Ross B. Corotis
Denver Business Challenge Professor
Department of Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering

Dr. Corotis received both his undergraduate and graduate education at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, he was an NSF Graduate Fellow.

He was on the faculty at Northwestern University for eleven years, and was awarded the Technological Institute Teaching Award in 1977. He was twice named to the Student Government Faculty Honor Roll, and in 1979 was selected Civil Engineering Teacher of the Year. In 1981, Dr. Corotis moved to Johns Hopkins to establish the Department of Civil Engineering, which he chaired until becoming Associate Dean in 1990, where he continued to teach and conduct research. In 1994, Dr. Corotis accepted the position of Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2001 he returned to the Department of Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering.

With a background in structural mechanics and stochastic vibrations, Dr. Corotis' primary research interests are in the application of probabilistic concepts to civil engineering problems. He has been the director of eleven NSF projects, two on stochastic modeling of loads on structures, five on structural system reliability, three on wind characteristics, and one on mesoscale storm modeling. In addition, he has directed one ERDA and three DOE projects on the analysis of wind characteristics for energy conversion systems, and two NBS projects on building loads.

Dr. Corotis has been a member of the ASCE Structural Division Technical Committees on the Safety of Buildings (past chair) and Practical Reliability Concepts, the Technical Administrative Committee on Structural Safety and Reliability (past chair), the Administrative Committee on Research, the Engineering Mechanics Division Committee on Probabilistic Methods, and the ACI Committee on Structural Safety (past chair), and the Subcommittee on Live Loads of the ASCE Minimum Design Loads Standards Committee (past chair). He is a member of the CIB Commission on Actions on Structures, the International Federation for Information Processing Committee on Reliability and Optimization of Structures, the International Association for Structural Safety and Reliability Conference Scientific Committee, and the Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Structural Safety. He is the author of more than 120 publications and has given more than eighty presentations at professional meetings and symposia. He was awarded the ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 1984 for his work on stochastic modeling of structural loads, was named Civil Engineer of the Year by the ASCE Maryland Section in 1986, Engineer of the Year by the Baltimore Engineers' Week Council in 1989, and Outstanding Engineering Educator by the ASCE Maryland Section in 1992. He is past President of the ASCE Maryland Section.

Dr. Corotis is a member of Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Chi Epsilon and is both a registered professional engineer (Colorado, Maryland, Illinois) and structural engineer (Illinois).