For international achievement and contributions, MSU University Distinguished Professor Venkatesh Kodur has been named a 2020 Fellow of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE). The Fellow grade is only awarded to a select few members, based on scholarly activities, significant accomplishment and service, and stature in fire protection engineering.
Kodur, of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), will be honored during a presentation on Nov. 9 at the 2020 SFPE Virtual Annual Conference.
CEE Department Chair Neeraj Buch said Kodur's comprehensive knowledge has advanced the performance of construction materials and structural systems during a fire.
"Dr. Kodur's research has brought academics and industry together to better understand the effect of fire on the behavior of reinforced concrete structures." See video.
Kodur said he is honored to be the recipient of the prestigious Fellow award and grateful to SFPE for the recognition.
"This award would not have been possible but for the research contributions of dozens of my former and current post-doctoral scholars and PhD students in developing engineering methodologies and innovative technologies for the advancement of fire protection engineering field," he added.
Kodur is internationally recognized for his contributions in the area of structural fire engineering and is credited with developing the fundamental understanding of the behavior of materials and structural systems under extreme fire conditions.
He has published more than 450 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and conferences, and he has given numerous invited key-note presentations. He is one of the most highly cited authors in Civil Engineering and Fire Protection Engineering disciplines.
Kodur has chaired numerous international technical committees and standards committees, including the SFPE Standards Committee on Calculating Fire Exposures to Structures, the SFPE Standard S.01 Working Group on Exposures, and the ASCE/SEI/SFPE Standards Committee 29-13, Standard Calculation Methods for Structural Fire Protection, for which he is chair.
He is a long-serving author for the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering, including contributing the chapter on "Building Materials" for the 3rd, 4th and 5th editions. He provides leadership to the editorial board of the official SFPE peer-review journal, Fire Technology. He has organized numerous international conferences, workshops and short courses in structural fire engineering.
Kodur is an award-winning professor at MSU. In Spring 2020, he received the Withrow Distinguished Senior Scholar Award from the College of Engineering for his sustained professional distinction in research and scholarly activities, teaching, and public and institutional service.
Kodur's industrial background at the National Research Council of Canada (NRCC) provides him with a unique perspective and his research is highly innovative in combining theoretical-depth with highly relevant practical applications.
As founding director of the Center for Structural Fire Engineering and Diagnostics (SAFE-D Center), he and his research team apply advanced experimental techniques and complex numerical modeling approaches for developing rational calculation methodologies and innovative practical solutions for fire design of various structural systems. He designed and developed unique structural and material fire testing facilities at MSU, the first of its kind at a U.S. university.
"This unique and sophisticated fire testing facility dedicated in 2007, is highly cost-effective in operations, since the furnace can be used to test a variety of structural configurations," Buch explained.
Among his other honors, Kodur is fellow of five institutes/ academies; namely, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Structural Engineering Institute (SEI), American Concrete Institute (ACI), Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), and Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). His other recognitions include a NATO award for collaborative research, an American Institute of Steel Construction Faculty Fellowship Award, and an NRC (Government of Canada) Outstanding Achievement Award. He has received some of the highest honors bestowed on engineers in Canada and India.
Most notably, he was part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and American Society of Civil Engineers high profile "Experts Team" that investigated the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings as a result of Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Kodur's new book, Structural Fire Engineering, was published this summer by McGraw Hill and provides hands-on techniques engineers can apply to prevent or mitigate the adverse effects of fire in built infrastructure. Kodur notes there are very few books available on this specialized topic so his new publication is helping to fill in knowledge gaps in the fire safety field.