Professor, Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering
Contact Information
Phone: 703-993-1658
Campus: Fairfax
Building: Nguyen Engineering Building
Room 2222
Mail Stop: 6C1
Email: gurgessa@gmu.edu
Personal Websites
In the News
Biography
Girum Urgessa is a tenured professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering (CEIE) at George Mason University. He received his MS (2002) and PhD (2006) from the University of New Mexico, and his BS (2000) from Addis Ababa University. Before coming to Mason, he was a research engineer in the Applied Science Division of Weidlinger Associates (now Thornton Tomasetti) and a structural engineer at Dekker/Perich/Sabatini.
Urgessa's research interests include the dynamic response of structures subjected to air-blast, impact, progressive collapse, and underwater explosions; the use of fiber-reinforced polymer composites in structural design and retrofit applications; and structural stability of temporary structures. Over the past 12 years, he has taught ten different structural engineering and mechanics courses and received the university's Teaching Excellence Award in 2015 He has played active roles in faculty governance at Mason, including serving on the faculty senate, the faculty handbook revision committee, the term faculty task force, and several academic program review committees. He has also chaired the Faculty Matters Senate standing committee. Outside of Mason,
Urgessa is currently a member of the sub-committee on Retrofit of Structures under Dynamic Loads under the Committee on Dynamic Effects of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He was a voting member of the American Concrete Institute Committee on Blast and Impact Load Effects and the Transportation Research Board Committee on Field Testing and Nondestructive Evaluation of Transportation Structures. Dr. Urgessa is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Maryland.
Degrees
- PhD, Structural Engineering, University of New Mexico
- MS, Structural Engineering, University of New Mexico
- BS, Civil Engineering, Addis Ababa University
Research Interests
- Structural response for air-blast
- Impact
- Progressive collapse, and underwater explosion
- Fiber-reinforced polymer composites in structures
- Engineering Education and Workforce Development