SSRC Honors 2026 Award Winners
- Martin Downs
- May 5
- 2 min read
SSRC takes great pride in the contributions that our members make to the field of Structural Stability. Each year we grant a number of awards to the outstanding individuals who have made a demonstrable impact on our organization and others. Whether they are veterans of the industry or just starting their career, we applaud their talent and commitment to research.
Beedle Award 2026 Winner - Ben Schafer
Benjamin Schafer, Ph.D., P.E., F. SEI is the Hackerman Professor of Civil and Systems Engineering and the Director of the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is an active volunteer and leader on multiple national committees related to the engineering and design of steel building structures for AISC, ASCE, SFIA, and others. He is a past Chair of the Structural Stability Research Council, past President of the Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute, and former Editor of the journal Thin-walled Structures. He has won multiple awards for his research, teaching, and speaking and currently resides in Washington DC.
MAJR Award 2025 Winner - André Martins
Dr. André Martins is currently an Assistant Researcher at the Department of Civil Engineering (DECivil) of Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon (IST-UL). He holds a PhD degree in Civil Engineering (Structural Stability) from the IST-UL, with a thesis focused on cold-formed steel (CFS) members affected by interaction phenomena involving distortional buckling. Since then, he has remained affiliated with DECivil at IST-UL. His main research interests include analysis, behavior, and design of thin-walled structures, particularly the structural stability of CFS Structures, and, more recently, Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) composites. His research activities involve instability phenomena (local, distortional, global, and coupled buckling), development of design proposals, experimental testing, structural reliability and reliability-based code calibration. He has co-authored two book chapters, 45 international journal papers, and 52 papers in international and national conference proceedings.
Yoon Duk Kim Young Researcher Award 2026 Winner - Pedram Mortazavi
Pedram Mortazavi, Ph.D., P.Eng., is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Mortazavi’s research is aimed at leveraging his expertise in large-scale testing and advanced simulation methods towards the development of structural components and systems with enhanced performance, stability, and resilience. Dr. Mortazavi is currently the Vice-Chair of Task Group 06: Extreme Loads of the Structural Stability Research Council (SSRC). He is a member of the CSA-S16 technical committee on Steel Structures, a regular participant at the AISC Task Committee 9 meetings on Seismic Design and is a member of several Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC) task groups for seismic design of structures. Dr. Mortazavi is also a member of the editorial board of the Resilient Cities and Structures Journal. He has received many recognitions including the G. J. Jackson Fellowship by CISC, the Donald Jamieson Fellowship by CSCE, and the TA-TATP Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Toronto, among others.
Vinnakota Award 2026 Winner - Morane C. Mefande Wack
Morane Chloé Mefande Wack is currently an PhD candidate at Polytechnique Montreal, Canada. Her research focuses on the stability of steel built-up members used as compression members in large-span truss bridges.
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