Ross Corotis

Ross Corotis is the Denver Business Challenge Professor of Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. He studies probabilistic concepts and decision perceptions, particularly societal trade-offs for hazards in the built environment, emphasizing the coordinated roles of engineering and social science with respect to framing and communicating long-term risks and resiliency.

His primary research applications have been in live loads, load combinations and seismic safety, but he has also served on several flood study committees for the National Academies. With all three degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was on the faculty at Northwestern University, established the department of civil engineering at The Johns Hopkins University, and was dean of engineering at CU Boulder.

He has won numerous awards, chaired committees on structural safety for American Society of Civil Engineering (ACSE) and ACI, chaired the executive committee of the International Association for Structural Safety and Reliability, and was editor of the journals Structural Safety and ASCE Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

For The National Academies he served on the building research board, the steering committee of the Disasters Roundtable, was founding chair of the Committee on NIST Technical Programs, and past chair of the Civil Engineering Section of the National Academy of Engineering. He is currently on the National Academies’ Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment, and chairs the Laboratory Assessment Board.

He is a registered professional engineer, registered structural engineer, distinguished member of ASCE, and author of 250 publications. In 2007-2008 he served as science advisor at the Department of State in Washington, D.C.