August 12, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CHICAGO - Right now, up-and-coming researchers across the country are discovering tomorrow’s innovations.

They keep steel on the cutting edge, and AISC wants to make a remarkable researcher the 2025 Milek Fellow.

Since 2004, AISC has given a promising non-tenured university faculty member the AISC Milek Fellowship (formerly the AISC Faculty Fellowship), a four-year award where the per-year funding level has grown from $30,000 when the program started some 20 years ago to $75,000 starting with the 2024 award.

Applications for the 2025 Milek Fellowship are due September 9, 2024.

“The Milek Fellowship is our flagship research program, and recent Milek Fellows have worked on groundbreaking, inspiring concepts like additive manufacturing, AI for steel design, and adhesives for steel-to-steel connections,” said AISC Director of Research Devin Huber, PE, PhD. “I’m looking forward to learning more about what’s going on in research labs around the country--the things that could drive structural steel design and construction in the future.

The Milek Fellowship is near and dear to my heart as I was the first PhD student to work on a Faculty Fellowship when it was awarded to my advisor in 2004. It was what really got me interested in steel and paved the way for my career in the industry.”

2024 Milek Fellow Mohannad Zeyad (M.Z.) Naser, PE, PhD, of Clemson University, is currently working to develop an AI design assistant, dubbed “SteelGPT,” that will flag potential improper designs or assumptions and offer engineers and fabricators suggestions to improve their designs. It’s intended as a resource to help design engineers develop an optimized and safe design while speeding up the overall process.

About the Milek Fellowship

AISC introduced its Faculty Fellowship Award in 2004 and in 2011 renamed it the Milek Fellowship after William A. Milek Jr., former AISC Vice President of Engineering and Research, to recognize his invaluable contributions to AISC and the structural steel industry as a whole.

The faculty member whose application is selected will be identified as the AISC Milek Fellow in selected publications and other venues, like NASCC: The Steel Conference; they will also receive free Steel Conference registration during their four years as a Milek Fellow.

The Fellowship also supports the next generation of researchers, as at least half of the funding is intended to go toward a particularly promising doctoral candidate.