High-Achieving Wind Researcher Elawady Joins FIU
Published on April 7, 2017
Amal Elawady, PhD, is the newest member of the leadership team at the NHERI Wall of Wind Experimental Facility (WOW-EF).
Amal Elawady, PhD, is the newest member of the leadership team at the NHERI Wall of Wind Experimental Facility (WOW-EF). She joins the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Florida International University at the rank of an Assistant Professor. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees with distinction from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, in which she continued as a Demonstrator, a title granted only to distinguished graduates.
Her excellent qualifications were immediately recognized by the leading international consultant firm Dar Group, where she worked as a structural engineer. Her passion for academic research drove her to pursue advanced graduate studies; Western University in Ontario, Canada, was a perfect match to her research interests.
Elawady received her PhD degree from Western University in 2016, with a focus on wind and structural engineering. Her PhD project focused on finding solutions to mitigate the replicated failures of transmission line structures during downburst events.
During her PhD, Dr. Elawady worked closely with the ASCE-74 Committee, which develops guidelines for transmission line structures. A major outcome of her work was the development of velocity profiles and load cases simulating the critical effects of the downburst wind fields on transmission line structures. The proposed approach was recently approved by the committee, which included in addition to scientists about 40 practitioners from various utility companies in North America.
As a result of her innovative work, along with the industrial impact of her research, Elwady has received numerous prestigious awards. Among her honors are the distinguished Alan Davenport Award for Excellence in Wind Engineering in 2015 and the Robert Addie Graduate Scholarship in Wind Engineering in 2016. Internationally, she received the O. H. Ammann Fellowship from the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) for creating new knowledge in the field of High Intensity Wind and infrastructures design and for influencing the codes of practice with new design guidelines.
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