Resilient Transportation Infrastructure Systems (R-TIS)

Christopher L. Alexander, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida and the Susan and William Bracken junior faculty fellow. He directs the corrosion research laboratory which aspires to conquer corrosion while increasing the sustainability and resilience of critical infrastructure. His research group develops techniques to detect and accurately quantify corrosion damage, advances and optimizes methods to mitigate it, and works towards understanding the mechanisms that govern its initiation and progression. The knowledge gained through these efforts is used to develop damage prediction tools that can estimate the remaining service life of critical infrastructure, identify the optimal material for future infrastructural components, and aide in the design of novel materials that will be more corrosion resistant in a continually evolving climate. Prior to his current position, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Sandia National Laboratories within the Materials Reliability Center where he studied atmospheric stress corrosion cracking as it relates to the aging and lifetime of nuclear waste interim storage containers. He holds a doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Florida where his dissertation work was on the application of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to corrosion detection in civil infrastructure and the role of surface heterogeneity in the manifestation of frequency dispersion and constant phase elements. View more