Karim Chatti, Ph.D., F.ASCE, professor of civil engineering at Michigan State University and director of the University Transportation Center on Highway Pavement Preservation, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Chatti is an internationally recognized expert in pavement engineering. His research focuses on mechanistic modeling of pavement systems, including pavement dynamics, vehicle-pavement interaction, backcalculation of pavement layer properties, pavement roughness, rolling resistance and vehicle operating costs, continuous structural health monitoring, and pavement preservation.
He joined MSU initially as a visiting assistant professor, after working for six months as an assistant research engineer in the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He then took on consultant work for Morrison-Knudsen Corporation, the National Highway Authority in Pakistan, and STUDI Engineering in Tunisia, before rejoining MSU as a tenure-track faculty member in January 1998. Chatti served as CEE associate chairperson for graduate studies and research from 2005 to 2009 and acting associate dean for research in the College of Engineering in 2013-14.
He has been involved in some 40 research projects, totaling $15 Million, funded by the Michigan and California DOTs, FHWA, NCHRP, SHRP2, and USDOT. He has advised more than 30 graduate students, including 12 Ph.D.s, and has mentored several postdoctoral fellows and undergraduate student researchers. He has more than 160 peer-reviewed publications and 30 technical reports.
Chatti was recently named editor-in-chief of the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part B: Pavements after serving as associate editor for JTE-Part B and JTE for several years; he is also on the editorial board of the International Journal of Pavement Engineering. He is past chair of the ASCE T&DI Highway Pavements Committee and the ASCE T&DI LTPP International Data Analysis Contest, and has been an active member of several other ASCE and Transportation Research Board technical committees. He is a founding member of the Academy of Pavement Scientists and Engineers and a former board member of the International Forum for Road Transport Technology.
He is the recipient of the Robert G. Packard Award for Outstanding Paper on Concrete Pavement Design (2008), First Prize (Curriculum Category) in the 2002 ASCE T&DI and FHWA International Contest on LTPP Data Analysis, a USAID Fellowship for B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. studies (1981-91), the USDOT UTC Outstanding Student of the Year Award for Region IX, and a Certificate of Outstanding Academic Achievement from MSU’s College of Engineering (1985).
He holds a B.S. degree (with honor, 1985) and an M.S. degree (1987) from MSU, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1992).
