Expertise: Construction materials focused on pavement material characterization, pavement design, rehabilitation and preservation

Hasan Ozer’s idea of an enjoyable endeavor is implementing computational mechanics tools for structural performance modeling of civil infrastructure.

Another gratifying pursuit: developing sustainability assessment models to understand the interaction of the environment and transportation infrastructure.

Ozer expects to demonstrate to his students not only the value of such work but the exhilaration of doing it.

“One thing I tell my students at the beginning of each class is to have fun and enjoy the semester with me,” Ozer says.

The fun includes games and activities designed to reveal fascinating challenges facing today’s transportation engineers.   

For instance, infrastructure must be adapted to ensure traffic safety and efficiency as more autonomous and connected vehicles show up on our roads. There’s also a pressing demand to make that infrastructure more sustainable while keeping costs from escalating.

Ozer wants students to realize how meeting such needs “is vital for nations’ economies and people’s lives.” And he hopes they will come to share his passion for using advanced computational methods, modeling and mathematics to provide solutions to complex engineering problems.

He apparently succeeded at motivating students he has taught since 2012 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Center for Transportation. Those students repeatedly ranked him among the most excellent UIUC teachers.

Ozer’s Arizona State University students will benefit from his experiences as chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers Highway Pavement Committee and as a member of the Transportation and Development Institute since 2014, as well as a national standing committee member with in the Transportation Research Board since 2018. 

He also co-chaired the ASCE and TDI’s International Airfield and Pavement Conference in 2017 and again this summer.

Ozer says he was drawn to ASU because it is “one of the few schools that has made a commitment to the integration of sustainability into the engineering discipline,” and by the added attraction of having “a great transportation and pavement engineering program.”