The Engineer's Impact - Maged Youssef

Your inside look at faculty’s research and its effect on society

In this new Q&A series, we’ll feature Western Engineering faculty members to gain a succinct overview of their research, understand its impact on society, and discover intriguing little-known facts.

Meet Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Maged Youssef. 

Can you describe your research?maged-youssef.jpg

My research aims at providing deep understanding of the behavior of structures exposed to extreme events, developing simplified, practical, and user-friendly analysis and design methods for such structures, and developing sustainable structures that experience minimum damage during extreme events.

How does your research impact society in everyday life?

My research assures public safety and provides the means to have sustainable structures in Canada that can withstand extreme events while suffering minimum amount of damage.

What’s an interesting, little-known fact related to your research?

Recent disasters have shown that significant structural damage and severe economic losses can be experienced in developed countries, where state-of-the-art codes and standards are being enforced. Examples include Christchurch, New Zealand, which had to deal with extensive amount of structural damage following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Although structures performed as designed, majority of them had to be demolished. Rebuilding the city took about 10 years and costed about US $100 million. Another example is the 2018 wildfire in Butte County, Northern California, which caused significant structural damage.