Jerome F. Hajjar
CDM Smith Professor and Chair, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Affiliated Faculty, Marine and Environmental Sciences
Contact
- jf.hajjar@northeastern.edu
- 400 Snell Engineering Center
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Social Media
Office
- 400 Snell Engineering Center
- 617.373.3242
Research Focus
Sustainable and resilient steel and composite steel/concrete structures; earthquake engineering; structural stability; large-scale experimental testing of structures; regional simulation
Education
- PhD, Structural Engineering, Cornell University, 1988
- MS, Structural Engineering, Cornell University, 1985
- BS, Engineering Mechanics, Yale University, 1982
Licensure
- Professional Engineer: Illinois, Minnesota
Honors & Awards
- 2023 President of the Structural Engineering Institute
- 2023 SSRC Lynn S. Beedle Award
- 2023 ASCE Thomas A. Lenox ExCEED Leadership Award
- 2022 NAE Member
- 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award, American Institute of Steel Construction
- 2018 Robert D. Klein Lectureship Award
- 2016 ASCE Moisseiff Award
- 2015 BSCES Clemens Herschel Award
- 2013 SEI Fellow
- 2010 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award
- 2009 ASCE Shortridge Hardesty Award
- 2007 ASCE Fellow
- 2005 AISC T. R. Higgins Lectureship Award
- 2004 AISC Special Achievement Award
- 2003 ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize
- 2000 ASCE Norman Medal
Professional Affiliations
- American Concrete Institute
- American Institute of Steel Construction
- American Society of Civil Engineers Structural Engineering Institute
- Architectural Institute of Japan
- Association for International Cooperation and Research in Steel-Concrete Composite Structures
- Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering
- Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
- European Association for Earthquake Engineering
- International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineering
- Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute
- Research Council on Structural Connections
- Structural Stability Research Council
Research Overview
Sustainable and resilient steel and composite steel/concrete structures; earthquake engineering; structural stability; large-scale experimental testing of structures; regional simulation

Laboratory for Structural Testing of Resilient and Sustainable Systems
The double-height STReSS Lab features a 2,000 square-foot, reinforced concrete strong floor to enable full-scale testing of buildings, bridges, and other structures to failure. The strong floor includes a grid of 416 tie-down anchors, each capable of withstanding 200,000 pounds of force.
Selected Research Projects
- Century-scale Carbon-sequestration in Cross-laminated Timber Composite Bolted-steel Buildings
- – Principal Investigator, ARPA-E
- Ensuring Long-Term Availability and Bankability of Offshore Wind Through Hurricane Risk Assessment and Mitigation
- – Principal Investigator, National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium
- CRISP Type 2: Identification and Control of Uncertain, Highly Interdependent Processes Involving Humans with Applications to Resilient Emergency Health Response
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Physics-Reinforced Deep Learning for Structural Metamodeling
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Steel Diaphragm Innovation Initiative
- – Co-Principal Investigator, American Institute of Steel Construction and Industry
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- Du, X., Hajjar, J. F., Bond, R. B., Ren, P., and Sun, H. Clustering and Selection of Hurricane Wind Records using Autoencoder and k-means Algorithm, Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 149(8), August 2023, Paper No. 04023096-1.
- Briggs, N. E., Avellaneda-Ramirez, R. E., Coleman, K., Schafer, B. W. Eatherton, M. R., Easterling, W. S., and Hajjar, J. F. Cyclic Behavior of Composite Connections in Composite Floor Diaphragms, Proceedings in Civil Engineering, 6(1), 2023, 566-577.
- Yan, Y. and Hajjar, J. F. Automated Creation of Geometric Models for the Superstructure Components of Steel Girder Bridges Through Exploiting Terrestrial Laser Scanning Data, Automation in Construction, 142, 2022, Paper No. 104484.
- Padilla-Llano, D. A., Schafer, B. W., and Hajjar, J. F. Cyclic Fracture Simulation Through Element Deletion in Structural Steel Systems, Journal of Constructional Steel Research, 189, 2022, Paper No. 107082.
- Yan, Y., Mao, Z., Wu, J., Padir, T., Hajjar, J. F. Towards Automated Detection and Quantification of Concrete Cracks using Integrated RGB Images and Lidar Data from Unmanned Aircraft System, Structural Control and Health Monitoring, 28(8), 2021, Paper No. e2757. (https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/stc.2757)
- Du, X., and Hajjar, J. F. Three-dimensional Nonlinear Mixed Beam Element for Members with Angle and Tee Sections, Thin-Walled Structures, 164, 2021, Paper No. 107817.
- Wang, L., Webster, M. D., and Hajjar, J. F. Design for Deconstruction Using Sustainable Composite Beams with Precast Concrete Planks and Clamping Connectors, Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 146(8), 2020, Paper No. 04020158-1.

