Professor Alessandro Palermo is the host for Dr. Mashal at the University of Canterbury (UC). Dr. Mashal is a former PhD student of Professor Palermo. His PhD thesis was focused on low damage seismic design technologies for Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC).
“I am very excited to be back at UC. I would like to thank the Erskine Programme and CNRE for giving me the opportunity to spend a part of my sabbatical leave at my alma mater from where I have many fond memories. I look forward to my Erskine visit and collaborating with faculty from UC.” said Dr. Mashal
During his four-month Erskine Fellowship, Dr. Mashal will be teaching a class titled “Earthquake Bridge Engineering”, delivering presentations and webinars to professional and social societies, and participating in other academic activities with his host.
Dr. Mashal obtained his PhD, Masters, and Bachelors in Civil Engineering with a focus on Structural and Earthquake Engineering from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand (2015), the State University of New York at Buffalo in the United States (2011), and Kabul University in Afghanistan (2009), respectively. He is a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in Idaho, a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng) and International Professional Engineer (IntPE) in New Zealand.
Dr. Mashal has more than 12 years of consulting and academic experience in the United States, New Zealand, and Afghanistan. He has been the recipient of several awards and recognitions such as the “2022-23 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award” from the United States Department of State, “2020 Alfred Noble Prize” from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the “2018 Outstanding Civil Engineer of the Year Award” from the ASCE Southern Idaho Section. He has been part of over 100 publications and is a member of several national standards committees in ASCE, ACI, PCI, and TRB.
His research interests include accelerated bridge construction, precast concrete, earthquake engineering, seismic resiliency, large-scale testing, advanced materials in civil engineering, Net Zero, augmented/virtual reality and robotics in disaster response, energy security, hydrogen storage, and pumped hydro.
Dr. Mashal’s office is at E430 in Engineering Core building. He looks forward to meeting with faculty, students, and staff.
