ASCE has honored Dan M. Frangopol, Sc.D., P.E., F.SEI, F.EMI, Dist.M.ASCE, with the 2020 Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal for outstanding contributions to the advancement of probabilistic, reliability and risk methods in civil engineering, particularly in developing probabilistic models for life-cycle performance assessment, maintenance and optimum management of civil infrastructure systems in diverse loading environments.
Frangopol has made seminal scholarly contributions of lasting value to the field of safety and reliability in civil engineering that have resulted and will continue to result in major advances in the broad field pertinent to the Freudenthal Medal, an award that recognizes “distinguished achievement in safety and reliability studies applicable to any branch of civil engineering.” He is regarded as a pioneer and a world leader in research on life-cycle performance and resilience of fatigue-sensitive structures under uncertainty, probabilistic maintenance and management of deteriorating structures and distributed infrastructure under extreme events, and probabilistic multiobjective optimization of the life-cycle performance of structures and networks. He has also made significant contributions to probabilistic redundancy of structures made of brittle-ductile and ductile materials, and to probabilistic theory of plastic structures.
He has authored or coauthored three books, 50 book chapters (13 in ASCE books), 400 papers in archival journals (90 in ASCE journals) and more than 600 papers in conference proceedings. His research work in the field of structural safety and reliability was sponsored by numerous national and international agencies. As a civil engineering educator, he has been at the forefront in the development and use of modern probabilistic methods and related mechanics principles and systems for educational purposes, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Frangopol served as vice president (2014-15) and member of the Board of Governors of EMI, the Engineering Mechanics Institute of ASCE (2013-15), and was elected Fellow of EMI (2013).
The Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal recognizes distinguished achievement in safety and reliability studies applicable any branch of civil engineering.