Nov 13, 2023
Pankow Foundation Greenlights Phase II of Hajjar’s Steel Plate Flooring System Grant
CDM Smith Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Jerry Hajjar announced a $415,000 grant constituting Phase II of a multi-year grant from the Charles Pankow Foundation totaling $835,000 to date. The award is in conjunction with collaborators from Johns Hopkins, Virginia Tech, Iowa State, West Virginia University, industry partners Magnusson […]

Sep 28, 2023
Developing a Robotic Aquaculture System
BioE/ECE Affiliated Faculty Joseph Ayers, MES/CEE Professor Mark Patterson, CEE Chair Jerome Hajjar, ECE Professor Milica Stojanovic, and CEE/MES Associate Professor Amy Mueller were awarded a patent for “Robotic aquaculture system and methods.”

Sep 28, 2023
Hajjar Serves as President of Structural Engineering Institute Beginning October 2023
Jerome F. Hajjar, PhD, PE, F.ASCE, F.SEI, CDM Smith Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University, and member of the National Academy of Engineering, becomes the President of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) in October 2023.

Aug 16, 2023
Hajjar Honored with Lynn S. Beedle Award from Structural Stability Research Council
CEE Chair & CDM Smith Professor Jerome F. Hajjar will be honored with the SSRC Lynn S. Beedle Award, a lifetime achievement award, at the upcoming 2024 SSRC Annual Stability Conference and become the president of the Structural Engineering Institute on October 1, 2023.

Aug 09, 2023
Baiyu Chen, CEE PhD Student, Receives SEAMASS Scholarship
Baiyu Chen has been awarded the Structural Engineers Association of Massachusetts (SEAMASS) scholarship at the SEAMASS 2023 Annual Dinner Meeting & Presentation this past May. Chen, currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering under Professor Jerome Hajjar, demonstrated exceptional passion and commitment to the field, earning recognition and support from the association. Chen’s […]

Jul 17, 2023
ASCE Thomas A. Lenox ExCEED Leadership Award for Contributions to Civil Engineering Education
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has awarded W. Samuel Easterling, James L. and Katherine S. Melsa Dean of Engineering at Iowa State University, and Jerome F. Hajjar, CDM Smith Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University, the 2023 Thomas A. Lenox Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) Leadership Award for extraordinary leadership in civil engineering education.

Jun 15, 2023
Indonesia is Building a New Capital. Will It be a Model Amid Climate Change?
CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly and Chair Jerome Hajjar emphasize the importance of water management, sustainability, and potential challenges regarding the construction of Indonesia’s new capital city, Nusantara.

Apr 19, 2023
Mishac Yegian Retires After 47 Years of Meritorious Service and Leadership
After nearly five decades of service as a professor and researcher at Northeastern University, College of Engineering Distinguished Professor Mishac Yegian will be retiring in the summer of 2023. His tenure at Northeastern covered 47 years in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, which he also led as Department Chair for a seventeen-year period […]

Feb 08, 2023
Building a Carbon Negative Future with Steel and Cross Laminated Timber
In a new $3.1M grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Northeastern Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Chair and CDM Smith Professor Jerome Hajjar will lead a multi-institution team of researchers developing a new carbon sequestration technique using cross-laminated timber composite floor systems in bolted steel construction for building structures.

Feb 08, 2023
Devastating Earthquakes Demonstrate the Need for Old Infrastructure Retrofits
CEE Professors Jerome Hajjar, Mehrdad Sasani, and Mishac Yegian, who are experts in the field of earthquake engineering, advise that older structures should be retrofitted with modern standards to help prevent the devastating collapses that happened during the recent earthquakes in Turkey.