The 2019 winner of the $15,000 AISC T.R. Higgins Award is Ronald D. Ziemian, a professor at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Penn. Ziemian is recognized worldwide for his expertise in structural stability and his uncanny ability to take an incredibly complex topic and make it understandable to everyone from undergraduates to experienced structural engineers. Get an inside look at his life and career in the May 2016 Steel Profiles podcast episode at www.aisc.org/podcasts, in which he discusses the most important concept for engineers to understand about stability.

The award, presented annually by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), recognizes an individual for their outstanding lectures and papers that have advanced the state-of-art of steel in construction. Ziemian will present his lecture, “Structural Stability–Letting the Fundamentals Guide Your Judgement,” at the upcoming NASCC: The Steel Conference on April 5 in St. Louis (registration for the conference opens January 2; visit www.aisc.org/nascc for more information). You can view his past conference sessions, including “Stability of Hollow Sections” and “Modules for Learning Structural Stability” in our Education Archives at www.aisc.org/educationarchives.

“Ron was primarily nominated for his stability paper, ‘Formulation and Validation of Minimum Brace Stiffness for Systems of Compression Members,’ which was published in the Journal of Constructional Steel Research, as well as his stability work, which was particularly notable in the discussions of the jury,” said Larry Kruth, PE, AISC’s vice president of engineering and research. “Ron’s work has done much to advance the understanding of stability in the structural engineering profession, and it is our pleasure to present him with this year’s award.”

In addition to authoring papers on the design and analysis of steel and aluminum structures, Ziemian is co‐author of the textbook Matrix Structural Analysis (Wiley, 2000), the developer of the educational analysis software MASTAN2 and the editor for the 6th edition of the Guide to Stability Design Criteria for Metal Structures (Wiley, 2010). He is also the co-editor in chief of Elsevier’s Journal of Constructional Steel Research. He is a member of AISC’s Committee on Specifications, chairs AISC’s TC3 – Loads, Analysis and Stability, and previously chaired AISC’s Task Group on Inelastic Analysis and Design. He also serves on the AISI and Aluminum Association Specification Committees, is active with the Steel Joist Institute and the former chair of the Structural Stability Research Council. Ziemian was awarded an AISC Special Achievement Award in 2006, the ASCE Shortridge Hardesty Award in 2013 and the ASCE Norman Medal in 1994 for his contributions to the profession related to the stability analysis and design of metal structures. He received his BSCE, MENG and PhD degrees from Cornell University.

For more about the T.R. Higgins Award and its past winners, please visit www.aisc.org/higgins.