2008 Civil Engineering Alumnus of the Year: Prof. Robert Melchers
Professor Robert Melchers has an internationally distinguished career that spans from structural engineering through structural reliability and risk analysis to corrosion research. He was leader of the Newcastle Earthquake Study, has advised the Liquefied Petroleum Gas Industry on risk assessment, was part of the risk assessment team for the HIFAR reactor and currently sits on the Nuclear Safety Committee of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Authority. He has consulted widely to industry. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Engineers Australia and the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Professor Melchers is a 1968 Monash University Honours 1 graduate in Civil Engineering. In 1972 he obtained his PhD in structural engineering from Cambridge University. After some years in consulting, he returned to Monash as an academic staff member. He was appointed Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Newcastle in 1986. In 2004 he was awarded a 5-year Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship allowing him to devote himself full-time to cutting-edge research on infrastructure deterioration, focusing on corrosion of steel in marine environments. This work has won him numerous awards in the corrosion science area. In 2009 he was awarded a second 5-year ARC Fellowship. He also has been awarded Visiting Research Fellowships in the UK and is currently part of two Marie Curie European Research Projects.
Professor Melchers has authored the internationally most widely-used text on structural reliability and co-authored, edited or contributed to another 22 books, has over 200 papers in scientific and engineering journals, numerous conference contributions and given more than 20 keynote lectures at major international conferences. He has been awarded more than $13 million in competitive research grants, some shared with other investigators.