Ali Maher, Ph.D., F.ASCE, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and director of the Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT) at Rutgers University, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Since 1988, Maher has been a full-time faculty at Rutgers, teaching and conducting research in the areas of geotechnical, geoenvironmental and infrastructure engineering. His research contributions have been primarily in ground improvement, sediment and soft soil engineering, and infrastructure asset management, where he has published extensively (more than 140 journal and proceedings) and produced a significant number of Ph.D. and M.S. graduates.
He served as department chair from 1995 to 2007, and founded the CAIT center in 1996. CAIT is currently the USDOT-designated Region II University Transportation Center (UTC), which consists of nine key research institutions in the New York, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico regions (Rutgers, NJIT, Princeton, Rowan, U. Buffalo, Cornell, Columbia, SUNY, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico and Atlantic Cape Community College).
Under Maher’s leadership, CAIT has grown into a program of excellence in multimodal infrastructure asset management, resiliency and transportation mobility, addressing infrastructure state of good repair and resiliency challenges faced by the NY/NJ region and the nation. Utilizing the region’s complex, diverse, and aging systems as “Living Labs,” the Center has been a pioneer in the implementation of advanced robotics and automation in infrastructure monitoring and repair, large-scale evaluation of transportation infrastructure systems under accelerated service loads and conditions, novel infrastructure materials and devices, and development of practical decision-making tools for a wide range of public and private sector stakeholders.
More than 60 professional staff and 80 affiliated faculty are associated with the activities of the Center and work collectively in projects and training programs. As a recognized center for excellence, CAIT collaborates closely with more than 10 major research institutions in Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America through collaborative agreements on joint initiatives and faculty/student exchange programs. Moreover, the dedicated workforce training program at CAIT is currently training more than 6,000 professionals in various fields of transportation, including traffic safety, mobility, work-zone safety and many related areas.
Maher is past president of the United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER), a current member of ASCE’s Geo-Institute on Soil Improvement, a member of the board of directors of the International Society for Structural Health Monitoring of Intelligent Infrastructure, and serves on the editorial boards of a number of technical journals, among them ASTM’s Geotechnical Testing Journal, and Civil Structures Health Monitoring (CSHM).
He obtained his BSc, MSC and Ph.D. in civil/environmental engineering from the University of Michigan in 1978, 1985, and 1988, respectively.
Read his work at the ASCE Library.
