Professor
Director, Structures and Materials Research Laboratory (SMRL)
Sonny Astani Dept. of Civil and Env. Engineering
University of Southern California
3620 S. Vermont Avenue, KAP 210
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2531
Phone: (213) 821-1036
Fax: (213) 744-1426
Email: gencturk@usc.edu
SMRL website: smrl.usc.edu
Dr. Bora Gencturk is a Professor in the Sonny Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the Director of Structures and Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Southern California (USC). He obtained his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his B.S. degree from Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey). Dr. Gencturk’s research focuses on the durability and extreme event resilience of reinforced concrete structures with emphasis on application of high-performance materials. He specifically studies the degradation of cementitious materials due to environmental aging (e.g., alkali-silica reactivity and corrosion of reinforcing steel) and investigates the application of higher performance materials (e.g., engineered cementitious composites, and high- and ultra-high-performance concretes) to mitigate these issues. He combines his cementitious material degradation studies with structural-scale tests to investigate the impacts of (both traditional and advanced) material performance on the response of structures under extreme events (e.g., earthquakes and impact). To date, Dr. Gencturk has been awarded $13.3M total ($5.6M as his individual share) in research funding as a PI or Co-PI in 24 projects. He has received both young investigator awards given by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF): Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) and Broadening Participation Research Initiation Grant in Engineering (BRIGE). Dr. Gencturk has authored or co-authored 161 technical publications including 92 refereed journal papers, three book chapters, 11 research reports, and 55 conference papers, and an invited magazine article. He has graduated eight Ph.D. and five M.S. students (with theses). He is currently advising one post-doc and four Ph.D. students. Dr. Gencturk teaches courses on mechanical behavior of materials, structural dynamics and earthquake engineering, reinforced concrete design and behavior, probabilistic methods and structural reliability. He served as the Co-Guest Editor of two special issues, one in American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Journal of Structural Engineering, and the other one in Journal of Earthquake Engineering. He reviewed proposals for NSF, the United States Department of Energy (DOE), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, the Chilean National Science and Technology Commission (CONICYT), the Polish National Science Centre (NCN), and the Czech Science Foundation (GACR), among others. He is a member of ASCE, the American Concrete Institute, and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. Dr. Gencturk is also a registered Professional Civil Engineer in California.
Opportunities for Prospective Students
Teaching and research assistant positions are available. Dr. Gencturk welcomes inquires from students interested in pursuing a graduate study in Civil Engineering at the University of Southern California. Preference will be given to students who are interested in a PhD degree (having an MS degree is not required).
If you are interested please contact Dr. Gencturk from the contact information provided above. Please see Department’s website for more information regarding the application and admission process: https://cee.usc.edu/academics/phd-programs/.