Greg Kopp

Professor

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Toronto (1995)
M.Eng. McMaster University (1991)
B.Sc.M.E. University of Manitoba (1989)

My Research Group


Professor G.A. Kopp received a B.Sc.M.E. from the University of Manitoba in 1989, a M.Eng. from McMaster University in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto in 1995. Between 1995 and 1997 he held a NSERC Post-doctoral Fellowship in the Chemical Engineering Department at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. He returned to Canada in the summer of 1997 to an appointment of Assistant Professor at the University of Western Ontario and as a Senior Research Engineer at the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory. He was promoted to Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering in July 2007 (and has a cross-appointment in the Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering). In January 2015 he was appointed Associate Dean (Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies) in the Faculty of Engineering.

Dr. Kopp’s expertise and research projects relate to mitigating damage to structures during extreme wind storms such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Details include model-scale wind tunnel and full-scale component test methods, field surveys of damage caused by tornadoes, building aerodynamics, wind effects on building component and cladding systems, tornado and thunderstorm winds, wind loads on solar arrays, the role of turbulence on wind loads, wind-borne debris and turbulent shear flows.

Awards & Distinctions

  • Honourable Mention: Governor General's Gold Medal (Univ. of Toronto), 1995
  • NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship, July 1995 - July 1997
  • Frontiers in Education New Faculty Fellow, 1999
  • Faculty Scholar, University of Western Ontario, 2007-2009
  • University Student’s Council Teaching Honour Roll, 2008
  • Lady Davis Fellowship, Technion, Israel, 2011
  • Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, Certificate of Excellence in Reviewing, 2013 & 2014
  • American Association for Wind Engineering, Best Paper Award (for papers published in 2013), for Gavanski, E., Kordi, B., Kopp, G.A. & Vickery, P.J., 2013, Wind loads on roof sheathing of houses, J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodyn., vol. 114, pp. 106-121.
  • Peter Rosati Teaching Award, 2015, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Western Ontario.
  • The Peter Irwin Lecture, 2017, American Association for Wind Engineering (the lecture was given as a Plenary Lecture at the 13th Americas Conference on Wind Engineering, Gainesville, USA).

Professional Activities

Dr. Kopp is currently Chair of the ASCE 49 Standards Committee Wind Tunnel Testing for Buildings and other Structures, a member of the Executive Board of the International Association of Wind Engineers, a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics and an Associate Editor for Frontiers in the Built Environment (Wind Engineering and Science). He has been a Director of the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory since 2000. He is on Technical Advisory Committees for several wind engineering research programs at universities in the USA and Europe. He is a voting member of the ASCE 7 Wind Loads Subcommittee, Chair of Chapter 31 Task Committee of ASCE 7-22, and a voting member of the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes, Task Group for Climatic Loads. He held a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Wind Engineering from 2001 – 2010 and was a Guest Professor of the Global Center of Excellence Program in wind engineering at Tokyo Polytechnic University in Japan from 2008 – 2013.