Mehrdad Sasani
Professor,
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Office
- 421 Snell Engineering Center
- 617.373.5222
Research Focus
Progressive collapse of structures; earthquake engineering; structural integrity and reliability; building and community resilience
Education
- PhD, Structural Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, 2001
- MS, Structural Engineering, Tehran Polytechnic, 1987
- BS, Civil Engineering, Tehran Polytechnic, 1985
Licensure
- Professional Engineer: Massachusetts and California
Honors & Awards
- 2025 Constantinos Mavroidis Translational Research Award
- 2018 Fellow of the American Concrete Institute
- 2016 BSCES/ASCE Clemens Herschel outstanding paper award
- 2015 Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers
- 2015 Fellow of Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers
- 2006 CAREER Development Award, National Science Foundation
Professional Affiliations
- ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division (IRD): Risk and Resilience Measurements Committee (RRMC)
- ASCE/SEI-7: Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures, Codes & Standards Division
- ASCE/SEI-41: Seismic Retrofit of Existing Buildings Standards, Codes and Standards Division
- ASCE/SEI: Disproportionate Collapse Mitigation of Building Structures, Codes and Standards Division
- ACI-377 (Chair): Performance-Based Structural Integrity & Resilience of Concrete Structures
- ACI-374: Performance-Based Design of Concrete Buildings
- MEAER (Chair), Massachusetts Engineers and Architects Emergency Response committee, http://MEAER.org
- Editorial Board Member (Associate Editor) of Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE
- SEI Boston Chapter of BSCES, Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section
- Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
- International Joint Committee on Structural Safety
- MBTA Certification Committee for concrete licensing program.
- Structural Engineering Institute
Research Overview
Progressive collapse of structures; earthquake engineering; structural integrity and reliability; building and community resilience
Selected Research Projects
- A Decision and Design Framework for Multi-Hazard Resilient and Sustainable Buildings (RSB)
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Near Collapse Performance of Existing RC Concrete Frame Buildings (NEESR)
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- M. Joyner, M. Sasani, Building Performance for Earthquake Resilience, Engineering Structures, 210(110371), 2020, 1-14
- M.H. Kurth, J.M. Keenan, M. Sasani, I. Igor Linkov Defining resilience for the building industry in the U.S., Building Research & Information, 47(4), 2019, 480-492
- M. Joyner, M. Sasani, A Multihazard Risk-Based Resilience Analysis of East and West Coast Buildings Designed to Current Codes, Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, 144(9), 2018, 1-16
- R. Ceskavich, M. Sasani, Methodology for Evaluating Community Resilience, Natural Hazards Review, ASCE, 19(1), 2018, 1-13
- J.A. Murray, M. Sasani, Seismic Hybrid Simulation of a Nonductile RC Building with Severe Damage to Multiple Columns, Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 46, 2017, 733–752
- J.A. Murray, M. Sasani, Near-Collapse Response of Existing RC Building Under Severe Pulse Type Ground Motion Using Hybrid Simulation, Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 45(7), 2016, 1109–1127
Jan 31, 2025
2024 Stanford University Annual Assessment of Author Citations
The following COE professors are among the top scientists worldwide selected by Stanford University representing the top 2% of the most-cited scientists with single-year impact in various disciplines. The selection is based on the top 100,000 by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above. The list below includes those who published a paper in 2024 or later.
Jan 30, 2025
Faculty and Staff Awards 2025
Faculty and staff were recognized at the 27th Annual College of Engineering Faculty and Staff Awards for their exceptional service and dedication in support of students, the COE community, and the university during the 2024-2025 academic year.
Sep 13, 2023
How Can Residents in Morocco Guard Against the Next Deadly Earthquake?
CEE Professor Mehrdad Sasani was interviewed by NPR in the article “How Can Residents in Morocco Guard Against the Next Deadly Earthquake?” He was also featured in articles by News9Live, […]
Sep 11, 2023
Morocco Earthquake Devastation Worsened by Age-Old Construction Methods
CEE Professor Mehrdad Sasani says that the traditional methods of construction used in rural and remote regions of Morocco are not earthquake-resistant and will continue to cause devastation during earthquakes due to limited resources.
Apr 24, 2023
Concern About Parking Garage Safety in Mass. in Wake of Deadly Collapse in New York City
CEE Professor Mehrdad Sasani was featured in the CBS News article “Concern About Parking Garage Safety in Mass. in Wake of Deadly Collapse in New York City.”
Feb 21, 2023
‘Very Simple Things’: Earthquake Engineers on What Went Wrong in Turkey
CEE Professor Mehrdad Sasani was featured in the Middle East Eye article “‘Very Simple Things’: Earthquake Engineers on What Went Wrong in Turkey.”
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.
Nov 02, 2022
2022 Stanford University Annual Assessment of Author Citations
A group of COE professors are among the top scientists worldwide selected by Stanford University representing the top 2% of the most-cited scientists with single-year impact in various disciplines. The selection is based on the top 100,000 by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above.
Nov 03, 2021
Evaluating Earthquake Resilience in Urban Areas
CEE Professor Mehrdad Sasani was awarded a $400K NSF grant for a “Scalable Assessment of Urban Earthquake Resilience: A Novel Model-informed Deep Learning Paradigm.” This Disaster Resilience Research Grants (DRRG) project will enable assessment of earthquake resilience for large-scale urban building clusters via developing a fundamentally novel and scalable AI-empowered model. The outcome of this project can be used to evaluate earthquake resilience of building clusters in large-scale urban areas.
Jul 06, 2021
NGSEA Wins 2021 SEI Graduate Student Chapter of the Year
The Northeastern Graduate Structural Engineering Association (NGSEA) was selected by the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) Local Activities Division as the Graduate Student Chapter of the Year for the second year in a row.