Satish Nagarajaiah is an Indian-American academic professor, who teaches and conducts research in the departments of civil engineering and of mechanical engineering at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

. He was elected in 2019 to the United States

National Academy of Inventors The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) is a US non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging inventors in academia, following the model of the National Academies of the United States. It was founded at the University of South Florida in 201 ...

. He got elected in 2021 as Distinguished Member of

American Society of Civil Engineers The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is a tax-exempt professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, it is the oldest national engineering soci ...

for achieving eminence in structural engineering, in 2017 as fellow of the

, and in 2012 as fellow of

ASCE The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is a tax-exempt professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, it is the oldest national engineering soci ...

's Structural Engineering Institute. He has been honored with the 2020 Nathan N. Newmark Medal, 2017 Reese Research Prize, 2015 Leon S. Moisseiff Award from the

. He is considered an authority in seismic isolation and adaptive stiffness structural systems and is known for his contributions to

structural engineering Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and joints' that create the form and shape of human-made Structure#Load-bearing, structures. Structural engineers also ...

Early life and education

He received a bachelor's degree in structural engineering from

Bangalore University Bangalore University (BU) is a public state university in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The university is a part of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and affiliated by University Gra ...

in 1980 and completed his Master's in

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...

from the

Indian Institute of Science The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a Public university, public, Deemed university, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The ...

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

, in 1982. After completing his education in India, he worked as the lead structural engineer with Tata Consulting Engineers till 1986. He earned his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

(1987-1990) from The State University of New York at Buffalo, where he worked as a postdoctoral researcher till 1993, and then as an assistant professor at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

in Columbia from the year 1993 to 1998. In 1999, he joined the

faculty.

Career

Nagarajaiah's career involves teaching, research, consulting, and service focused on

Structural dynamics Structural dynamics is a type of structural analysis which covers the behavior of a structure subjected to dynamic (actions having high acceleration) loading. Dynamic loads include people, wind, waves, traffic, earthquakes, and blasts. Any structu ...

, Seismic isolation, Structural control, Monitoring, Sparse System Identification, Sensing with

Nanomaterials Nanomaterials describe, in principle, chemical substances or materials of which a single unit is sized (in at least one dimension) between 1 and 100 nm (the usual definition of nanoscale). Nanomaterials research takes a materials science ...

, and Physics Guided Machine Learning. During and after obtaining his

he worked with UB's MCEER researchers and co-authored nine technical reports for the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) with Andrei M Reinhorn and Michael Constantinou and other collaborators on three different federal grants. He developed the 3-D BASIS class of computer programs for the response-history analysis of seismically isolated buildings while researching through MCEER. These programs featured developments that

Computers and Structures Computers and Structures, Inc. (CSI) is a structural and earthquake engineering software company founded in 1975 and based in Walnut Creek, California, with additional office location in New York. The structural analysis and design software CSI ...

later adopted to develop the widely used programs,

SAP2000 Computers and Structures, Inc. (CSI) is a structural and earthquake engineering software company founded in 1975 and based in Walnut Creek, California, with additional office location in New York. The structural analysis and design software CSI ...

and ETABS. Nagarajaiah has invented numerous devices and systems to protect structures from damaging vibrations, including those caused by earthquakes. These include semiactive and smart systems with variable stiffness and adaptive passive versions of both tuned mass dampers and negative stiffness systems. He has also co-invented structural monitoring technologies that include strain-sensing nanomaterials and noncontact, laser-based smart strain-sensing skin. He has also developed advanced nonlinear structural dynamic analysis techniques that have been widely used to analyze and design structures, including the

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts for the following federal judicial districts: * Distric ...

San Francisco International Airport San Francisco International Airport is the primary international airport for the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. Owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco, the airport has a San Francisco mailing ...

Exxon Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was form ...

, and

Apple Inc Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer ...

. He holds four patents in the field of

. He has served on the

's Structural Engineering Institute Board of Governors from 2015 to 2019. He was the founding chair of the ASCE-Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) structural health monitoring committee from 2004 to 2006. He also served as chair of the ASCE SEI structural control and sensing committee from 1998 to 2002.

Published works

He served as the managing editor of

's ''

Journal of Structural Engineering The ''Journal of Structural Engineering'' is the principal professional peer-reviewed journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the oldest professional civil engineering society in the United States. The journal is one of the flagship j ...

'' from 2011 to 2018. He is the editor of the ''Structural Control & Health Monitoring International Journal'', published by

Wiley Wiley may refer to: Locations *Wiley, Colorado, a U.S. town *Wiley, Georgia, an U.S. unincorporated community * Wiley, Pleasants County, West Virginia, U.S. * Wiley-Kaserne, a district of the city of Neu-Ulm, Germany People *Wiley (musician), ...

, and editor-in-chief of the ''Structural Monitoring & Maintenance International Journal'' (North America edition), published by Techno-press. He has also authored two books and has published over 350 journal and conference articles.

Books

* *

Honors and awards

Nagarajaiah has received the following accolades for his research and work; * In May 2021, Nagarajaiah was named a distinguished member of the

(ASCE), the highest honor bestowed by ASCE. * He was awarded the 2020 Nathan N. Newmark Medal from the

(ASCE), Engineering Mechanics Institute, and Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) in March 2020. * In November 2020, he with his coauthor, won the Takuji Kobori Prize from the International Association of Structural Control and Monitoring (IASCM) for 2019 based on their paper Bayesian structural identification of a hysteretic negative stiffness earthquake protection system using unscented

Kalman filtering In statistics and control theory, Kalman filtering (also known as linear quadratic estimation) is an algorithm that uses a series of measurements observed over time, including statistical noise and other inaccuracies, to produce estimates of unk ...

. * He was elected into the

in December 2019. * He received the 2017 Raymond C. Reese Research Prize from the Engineering Institute of the

(ASCE) in February 2017. * In 2016, he was ranked among the top 25 most cited researchers in civil engineering in

Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

and

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

's Global Ranking of Academics. * In January 2015, Satish Nagarajaiah was honored with the Leon S. Moisseiff Award for 2015 by the

(ASCE) for his research in the field of

Structural design Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and joints' that create the form and shape of human-made structures. Structural engineers also must understand and c ...

. * In 2012, the

Structural Engineering Institute A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

(SEI) of

named him an inaugural fellow of SEI. * He was honored with a

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

's Early CAREER award for innovative research in Adaptive Stiffness Structures in 1999.

References