Dr. Nassif is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Rutgers Infrastructure Monitoring and Evaluation (RIME) Group at Rutgers University, where he has established the Bridge Engineering program. He is also serving the Associate Director for Outreach and Technology Transfer at the federally-supported C2SMART Tier 1 University Transportation Center (UTC) at which Dr. Nassif is leading the significant efforts to conduct the research area of the resilient, secure, and smart transportation infrastructure. At C2SMART, he is leading the efforts on one of the Center’s four themes of “Infrastructure Resiliency” working on risk assessment, structural safety, and service life prediction of existing bridges. His work was recognized by NYCDOT and he was invited by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to serve on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Panel of Experts. Dr. Nassif is the 4-year Director of the Bridge resource Program (BRP) sponsored by NJDOT/FHWA to provide ongoing engineering evaluation and research support, including the development of risk assessment methodologies utilizing probability-based approaches to quantify the risk of NJ bridges subjected to various types of hazards including flooding, scour, and seismic events. His work in this area was recognized by the TRB Committee on Bridge Management and he was invited to present it during the AASHTO Maintenance Conference held in Grand Rapids, MI, in July 2019.
His expertise includes structural health monitoring (SHM), advanced weigh-in-motion (WIM) technology, field testing of infrastructure facilities with an emphasis on the railroad as well as highway bridges, crash analysis simulation using LS-DYNA, advanced cementitious materials, and structural concrete, etc. Dr. Nassif was also involved in the pioneering work of code calibration for the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications (1994) as well as the Ontario Highway Bridge Design Code (OHBDC) and is currently involved in an ongoing NCHRP project for the calibration of AASHTO’s design of concrete bridges at the Serviceability Limit States.
Dr. Nassif has expertise in the safety and resiliency of infrastructure and bridge engineering. He has performed many projects including a number of NCHRP projects and scans to develop the framework, design process flow diagram for the AASHTO LRFD specifications, design guide and standards for various types of infrastructure assets. Dr. Nassif’s involvement with NCHRP projects includes the pioneering work of the development and calibration of the first generation of reliability-based AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications (BDS) in NCHRP 12-33 (1994) and NCHRP 12-83 (2014). He was also the Subject Matter Expert (SME) on two NCHRP
scans, including NCHRP Project 20-68A, Scan 12-01 “Advances in State DOT Superload Permit Processes and Practices” and NCHRP Project 20 68A, Scan 15-02 “Bridge Scour Risk Management”. Recently, as part of a team led by Prof. Andy Nowak, he was awarded NCHRP 12-123 project as a Co-PI to develop and calibrate the AASHTO BDS for segmental bridges.
Prior to obtaining his PhD, Prof. Nassif has several of practical and design experience. He is a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and served on several committees including Technical Activity Committee (TAC), ACI 209 Creep and Shrinkage, ACI 435 Deflection, and Chaired committees ACI 444-Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Instrumentation, ACI 348- Structural Safety, and subtask on Paper Awards. He also served as President of the NJACI Chapter and currently serves on its Board of Directors. He is also a member of TRB, PCI, PTI, IEEE, ASCE, IABSE, and IABMAS. He received various awards including AASHTO’s Research Activities Committee “Sweet Sixteen” Project Award (2013), NJDOT’s Implementation Award (2013 and 2017), Outstanding Faculty Award from ASCE NJ Section (2006) and ACEC (2007), Medallion of Appreciation (2004) from FHWA, and is a member of the Engineering Honor Societies Tau Beta Pi, Chi Epsilon and Engineering Research Society Sigma Xi. He is an Editor of the Journal of Construction and Building Materials (JCBM) and Associate Editor for the ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering. Professor Nassif has several years of practical experience in design and construction.
