Dan M. Frangopol


Dan Mircea Frangopol is an American civil engineer and the inaugural holder of the Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Education, Career, and Academic Positions

Dan M. Frangopol received his Diploma in Engineering from the Institute of Civil Engineering, Bucharest, Romania, in 1969. He received his doctorate of Applied Sciences from the University of Liège, Belgium, in 1976. His doctoral thesis, entitled Probabilistic Study of Structural Safety, was supervised by Charles E. Massonnet and J. Ferry-Borges.
After receiving his diploma, from 1969 to 1974 Frangopol held a position as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering in Bucharest. In 1974, he moved to Belgium, where he was a Research Structural Engineer at the Department of Mechanics of Materials and Structural Engineering, University of Liège. In 1977 he went back to Romania to become an Associate Professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering in Bucharest. From 1979 to 1983 he was a Project Engineer at A. Lipski Consulting Engineers in Brussels, Belgium. In 1983, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder as Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, in 1988 he became Full Professor, and in 2006 an Emeritus Professor. In 2006 he moved to Lehigh University as Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the inaugural holder of the Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture. Since January 2008 he is a Visiting Chair Professor of the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology in Taipei and since September 2009 he is an Honorary Professor at Tongji University in Shanghai. Dr. Frangopol is an experienced researcher and consultant to industry and government agencies, both nationally and abroad. His work has been funded by NSF, FHWA, ONR, NASA, USACE, AFOSR, ARDEC, ASCE, and by numerous other agencies including the U.K. Highway Agency and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. He has left an indelible legacy of work, having authored or co-authored 3 books, 50 book chapters, over 420 articles in archival journals, and more than 600 papers in conference proceedings. As of July 2020, his h-index is 81, i10-index is 413, and the total number of citations is over 26,200. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, a peer-reviewed journal. He is also the Founding Editor of the Book Series Structures and Infrastructures. He is a pioneer in the field of life-cycle civil and marine engineering and is widely recognized as the leading educator and creator in this field
According to ASCE "Dan M. Frangopol is a preeminent authority in bridge safety and maintenance management, structural systems reliability, and life-cycle engineering. His contributions have defined much of the practice around design specifications, management methods, and optimization approaches. From the maintenance of deteriorated structures and the development of system redundancy factors to assessing the performance of long-span structures, Dr. Frangopol's research has not only saved time and money, but very likely also saved lives."

Honors and awards

Frangopol is a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a Member of the National Academy of Construction of the United States, a Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea, a Foreign Associate of the Engineering Academy of Japan, a Foreign Member of the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium, an Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy, and an Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy of Technical Sciences. He has received four Honorary Doctorates and several prestigious national and international awards, including the Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal, the George W. Housner Structural Control and Monitoring Medal, the Lifetime Achievement Award in Education Award, the Nathan M. Newmark Medal, the T.Y. Lin Medal, the J. James R. Croes Medal, the Alfredo Ang Award, the Fazlur R. Khan Life-Cycle Civil Engineering Medal, the OPA Award, the Alfred Noble Prize, the Raymond C. Reese Research Prize, the Arthur M. Wellington Prize, the Ernest E. Howard Award, the State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award, the Moisseiff Award, the Munro Prize, and the IASSAR Senior Research prize, to name a few.
He is the Founding President of the International Association for Bridge Maintenance and Safety and of the International Association for Life-Cycle Civil Engineering, and Founding Vice-President of the International Society for Structural Health Monitoring of Intelligent Infrastructure. He is an Honorary Professor at 14 universities and an inaugural Fellow of SEI and EMI, Fellow of ACI, IABSE, ISHMII and JSPS, Honorary President of the IABMAS Groups of Brazil, Chile, Italy, Korea, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and USA, Honorary President of the IALCCE Group of the Netherlands, and Honorary Member of IABMAS Groups of Australia, China, Japan, and Portugal. He is the Past Chair of the Technical Activities Division of the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE, Past Vice-President of the International Association for Structural Safety and Reliability, Past Chair of the Executive Board of IASSAR, and Past Vice-President of the Engineering Mechanics Institute of ASCE. His honors include: