The 2025 Milek Fellowship Application Period is Now Closed

AISC has officially closed the application period for the 2025 Milek Fellowship. Thank you to all of those who applied and be on the lookout in the summer of 2025 for information pertaining to the 2026 Milek Program!

 

GENERAL PROGRAM INFORMATION

About the Milek Fellowship

Each year, AISC selects a promising non-tenured university faculty member as the AISC Milek Fellow (formerly the AISC Faculty Fellow), a four-year, $75,000-per-year award. The award was renamed 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.

Part of the value of this program to AISC, the selected fellow, and the university is the public recognition of the honor. The faculty member whose application is selected will be identified as the AISC Milek Fellow in selected publications and other venues will be presented with a Milek Fellow certificate and will receive free registration at NASCC: The Steel Conference for the four years following their selection as Milek Fellow. The faculty member is to use this fellowship to support students with high potential to be valuable contributors to the U.S. structural steel construction industry and should strive to fund a doctoral candidate with at least half of the fellowship money. The subject of study may be chosen from a wide array of topics in steel design and construction.

 

Past Milek Fellowship Recipients

Year	Investigator	Institution	Project
2024	Mohannad Z. Naser	Clemson University	SteelGPT: Automating Structural Design of Steel Structures
2023	Ryan Sherman	Georgia Institute of Technology	Additive Manufacturing for Structural Steel Applications
2022	Kara Peterman	University of Massachusetts-Amherst	Holistic Design and Behavior of Adhesive Steel-to-Steel Connections
2021	Willam N. Collins	University of Kansas	Innovative Steel Deck System for Highway Bridge Applications
2020	Matt Yarnold	Texas A&M	Behavior of Hot Rolled Asymmetric Steel I‐Beams
2019	Johnn P. Judd	Brigham Young University	Inelastic Design Method for Steel Buildings Subjected to Wind Loads with the Goal to Increase Design Simplicity, Economy, and Performance
2018	Gary S. Prinz	University of Arkansas	Steel Seismic Systems with Architectural Flexibility: Seismic Performance of Non-Orthogonal SMF Beam-to-Column Connections
2017	Patricia Clayton	UT-Austin	Seismic Performance of Moment-Resisting Frames with Fuse-Type Connections
2016	Spencer Quiel	Lehigh University	Performance-Based Design of Passive Fire Protection for Floor Systems in Steel-Framed Buildings
2015	Matthew Fadden	University of Kansas	Thin Composite Two-way Flooring Systems for Structural Steel Systems
2014	Michael Pollino	Case Western Reserve University	Damage Resistant Design Methodology For Multi-Hazard Resilient Buildings
2013	Luis Ibarra	University of Utah	Effect of Buckling Restrained Brace (BRB) Boundary Conditions on the Seismic Resilience of Braced Frames
2012	Matthew Eatherton	Virginia Tech	Development of Buckling Resistant Steel Plate Shear Walls
2011	Shih-Ho Chao	University of Texas at Arlington	Quantification of Seismic Performance Factors for Steel Staggered Truss and Eccentrically Braced Framing Systems
2010	Jason McCormick	University of Michigan	Seismic Applications of Hollow Structural Sections in Moment-Resisting Frames
2009	Larry Fahnestock	University of Illinois	Reserve Capacity in Steel Concentrically-Braced Frames: Implications for Seismic Behavior, Design and Performance
2008	Jeffrey Berman	University of Washington	Improving the Threat Independent Life-Safety of Steel Gravity Framing Systems
2007	Venkatesh Kodur	Michigan State University	Performance-Based Methodology for Demonstrating the Feasibility of Unprotected Steel in Sprinklered Buildings.
2006	Ben Schafer	Johns Hopkins University	Cross Section Stability of Structural Steel
2005	Judy Liu	Purdue University	Slit Steel Shear Walls
2004	Amit Varma	Michigan State University / Purdue University	Development of Innovative Long-Span Slab Systems for Multi-Story Residential Steel Structures