Bilal M. Ayyub is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland (College Park) and the director of the Center for Technology and Systems Management. Dr. Ayyub is also a researcher and consultant in the areas of risk analysis, uncertainty modeling, decision analysis, systems engineering. He is the president of BMA Engineering, Inc. He completed his B.S. degree in civil engineering in 1980 from the University of Kuwait, and completed both the M.S. (1981) and Ph.D. (1983) degrees in civil engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Ayyub has completed several research projects that were funded by the National Science Foundation, Air Force, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Homeland Security, the Maryland State Highway Administration, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and several engineering companies.

Dr. Ayyub is a fellow of ASCE, ASME and SNAME, and has served the engineering community in various capacities through societies that include ASNE, ASCE, ASME, SNAME, IEEE-CS, and NAFIPS. He is the author and co-author of more than 500 publications in journals and conference proceedings, and reports. His publications include several textbooks. Dr. Ayyub is a multiple recipient of the ASNE "Jimmie" Hamilton Award for the best papers in the Naval Engineers Journal in 1985, 1992, 2000 and 2003. Also, he received the ASCE"Outstanding Research Oriented Paper" in the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management for 1987, the ASCE Edmund Friedman Award in 1989, the ASCE Walter Huber Research Prize in 1997, and the K. S. Fu Award of NAFIPS in 1995.