Akinci Elected to NAC
Professor Burcu Akinci, the Paul Christiano Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Engineering Research Accelerator, has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Construction (NAC).
Akinci has distinguished herself as an expert by way of her significant contributions in the utilization of BIM and sensing technologies to increase operational efficiency and support proactive decision-making in construction and facility/infrastructure management. Among her numerous awards, she recently received the 2020 Computing in Civil Engineering award from ASCE and was made a 2020 honorary member of the Women in Transportation Systems, Pittsburgh chapter.
She also holds one patent, two provisional patents, over 70 referred journal publications and 100 conference publications. She has given over 100 invited presentations and co-edited books on CAD/GIS Integration and on Embedded Commissioning.
Akinci co-founded the start-up, Lean-FM which was awarded a 2017 Innovation Award from the Pittsburgh Business Times. Lean-FM develops and demonstrates the feasibility of using big data analytics and machine learning to transform facilities operations and maintenance decisions.
Akinci’s research interests include the development of approaches to model and reason about information-rich histories of facilities, to streamline construction and facility management processes. She specifically focuses on investigating utilization and integration of building information models with data capture and tracking technologies, such as 3D imaging, embedded sensors and radio-frequency identification systems to capture semantically-rich as-built histories of construction projects and facility operations.
Election to the NAC is conferred to individuals who have made significant contributions to the effectiveness of the engineering and construction industry over a period of multiple years. Members are recognized as industry leaders by their peers and selection to the NAC is typically not the first highly esteemed national honor for inductees.
The NAC brings together exceptional leaders from throughout the spectrum of industry stakeholders, from designers, construction managers, contractors, attorneys, labor leaders and even journalists. The organization works to share diverse expertise and proven leadership as a service to the nation.
Akinci will be formally inducted at the NAC's 2021 Member Annual Meeting in October.