built at Swinburne. He was recently awarded the 2017 WH Warren Medal by the Board of the College of Civil Engineers of Engineers Australia, and the 2019 Magazine of Concrete Research Prize, Institution of Civil Engineers, U.K.
He is Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, American Concrete Institute, International Institute for FRP in Construction and the Bridge Engineering Institute.
Al-Mahaidi received a B.Sc (Hon 1) degree in civil engineering from the University of Baghdad and M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees in structural engineering from Cornell University.
