ASCE has honored Ahsan Kareem, Ph.D., F.EMI, Dist.M.ASCE, NAE, with the 2019 Ernest E. Howard Award for his contributions to research and practice on modeling, analysis and design of flexible structures for wind loadings.
Elected to Distinguished Membership in 2010 and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009, Kareem is internationally renowned as a scholar/engineer who has made lifetime contributions to civil engineering theories and practices. In his many decades of pioneering work, he has remained faithful to the practice of wind and structural engineering, most recently attested to by his full-scale validation of some of the world’s tallest buildings. He has made the most profound civil engineering research contributions in subjects like dynamic wind load effects, system identification and control, simulation and computational methods, uncertainty, safety and risk assessment. He has also developed, improved and implemented current and past versions of ASCE Standard of Wind Loads, and developed web-based e-analysis and e-design tools for promoting their usage in design practice.
Kareem was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009 for his contributions to analyses and designs to account for wind effects on tall buildings, long-span bridges and other structures.
He is one of only a few researchers whose work has truly transformed and revolutionized their field through a series of groundbreaking innovations. Kareem has conducted research in structural dynamics on topics including 1) characterization and formulation of wind load effects via fundamental experimental, laboratory and full-scale measurements, 2) dynamic loads due to wind, waves and earthquakes on tall buildings, long-span bridges, offshore structures and other structures, 3) wind hazard mitigation, 4) application of cyber infrastructure for coordination of computational resources, data management and archiving, and visualization tools into a web-accessible framework, and 5) development of virtual organizations and development of design codes and standards.
The Ernest E. Howard Award is given to a member of the Society who has made a definite contribution to the advancement of structural engineering through research, planning, design or construction.
