Dr. Yang Lu (P.E.) is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Boise State University. Prior to joining Boise State, he was an ARRA Fellow Research Associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where he developed a micromechanics-based mechanistic approach to predicting the infrastructure materials performance. He obtained his M.S. in Civil Engineering from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. in Transportation Infrastructure Engineering from Virginia Tech.
Dr. Lu’s research integrates imaging-based characterization and multiscale/multiphysics modeling techniques to unravel the link between the composition, microstructure, and performance of heterogeneous transportation infrastructure materials under various environmental and mechanical loads. His representative work includes atomistic characterization and modeling of asphalt concrete interfacial debonding and failure mechanisms, the development of chemo-mechanical degradation models for predicting deterioration behavior, coupled deformation-diffusion in non-isothermal saturated and unsaturated porous media, formulations of concurrent AtC model for bridging scale heat-transfer/deformation multiphysics problems, modeling and homogenization of mechanical and transport properties of porous media from X-ray CT images, virtual microstructure testing platform-guided heterogeneous materials design, modeling compound degradation and failure of materials under the changing climate, infrastructure anomaly inspection using infrared thermography and ultrasound array tomography, and interdisciplinary innovation in data-driven and machine learning approach for resilient transportation infrastructure design. He is the recipient of the prestigious NIST outstanding associate award. He has published 40+ peer reviewed journal papers and 20+ peer reviewed conference proceedings.
Dr. Lu is affiliated with a number of professional organizations, including ASCE, ACI, ICE, and TRB, where he serves on 9 technical committees and as an active reviewer for 20+ journals. He also serves as an editorial board member for three journals, including Structural Durability & Health Monitoring, Trends in Civil Engineering and Material Science, and Journal of Materials Science Research.