Dr. Modak received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from BUET in 1989 with distinctions: First Class, First, Honors, Record Marks, and a gold medal. His superior academic accomplishment earned him the Malik Akram Hossain Gold Medal, Fazlur Rahman Khan Scholarship, and University Grants Commission Scholarship in Bangladesh. Thereafter he received two masters’ degrees in Structural Engineering. The first one was from BUET in 1992 with Record GPA and the second one was from Washington State University at Pullman in 1995. He received his PhD in Structural Engineering from Purdue University in 1997.

Dr. Modak served Bangladesh as a Lecturer of BUET for little over two years (1989–1992). After completing his Ph.D., he joined CSI team as a Research & Development Engineer in 1997. Since then, he is one of the lead developers of computer software for structural and earthquake engineering at CSI. His current responsibilities and past accomplishments in implementing and maintaining all the building design codes from across the nations in CSI software products make him one of the most well versed person in building design codes.

Dr. Modak has contributed to the state-of-the-art of computational structural mechanics — mainly in algorithm development for computational structural dynamics. He has written about thirty papers in engineering. He has published his works in many peer-reviewed reputed engineering journals such as International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Journal of Structural Engineering (ASCE), Computers and Structures, and so on. He also has published his work in many peer-reviewed conferences papers, reports, and a book chapter. Dr. Modak has peer-reviewed papers for many engineering journals including International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Journal of Engineering Mechanics, Journal of Structural Engineering, Journal of Infrastructure Engineering, International Journal of Earthquake Engineering, and International Journal of Solids and Structures.

Dr. Modak is/has been a member of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Structural Engineering Association of California (SEAOC), Earthquake Engineers Research Institute (EERI); US Association of Computational Mechanics (USACM), International Association of Computational Mechanics (IACM), Sigma Xi–The Scientific Research Society, and American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He has served in two technical subcommittees of ASCE Structural Engineering Institute — Emerging Computing Technology and Methods of Analysis.

Dr. Modak wants to use his science, technology, engineering, and mathematics knowledge for the development of Bangladesh. Currently he is interested in the following multi-disciplinary research areas: (a) Development of low-cost high-quality housing for sustainable development with green technology. He is looking at bamboo treated with environment friendly preservatives as a structural material. Challenges are structural configurations, decay protection, fire-resistance, and connection design. (b) Development of low-cost high-performance groundwater non-contaminating septic system using indigenous material for rural sanitation. (c) Improving evaluation systems in public examinations in Bangladesh to encourage fairness and competition. He is interested in the development of success-matrix for different components of the education system.

Structural Engg Software Developer (R&D)
Computers and Structures, Inc. (CSI)
1995 University Ave., Suite 540;
Berkeley, California 94704, USA
Web: www.csiberkeley.com
Web: www.caeplDhaka.com
Tel: (510) 914-7286
Email: Sukomal_Modak@yahoo.com