Bio: Ahmed Elgamal is Professor and Chair of the Department of Structural Engineering at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. Prior to UCSD, Elgamal was a faculty member at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Columbia University, and technical director for the Rensselaer Geotechnical Centrifuge Research Center. He studied Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Cairo University (B.Sc.), and Princeton University (M.A. and Ph.D.), and was a research fellow at CalTech. He is a recipient of the Shamsher Prakash Award and the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. Elgamal was also a Lilly Teaching Fellow (1991-1992). He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Research: Professor Elgamal is an expert in earthquake engineering and computational geomechanics. Incorporation of emerging information technologies into structural engineering is currently one of his main research areas. Internet applications include sensor networks for monitoring our civil infrastructure, with real-time condition assessment and decision-making algorithms. Integration of research and education with live web-accessible experiments is a main component.