Carnegie Mellon’s James H. Garrett Jr. Receives Prestigious Thomas Lord Professorship of Civil and Environmental Engineering
May 3, 2010
Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon University
412.268.5776
PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University's James H. Garrett Jr. will be awarded the prestigious Thomas Lord Professorship of Civil and Environmental Engineering at a reception from 3 to 5 p.m., Friday, May 7 in the Posner Center on the Pittsburgh campus.
"I am grateful to be recognized by Carnegie Mellon with this
professorship, and consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to work with
such excellent colleagues and students in the Civil and Environmental
Engineering Department and other departments at Carnegie Mellon. I have
tremendously enjoyed being a faculty member here at Carnegie Mellon for almost
20 years," said Garrett, head of Carnegie Mellon's top-ranked Department of
Civil and Environmental Engineering.
The Lord Professorship honors an educator whose work has had a profound
impact on the university, his academic field and society.
A visionary, Garrett is co-founder of the Center for Sensed Critical
Infrastructure Research (CenSCIR), a five-year-old research center developed to
deliver "nervous systems" for critical infrastructure. Garrett and his
colleagues envision infrastructure with various sensors that collect valuable
data that can be used to make important decisions regarding infrastructure
repairs and replacement.
Garrett
also is recognized for his work in developing formal models of codes and
standards, and for mobile hardware and software systems he has developed to
support information collection and access during construction management and
bridge inspection processes.
"This professorship is wonderful recognition of Jim's leadership as he
continues to build and work with an innovative and multi-talented department of
civil and environmental engineers in a discipline that is poised to help solve
some of the world's most challenging problems," said Pradeep K. Khosla, the
Philip and Marsha Dowd University Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering and dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering.
Prior to becoming department head in 2006, Garrett served for six years
as an associate dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering. He has
been a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering since
1990.
Elected a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in
2009, Garrett has received numerous awards, including the 2007 Steven J. Fenves
Award for Systems Research at Carnegie Mellon, the 2006 ASCE Computing in Civil
Engineering Award and the 2006 ASCE Pittsburgh Section's Professor of the Year
Award. He also has received three ASCE Best Paper awards from the ASCE
structural, transportation and computing journals. He currently serves as co-chief editor of the Journal of
Computing in Civil Engineering.
Garrett received his bachelor's degree (1982), master's degree (1983)
and Ph.D. (1986) in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon.