Faculty Profiles

Professor Elgamal is an expert in earthquake engineering, with emphasis on: i) experimental and computational geomechanics, and ii) Soil-Structure Interaction 

Incorporation of information technologies is an additional focus area. Applications include sensor networks for monitoring our civil infrastructure, with real-time condition assessment and decision-making algorithms. Integration of research and education with live web-accessible experiments is a main component.

Capsule Bio:

Ahmed Elgamal is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Structural   Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Prior to UC San Diego, Elgamal was a faculty member at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and at Columbia University, and was the technical director of the Rensselaer  Geotechnical Centrifuge Research Center. He studied Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Cairo University (B.Sc.) and Princeton University  (M.A. and Ph.D.), and was a research fellow at CalTech. He is a recipient of the ASCE H. Bolton Seed Medal, the Shamsher Prakash Award, and the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. Elgamal was also a Lilly Teaching Fellow (1991-1992). He served as the Journal of Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering Editor-in-Chief, Chair of the Department of Structural Engineering (2003 to 2007), and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering (2015-2019).

Education:

• B.Sc., Cairo University, Egypt (1977)
• M.A., Civil Engineering, Princeton University (1982)
• Ph.D., Civil Engineering, Princeton University (1984)

Awards:

• 2025 ASCE Geo-Institute H. Bolton Seed Medal

• 2011 Chandra S. Desai Excellence Award, Intl Association for Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics, IACMAG, May

• 2011, ISET V.H. Joshi Award for the best paper in Soil Dynamics published in the ISET Journal over the four-year period of 2005-2008.

• Thrust Area Leader, NSF Pacific Center for Earthquake Eng. Research (PEER), 2001-present

• Member, NSF Technical Coordination Committee for US-Japan Research Initiative, 1998-2002.

• Elected Member, USUCGER, 1998.

• Shamsher Prakash Award 1996.

• Lilly Teaching Fellow, July 1991 - June 1992.

• NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI), 1990-1995.

• Academic Honors, Cairo University, 1973-1977.

Selected Publications:

• Seismic response of the Eureka Channel Bridge-Foundation system, N Wang, A Elgamal, J Lu Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 152, 2022

• In-situ Ambient Vibration Study of a 900-kw Wind Turbine, I Prowell, A Elgamal, JE Luco, JP Conte, Journal of Earthquake Engineering 25 (14), 2021

• Large-scale shake table tests on a shallow foundation in liquefiable soils, M Jahed Orang, R Motamed, A Prabhakaran, A Elgamal, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering 147 (1), 2021

• Asymmetric input motion for accumulation of lateral ground deformation in laminar container shake table testing, M Zayed, A Ebeido, A Prabhakaran, Z Qiu, A Elgamal Canadian Geotechnical Journal 58 (2), 210-223, 2021

• Numerical simulations of LEAP centrifuge tests for seismic response of liquefiable sloping ground, Z Qiu, A Elgamal, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 139, 2020

• Shake table testing: A high-resolution vertical accelerometer array for tracking shear wave velocity, M Zayed, A Ebeido, A Prabhakaran, K Kim, Z Qiu, A Elgamal, Geotechnical Testing Journal 44 (4), 2020

• Three-dimensional modeling of strain-softening soil response for seismic-loading applications, Z Qiu, A Elgamal, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering 146 (7), 2020

• Three-Dimensional Seismic Response of a Large Embedded Structure and Induced Earth Pressure, J Li, K Kim, A Elgamal, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering 146 (5), 2020