Shamsher Bahadur Singh Editor

Dr. Shamsher Bahadur Singh is P.E. (Civil) from state of Michigan, USA and Post-doctorate (LTU), USA, Fellow of American Society of Civil Engineers (FASCE), Chartered Engineer (INDIA), Fellow of Institution of Engineers (FIE), PhD (IIT Kanpur), and currently Senior Professor of Civil Engineering Department at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani. His current areas of research are development of design guidelines for Functionally Graded Composite materials and Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) reinforced prestressed concrete structures in particular and composite materials & structures in general including nonlinear finite element modeling. Prof. Singh is also the member of ICI, ACI, FASCE, and ISTE in addition to being Associate Member of ACI-440 committee (for FRP) and ACI 423 committee (for Prestressed concrete). He has 33 years of teaching and research experience. He has been Indian Team Leader for prestigious UKIERI (UK-India Education Research Initiatives) collaborative research project involving 10 institutions (eight from India and two from UK) on sustainable concrete Infrastructure.  He is also member of various committees and serving as editorial board member of 5 Journals. He is representing BITS Pilani on committee of Ireland-India Concrete Research Initiatives (IICRI). He has 235 publications to his credit which include more than 190 research papers (97 Journals plus 94 conference papers), 6 books [two text books, one online book, and three edited books], 13 research reports and 20 book chapters, 02 theses, and 3  Patents in addition to being Who is Who of various organizations. Prof. Singh has also filed 03 Indian patents. Furthermore, Prof. Singh has had an opportunity to teach in some of the best universities in India and USA such as at MNNIT Allahabad, NIT Warangal, BITS Pilani, and Lawrence Technological University (LTU), Southfield, Michigan, USA.

Prof. Singh has delivered many Keynote lectures at national and International conferences and seminar along with helping the other technical educations as advisory member for their professional development. He has also organized (Role: as Chairman) various International Conferences such as the First and Second International Conferences on Advances in Concrete, Structural, and Geotechnical Engineering (ACSGE-09, ACSGE-2018) and UKIERI Seminars, and Network Concrete Seminars in addition to being organizing committee member of various national and international conferences.  Also, he acted as Convenor of 1^st International Conference on Rehabilitation and Retrofitting of Structures, held at Mumbai in association with Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), Mumbai, ASTR, VJTI, Mumbai, June 19-20, 2019.   He also organized International Webinar on Smart Cities: Beyond the Pandemics at BITS Pilani and was invited by Construction Industry and Development Council (an Appex Body of Niti Ayog, Government of India) to deliver expert online lecture at ICW 2020 at New Delhi as well as Video Lectures.  In addition, he also organized 5-day AICTE Training and Learning Faculty Development Program, Partnership 2020: US-India Higher Education Cooperation (a collaborative Initiative between U.S. Department of State and University of Nebraska, Omaha),   two DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organization, New Delhi) & BITS Pilani Interaction workshops for possible  research collaboration, and most recently, he successfully organized the US2020 Partnership workshop.

He has best paper award at the International Conference on Advances in Civil and Environmental Engineering held at Penang, Malaysia.  In his 33 years of teaching and research experience, he has spent 8 and half years as active faculty member at MNIT Allahabad, three and half years at IIT Kanpur as QIP PhD Research Scholar, 5 years as Postdoctoral Research Engineer and Adjunct Faculty member at Lawrence Technological University (LTU), Southfield, Michigan (USA), one year as Visiting faculty member at NIT Warangal, and 16 years at BITS Pilani, working currently as Senior Professor in Department of Civil Engineering.

 Prof. Singh has executed various research projects sponsored by DRDO, DST, CSIR, UGC, UKIERI, KK Birla Academy and Aditya Birla Group.Recently, as one of the PI_s he has been awarded US-2020 partnership award with Prof. Venkatesh Kodur (MSU)  and Prof. Vasant Matsagar of IIT Delhi. Also, his project under US-India Education Foundation (USIEF) Fulbright Specialist Program has been selected to host US Specialist at BITS Pilani for academic year starting August 01, 2022.  Based on the nomination at national level, Prof. Singh has been awarded with the “Best Academician of the Year -2020,” by the honourable Governor of Rajasthan, Shri Kalraj Mishra at the “Eminent Engineers Award event’ organized by Institution of Engineers (India) at Rajasthan State Center, Jaipur on Engineers Day (15^th September, 2020).  Most recently, on Invitation from Construction Industry Development Council (CIDC) an Apex body of NITI Ayog, Prof. Singh has joined the eminent group of Faculty members of CIDC Academy of Construction Engineering (CACE). Furthermore, Prof. Singh has been awarded Bharat Shiksha Gaurav Puraskar and Certificate of Excellence by KTK Outstanding Achievers and Education Foundation, New Delhi. Also, The Indian Concrete Journal Awarded one of the three Best Paper awards for the year 2020 in April 2021. Along with  Other achievements and professional activities of Prof. Singh can be seen in  his CV (detailed bio-data) posted on his personal website linked to BITS Pilani.

Dr. Sudhirkumar V Barai is a Director and Senior Professor of Civil Engineering at BITS, Pilani—Pilani campus, Rajasthan. He is also a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India availing lien for the current position.

In 1995, he obtained Ph.D. (Eng.) from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He received the degrees of B.E. (Civil) and M.E. (Civil) with specialization in Structural Engineering in 1987 and 1989, respectively, from the Faculty of Engineering, MS University of Baroda, Baroda, India.

He was Erskine Visiting Fellow at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, during May-June 2008. He was also Visiting Scientist at National University of Singapore during May-July 2003. He was a recipient of the BOYSCAST fellowship and visited the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, during May-November, 2000. He was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Department of Solid Mechanics, Materials, and Structures, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel during February 1997-July 1998.

His research interests include Sustainable Construction Materials, Structural Health Monitoring, and Computational Intelligence Tools and Applications in Engineering. He has published more than 260+ papers in leading international journals and conferences in his research fields. He has co‐authored three books (1) Concrete Fracture Models and Applications, (2) Shear Strengthening of T‐beam with GFRP: A Systematic Approach, and (3) Systematic Approach of Characterisation and Behaviour of Recycled Aggregate Concrete, which have been published by Springer. Also, he has co-edited a book entitled—Advances in Sustainable Construction Materials and Geotechnical Engineering published by Springer.

He is a Senior Member of RILEM and Member of RILEM-Technical Committee RAC, France, 2015; Technical Committee TDK, France, 2011.