Notable Alumni

Bio

Dr. David Mazurek '82, '84 M.S. holds a B.S. degree in ocean engineering an M.S. degree in civil engineering from the Florida Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. degree in civil engineering from the University of Connecticut. He was employed by General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division, where he provided submarine construction support, conducted engineering design and analysis associated with pressure hulls and other structures, and completed structural noise and vibration transmission reduction studies. He also taught for one year at Lafayette College just before joining the Coast Guard Academy's civil engineering faculty, where he has served for the past 24 years.

Dr. Mazurek's main area of research is in bridge engineering, having authored numerous papers on the subject. He has most recently collaborated with the Federal Railroad Administration to study improved methods for stress measurements of steel bridges. He has also studied vibration-based methods for detecting damage in bridges, ships, and towers. He has conducted structural forensics, investigating the collapses of several Coast Guard navigation and communication towers, as well as superstructure failures of submarines. He has studied risk assessment and building security issues, developing the rather unique undergraduate course entitled Structural Design for Extreme Events, which has blast-resistant design as the main emphasis. In 2005 he joined the Beer & Johnston engineering mechanics textbook team and has since co-authored four editions of Engineering Mechanics: Statics, the first edition of Statics and Mechanics of Materials, and three editions of Mechanics of Materials.

Dr. Mazurek has served on several national technical committees, most notably the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association's Committee for Steel Structures, for which he has been an active member since 1991 and is currently Chair of its Subcommittee for Coatings & Special Construction. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a member of the Chi Epsilon Civil Engineering Honor Society, and a founding member of Florida Tech's chapter of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. He was elected into the Connecticut Academy of Science & Engineering in 2013 and was the 2014 recipient of both the Coast Guard Academy's Distinguished Faculty Award and its Center for Advanced Studies Excellence in Scholarship Award. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in Connecticut and Pennsylvania.