Professor Amr Elnashai, Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering is Head and Bill and Elaine Hall Endowed Professor at the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of Illinois. He is a Consultant to the National Science Foundation (NSF) multi-institution multi-disciplinary Mid-America Earthquake Center. A graduate of Cairo University, Amr obtained his MSc and PhD from Imperial College, University of London, UK. Before joining the University of Illinois in June 2001, Amr was Professor of Earthquake Engineering and Head of Section at Imperial College. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey since 1997. Other visiting appointments include the University of Tokyo, the University of Southern California (1990-1995) and the European School for Advanced Studies in Reduction of Seismic Risk, Italy, where he serves on the Board of Directors since its founding in 2000.

He is founder and co-editor of the Journal of Earthquake Engineering, editorial board member of several other journals, a member of the drafting panel of the European and Egyptian design codes, past chairman of the UK earthquake engineering association, UK delegate to and past senior Vice-President of the European Association of Earthquake Engineering. He is the winner of the Imperial College Unwin Prize for the best PhD thesis in Civil and Mechanical Engineering (1984), the Oscar Faber Medal for best paper in the Institution of Structural Engineering, and two best paper medals from the International Association of Tall Buildings, Los Angeles. He served as coordinator for major European research networks including 14 institutions from 9 countries.

Amr is Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Structural Engineers in the UK. He is President of the Asian-Pacific Network (ANCER), a member of the FIB Seismic Design Commission Working Groups and two Applied Technology Council (ATC, USA) technical committees as well as the Illinois State Seismic Safety Task Force. He founded the Japan-UK Seismic Risk Forum in 1995 and served as its director until 2004. He was advisor to the UK Department of the Environment, chairman of a ministerial committee for the assessment of scientific research in Egypt, advisor to the Civil Defense Agency of Italy and review panel member for the Italian Ministry of Research and the New Zealand and Canadian Science Research Councils.

Amr’s technical interests are multi-resolution distributed analytical simulations, network analysis, large scale hybrid testing and field investigations of the response of complex networks and structures, on which he has more than 250 research publications, including ~130 refereed journal papers, many conference, keynote and prestige lectures (including the Nathan Newmark Distinguished Lecture), research reports, books and book chapters, magazine articles and earthquake field mission reports. Amr has successfully supervised 41 PhD and over 100 Master of Science Theses. Many of his students hold significant positions in industry, academia and government in over 12 countries. He has contributed to projects for a number of international companies and other agencies such as the World Bank, GSK, Shell, AstraZeneca, Minorco, British Nuclear Fuels, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Mott MacDonald, British Airport Authority, Alstom Power, the Greek, Turkish and Indonesian Governments, Federal Highway Administration, National Geographic Society, US AID, amongst others.