Meet the Chair
Henri P. Gavin
W.H. Gardner, Jr. Chair of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Henri Gavin is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke.
As an engineering researcher, he has interests in the areas of structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, nonlinear dynamics, seismic hazard mitigation for building contents, system identification, the statistical characterization of environmental loads including wind and earthquake, and optimal control with application to systems with controllable damping.
He became the W.H. Gardner, Jr. Department Chair of Civil & Environmental Engineering in July 2021.
Gavin is also a professor in Duke's Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, a faculty network member of the Duke University Energy Initiative, and a Bass Fellow. He is director of the Duke Structural Dynamics and Seismic Response Control Laboratory.
His teaching and research have earned him accolades—including the President's Award from the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering in 2010, the ASEE Southeast Mid-Career Teaching Award from the American Society for Engineering Education in 2007, and the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2005.