Chapra named ASCE Distinguished Member

Professor Emeritus Steven Chapra has been elected as a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The highest honor awarded by the ASCE, Distinguished Members are celebrated for attaining “eminence in some branch of engineering or in the arts and sciences, including the fields of engineering education and construction.” Chapra will be formally inducted into the Class of 2022 during the ASCE National Conference in Anaheim, CA, in October.

Chapra held the Louis Berger Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering and has been a key member of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering since arriving at Tufts in 1999. He became professor emeritus and research professor in 2020 after more than 20 years of student-centric teaching at Tufts. Chapra joined Tufts following faculty appointments at the University of Colorado Boulder and Texas A&M University. He holds a PhD in Water Resource and Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Chapra’s research interests include advanced computer applications in environmental engineering and water quality modeling. He twice received the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute’s (EWRI) Wesley W. Horner Award, which recognizes outstanding papers about hydrology, urban drainage, or sewerage published in an ASCE journal. He and former PhD student and Tufts alum Kyle Flynn, EG14, also received the EWRI’s 2021 Samuel Arnold Greeley Award, which honors the authors of the paper deemed to have made the most valuable contribution to the environmental engineering field each year. Chapra is a Fellow of the ASCE and an inaugural Fellow of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP).

The ASCE represents more than 150,000 members of the civil engineering profession across 177 countries. The society is a leading provider of technical and professional conferences and continuing education, the world’s largest publisher of civil engineering content, and an authoritative source for codes and standards that protect the public. ASCE names no more than 12 Distinguished Members each year.