Daniel P. Abrams

Professor

Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Engineering

2118 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory

Phone: (217) 333-0565

Fax: (217) 333-3821

Email: d-abrams@uiuc.edu

Daniel P. Abrams holds a B.S. (Illinois Institute of Technology 1970), M.S. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1974), and Ph.D. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1979), all in civil engineering. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois since 1985. After completing his Ph.D. in 1979, he joined the civil and architectural engineering faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1985, he returned to Illinois as a faculty member. He is a licensed professional engineer, has worked as a practicing structural engineer in Chicago and San Francisco, and continues to take part in consulting assignments with industry.

Dr. Abrams has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in structural engineering. He has written over 130 papers or reports on seismic response of concrete or masonry buildings.

Dr. Abrams was responsible for writing the masonry chapter of the new NEHRP Guidelines for Seismic Rehabilitation of Buildings (FEMA 273/356). He chaired the Building Seismic Safety Council's Technical Subcommittee 5 on Masonry Structures for the 1997 Update of the NEHRP Recommended Provisions for Seismic Regulations for New Buildings. He is also a past chair of the EERI Experimental Research Committee and the TMS Research Committee, and served on the Masonry Standards Joint Committee. He has testified at congressional hearings in support of the reauthorization of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act. He has served as a member of the Research Committee of the former National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, the chair of the ASCE Committee on Concrete and Masonry Structures, the chair of ACI-ASCE 442 Committee on Lateral Forces, and the President of The Masonry Society (TMS). He is an Associate Editor of ASCE’s Natural Hazards Review, and a member of editorial boards for the Journal of The Masonry Society, the Journal of Earthquake Engineering, the Journal on Progress in Structural Engineering and Materials, and EERI’s Earthquake Spectra. He is a member of several engineering societies including a fellow of the American Concrete Institute and a member of an FIB (European concrete institute) task group on seismic analysis and retrofit of concrete buildings and bridges.

Since 1997, Dr. Abrams has been the Director of the Mid-America Earthquake (MAE) Center. The Center is focused on the infrequent but high consequence seismic events that are typical in the eastern and central United States. Research is directed at a new paradigm for earthquake risk reduction known as “Consequence-Based Engineering” and includes development of enabling technologies to synthesize damage across regions, mitigation methods to minimize earthquake consequences and better definitions of seismic hazards. Under the leadership of Dr. Abrams, center research is coordinated among disciplines in the areas of seismology, geophysics, geotechnical and structural engineering, risk assessment, social science, urban planning and economics.

Dr. Abrams holds the Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Engineering. He was the recipient of the 1996 TMS Scalzi Research Award, the 1996 TMS President's Award, and the 1992 Senior Xerox Research Award within the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois.