CAEE Department Assistant Professor, Dr. Yared Shifferaw is one of five recipients of the 2013-2014 Drexel University Career Development Awards. These annual awards are designed to help faculty increase their exposure to colleagues at other institutions who can be collaborators and role models while introducing outside scholars to faculty at Drexel.
Dr. Shifferaw’s project is titled: “Catalyzing Collaborative Research: Experimental and Computational Wind Modeling in Cold-formed Steel Structures” and is geared towards establishing the foundation for research collaboration with Dr. Girma Bitsuamlak at the University of Western Ontario’s Wind Engineering, Energy and Environment Research Institute (WindEEE) to examine hurricane impact on residential cold-formed steel structures. The WindEEE hosts unique wind-tunnel testing facilities that are capable of producing various wind systems (including hurricane, tornado, and downburst) and provides opportunities for interdisciplinary research. This can be instrumental in establishing research opportunities for computational and experimental research at Drexel to lay the foundation to lead the effort in sustainable structures research.
Dr. Shifferaw joined the CAEE Department in Fall 2012. Prior to joining Drexel, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, sponsored by the American Iron and Steel Institute. He obtained his B.Sc. from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia and Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University, in Civil/Structural Engineering. His research interests lie in computational and experimental methods to advance sustainable and resilient solutions to existing and emerging materials in various applications of infrastructural systems.