The Zachry Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University welcomed three tenure-track faculty members this year. Drs. Maria Koliou, Petros Sideris and Matthew Yarnold join as assistant professors.
Koliou joins the department from a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology funded Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning at Colorado State University. She received her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, and her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University at Buffalo - SUNY. Her research interests span the fields of structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, and multi-hazard performance-based design for system functionality and community resilience. Her research focuses on developing novel sustainable structural designs and systems against natural and man-made hazards, and formulating fundamental mathematical frameworks to assess system functionality and community resilience.
She is a member of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program Provisions Update Committee IT-9, as well as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) technical committees. She also serves as the co-chair of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Younger Member Committee.
Prior to joining the department, Sideris was an assistant professor at the University of Colorado – Boulder, where he also served as director of the Structures and Materials Testing Laboratory. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees in civil engineering from the University at Buffalo - SUNY, and his bachelor’s from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
His research focuses on mitigating the effects of natural hazards on the built environment through the development of resilient and sustainable infrastructure systems, integrating advanced materials and response mechanisms. His research further attempts to broaden conventional structural design to incorporate the novel concepts of accelerated construction, rapid post-event retrofit and hazard energy harvesting. His endeavors combine fundamental mechanics, structural modeling and simulation techniques, and experimental explorations.
He is a member of various technical committees with the Transportation Research Board and the ASCE. He has received numerous awards for his research, teaching and service, including the 2014 ASCE Outstanding Reviewer Award and the 2017 ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Fellowship.
Yarnold joins the department after having been an assistant professor at Tennessee Technological University. He began his career at Lehigh University, earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Following graduation, he accepted a position as a bridge engineer for Ammann & Whitney, during which time he contributed to more than 15 bridge design and rehabilitation projects, along with obtaining his professional engineering license. He then returned to academia and received his doctoral degree from Drexel University. Yarnold has been a principal investigator for two projects funded by the National Science Foundation, as well as a project for the Tennessee Department of Transportation. He serves on several national committees through the ASCE and Transportation Research Boards. His research aims to further the understanding of structural systems through numerical modeling, large-scale laboratory testing and field experimentation/monitoring.