Amit Kanvinde

Amit Kanvinde is responsible for the overall area of academic personnel and planning. In this role, he oversees academic merits and promotions for the College of Engineering. He is also responsible for new appointments and reappointments of academic personnel. Finally, he oversees planning and search processes for faculty hiring.

Kanvinde joined UC Davis in 2004 after earning his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He led the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as chair from 2015-2020 during a period of significant faculty hiring that resulted in greater diversity. 

Kanvinde’s research focuses on the seismic response of steel buildings, and recent projects have developed methods to assess the fracture risk of existing buildings along with technologies for highly deformable structural connections for new buildings. He is the author or co-author of more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and is well-recognized for his research. Kanvinde has been awarded the American Society of Civil Engineers' Norman Medal (2008), Walter Huber Research Prize (2016) and State of the Art of Civil Engineering Award (2018), as well as the American Institute of Steel Construction's Special Achievement (2017) and T.R. Higgins Lectureship (2022) awards. In 2017, Kanvinde was selected by the National Academy of Engineering as one of "the nation’s brightest young engineers" to participate in their Frontiers of Engineering program.