Constantinou receives Newmark Medal

Michael C. Constantinou, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, has won the prestigious Nathan M. Newmark Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

He was recognized by the ASCE, the country’s oldest national engineering society, “for significant contributions to the innovation, theoretical development, experimental verification, creation of design standards, assisting practicing professionals in real-life implementations and educating new generations of professionals in further developments of protective systems for infrastructure against catastrophic shocks and vibrations.”

He was cited in particular for developing sliding seismic isolation systems and fluid viscous damping systems.

Constantinou will receive the award during ASCE’s annual convention, being held in October in New York City.

The Newmark Medal is a highly prestigious recognition, with just one recipient selected each year. Past UB winners of this competitive award over its 40-year history include George Lee (2000), Tsu-The Soong (2002) and Andrei Reinhorn (2011), a unique achievement among competing institutions in which only one other institution in the U.S. — University of California, Berkeley — has had more winners than UB.

One of the world’s leading scholars in the area of seismic protective systems, Constantinou has had a profound impact on earthquake engineering in the U.S. and around the globe.

His research has been employed to ensure the seismic protection of some of the world’s most prominent structures located in some of the most seismically active and highly populated regions of the world, from the San Francisco International Airport to off-shore oil and gas platforms in Russia, to several seismically isolated hospitals and the new Apple Campus building, currently under construction in California.

He has served as a consultant or peer reviewer for more than 100 structures with seismic protective systems in 19 countries.

During his 28-year tenure at UB, he has served as chair of the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering and as director or deputy director of UB’s Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL). He was principal or co-principal investigator on more than $30 million in externally funded research.

He is the author or co-author of more than 300 papers, books and book chapters, and reports, and has four patents issued or pending. He is a winner of the 2004 SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and is a co-recipient of four professional practice awards, including the General Services Administration Design Award in 1994 and the Grand Award of the American Council of Engineering Companies in 2002.

He is also a co-recipient of the 2015 ASCE Moisseiff Award for an important paper published in the ASCE journals.