Venkatesh Kodur

Venkatesh Kumar Kodur
  • University Distinguished Professor
  • Civil and Environmental Engineering

Bio

Venkatesh Kodur is chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Center on Structural Fire Safety and Diagnostics. He is an internationally recognized scholar for his contributions in the structural fire engineering field. His design approaches and fire resistance solutions have been incorporated into codes and standards in the United States and around the world.

He received his master’s (1988) and Ph.D. (1992) degrees from Queen’s University, Canada. Before joining MSU, he worked as a senior research officer at the National Research Council of Canada (NRCC), where he carried out research in structural fire safety.

Kodur has developed a fundamental understanding of the behavior of materials and structural systems under extreme fire conditions. His research has been instrumental in minimizing the destructive impact of fire in the built infrastructure, which continues to cause thousands of deaths and billions of dollars of damage each year in the U.S. and around the world.

Together with his students and collaborators, Kodur has published 375+ technical papers, including 210+ peer-reviewed papers in prestigious international journals. He has given numerous invited keynote presentations at major international conferences. According to Google Scholar, he has more than 8000 citations with an "h” index of 51 and is among the top 50 cited scholars in civil engineering.

He is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Indian National Academy of Engineering, Structural Engineering Institute, and American Concrete Institute. He is a professional engineer; associate editor of the Journal of Structural Engineering, and Journal of Structural Fire Engineering; editorial board member of five leading journals; chairman of ASCE-29 (Fire) Standards Committee; and a member of UK-EPSRC College of Reviewers.

His many honors include the American Institute of Steel Construction Faculty Fellowship Award, MSU Distinguished Faculty Award, NRCC (Government of Canada) Outstanding Achievement Award, and NATO Award for collaborative research.

Kodur was part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency/American Society of Civil Engineers team of experts that investigated the collapse of the World Trade Center following incidents on Sept. 11, 2001.