James LaFave

James M. LaFave holds a BS (1986) and MS (1987) in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and a PhD (1997) in Civil (Structural) Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been on the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) faculty at UIUC since 1999, and was Chair of the Illinois CEE Structures Group from 2010-14. Prof. LaFave currently serves as Associate Head and Director of Undergraduate Studies in CEE at Illinois, in addition to being the Director of CEE Education Programs for the Zhejiang University – UIUC Institute (ZJUI) in Haining, Zhejiang, China.

Dr. LaFave was previously a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and he is a licensed Professional Engineer with four years of practical consulting engineering experience. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the behavior, design, and assessment of reinforced concrete, structural steel, and prestressed concrete building, bridge, and ballpark structures, and has a primary research interest in the experimental behavior and analytical modeling of structural connections.

Jim has twice received the Illinois ASCE Student Chapter’s Outstanding Instructor Award, was presented with the ASTM Alan H. Yorkdale Memorial Award, and is recipient of an Outstanding TMS Journal Paper Award from The Masonry Society. He is a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute (ACI), was awarded the ACI Wason Medal for Most Meritorious Paper, and received the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities Outstanding Paper Award.