Imad L. Al-Qadi

Professor

Founder Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering

1207 Newmark

Phone: 217-265-0427

Fax: 217-333-1924

Email: alqadi@uiuc.edu

ICT website: http://ict.uiuc.edu/

Imad L. Al-Qadi is the Founder Professor of Engineering. He holds a BS (Yarmouk University, 1984), and MEng and PhD (Penn State University, 1986 and 1990, respectively) in civil engineering. He served as an Instructor and a Research Engineer at Penn State from 1988 to 1990. He was a member of the faculty of the Charles E. Via Jr., Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech for 14 years, until 2004. By 1998, he had already been promoted to Full Professor; and by 2002 he was named the Charles E. Via, Jr. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In addition, he was the Leader of the Roadway Infrastructure Group that he established. Since his arrival at UIUC in August 2004, he has also served as the Director of the Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Lab (ATREL) and the Founding Director of the Illinois Center for Transportation, which in less than three years has become one of the largest centers at the University of Illinois.

Professor Al-Qadi’s teaching and research interests focus primarily on pavement mechanics and advanced modeling, asset management system, infrastructure condition assessment and rehabilitation, pavement interlayer systems, and nondestructive evaluation. He has been working on transportation infrastructure instrumentation, full-scale accelerated testing, modeling of pavement viscoelastic response to tire loading, pavement fracture and modeling of pavement interface systems, polymerized asphalt rheology, pavement material recycling optimization, and ground penetrating radar signal analysis. His research has resulted in the authoring/ coauthoring of more than 400 publications, of which more than 200 are refereed papers, and delivering more than 350 presentations at international conferences and professional meetings on these topics including numerous keynote lectures. In addition, his research has resulted in new developments, including new tests, testing specifications, advanced modeling and simulation of pavement loading, and analysis of radar electromagnetic wave interactions with roads and bridges.

Professor Al-Qadi established the pavement, bituminous, and nondestructive testing programs at Virginia Tech and led the efforts to secure the Virginia Tech-Association of the American Railroad Affiliated Laboratory, of which he was the director of just before joining UIUC. In addition, he and his students designed and instrumented the state-of-the-art all-weather 1.6-mile Virginia Smart Road pavement testing facility. He has served as the principal investigator of more than 80 projects sponsored by various federal and state agencies as well as international industry. He has consulted for more than 50 federal, state, and major public agencies in the US and abroad, such as FHWA, BP Amoco, Michelin, Bekaert, Maccaferri, DMJM+HARRIS, and Koch.

A registered professional engineer, Professor Al-Qadi is a Fellow of the ASCE and a member of TRB, AAPT, NAGS, RILEM, ISAP, IGS, ASNT, and ASTM. He is also an elected honorary member of the Societa Italiana Infrastructure Viarie. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Pavement Engineering, the Associate Editor of the Research in Nondestructive Evaluation Journal, and served as the Regional Editor of the Construction and Building Materials Journal. He was also the Guest Editor of ASNT Materials special edition on Nondestructive Evaluation of Pavements.

A member of more than 20 technical committees, taskforces, and advisory boards, he is currently the Chair of the TRB Preservation and Maintenance Section and the Group Leader of the ISAP Technical Committee on Interlayer Systems. He is the past chair of the TRB Committee AHD25 on Sealants and Fillers for Joints and Cracks, the TRB Subcommittee AFS70-2 on Geosynthetics in Flexible Pavement Systems, that he founded, and the ASCE Highway Pavement Committee. He also served as the ASCE Design, Construction, and Maintenance Executive Council Chair and currently a member of the Board of Governors of the ASCE Transportation and Development Institute. Professor Al-Qadi served as the Chair/Co-Chair of many international conferences including the 5th and 6th RILEM International Conference on Pavement Cracking, the 2006 International NDE Conference on Civil Engineering, and the Advanced Characterization of Pavement and Soil Engineering Materials.

He has received numerous awards including the 2007 ASCE Laurie Prize, the 2006 TRR of the National Academies D. Grant Mickle Award, the Limoges Medal of Merit from France in 2004, the 2001 Dean’s Award for Research Excellence, the 1993 STS Award from UK, and was named to the Virginia Tech College of Engineering Dean's List of Excellent Teachers nine times. In addition, Professor Al-Qadi is the only pavement engineer to receive the quadrennial International Geosynthetic Society Award (2002) and the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award (1994). His achievements were profiled in the TRNews of the National Academies, November-December 2006 issue.