ACI SP-206

Abstract

<strong>PREFACE</strong> <br>Surendra (Suru) Poonamchand Shah, the son of a Gujarati businessman, grew UP in Mumbai (Bombay), India and attended Modem School and Elphinstone College where he became President of the Literary Society. While in Engineering College, he played the leading role in a drama that traveled to New Delhi and was performed in front of the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. For Suru, this tour of India was a memorable introduction to the delights of travel, an aspect of his academic career that he genuinely enjoys. Among Suru's other passions are exploring cuisine and wines in restaurants worldwide, investigating archaeological and architectural wonders of the world, analyzing theatre, opera, and film productions, and entertaining visitors to Chicago and Evanston, as well as working with students, post-docs, and colleagues. <br>After earning a B.E. at Sardar Vallabhbhai Vidyaputh Gujarat University, SUN came to the United States for graduate study at Lehigh University where he completed a Master of Science degree. For two years, he worked as a design engineer for Modjeski and Masters, a bridge design firm in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he met Dorothie Crispell, whom he married before he enrolled in the Ph.D. program in civil engineering at Cornel1 University. There, Professor George Winter, Professor Richard White, and Professor Floyd Slate were his research mentors. <br>In 1965, Suru joined the faculty of the Materials Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago. In addition to teaching a variety of civil engineering classes, he developed a state-of-the-art research laboratory and built a graduate program. He was rapidly promoted to associate, then full, professor. In 1981, he joined the faculty at Northwestern University where he holds the Walter P. Murphy Chair in Civil Engineering. <br>SUN was key in establishing the pioneering National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Advanced Cement Based Materials and has served as director since its inception in 1989. The ACBM Center is a multidisciplinary consortium comprised of five institutions: Northwestem University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Purdue University, and the National Institute of Science and Technology. The goal of the center is to improve knowledge of cement and concrete so that stronger, tougher, and more-durable materials are economically produced for infrastructure facilities and other structures. With ACBM Center colleagues, post-docs, and graduate students, Suru continues his tireless pursuit of fundamental understanding of cement-based materials and related fiber-reinforced cement composites. Currently, a consortium of world-class industrial partners provide strong support for the ACBM Center and assist the center in promoting improved teaching of the materials science of concrete. <br>Sum's accomplishments are too numerous to list here; suffice it to say that anyone involved in the materials science of concrete, fracture mechanics, high-performance concrete, or fiber-reinforced concrete has encountered and utilized his contributions. He has Co-authored two textbooks, edited over a dozen books, and published more than 400 papers. Suru has received many major professional and technical awards, including the AC1 Arthur R. Anderson Award, the RILEM Gold Medal, the Swedish Concrete Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Award, Engineering Newsletter Award, ASCE-CERF Charles Pankow Award, and ASTM Thompson Award. He has been the principal advisor of almost 100 graduate students and supervised the work of over 60 post-docs and visiting scholars. Contributors to this symposium in his honor include many of his former students. A list of former students and post-docs appear in the Appendix. <br>Suru and Dorothie Shah have two married sons, Byron and Daniel, and a grandson, Kian, bom in 1999.