Surendra Shah Elected Into Indian National Academy of Engineering

October 17, 2008

Surendra Shah, Walter P. Murphy Professor Civil and Environmental Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, was recently elected as a foreign fellow in the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

The Academy confers fellowship on Indian and foreign nationals who are in a position of high responsibility and have demonstrated their eminence by virtue of outstanding accomplishments in new and developing engineering fields. Established in 1987, the Academy promotes and advances engineering and technology and their applications to problems. It has 587 Indian fellows and 44 foreign fellows.

Shah’s research involves connecting microscopic behavior to structural response of concrete in order to help develop tougher, greener, and more durable materials. He has developed innovative nondestructive tools to detect fracture, including electronic laser specle interferometry and digital image correlation. He has done pioneering research in fiber reinforced concrete, high performance concrete, and fracture mechanics of quasi-brittle materials. Current research projects include: hybrid fiber reinforced cement based composites, interaction between microcracking and transport properties, monitoring in-situ properties of concrete at early age using ultrasonic method, computational model for fatigue fracture, utilization of waste material, early age cracking of high performance concrete, functionally graded coatings for reinforcing bars to improve their corrosion resistance, self compacting concrete, and extruded composites.