PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
Dr. Connor has over fifteen years of experience in the research and testing of bridges and related structures. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. Prior to joining the faculty at Purdue, he was a Senior Research Engineer and the manager of the Infrastructure Monitoring Program at the ATLSS Engineering Research Center at Lehigh University. Over his career, he has conducted field evaluations of bridges throughout the United States and in bridge evaluations internationally. He has researched fabrication flaws, fatigue cracking, and failures and developed repair strategies for structures for a variety of agencies including state DOT, rapid transit authorities, construction companies, and structural consultants. He has developed and is currently developing fatigue design specifications for highway bridge structures and bridge expansion joints for NCHRP and state agencies. In addition, he has developed a two-day short course focused on fatigue and fracture design for steel bridge structures geared to toward practicing engineers and is the Chairman of the First International Conference on Fatigue and Fracture in the Infrastructure, to be held in August of 2006.
Prior to entering the academic profession, he worked as a design engineer responsible for the conceptual, preliminary, and final design of numerous bridge design and rehabilitation projects throughout the eastern United States.