2025ASCE Ernest E. Howard Award — for "his contributions to advancing seismic design and improving the safety and resilience of steel and steel-concrete composite structures through research codification activities, and authoring articles, books and presentations benefitting the engineering community around the world."
2022ASCE Distinguished Member — highest ASCE honor
2020AISC Special Achievement Award — for groundbreaking work in the development and promotion of SpeedCore
2019AISC Lifetime Achievement Award
2019Fellow, Structural Engineering Institute
2018SUNY Distinguished Professor
2017Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering
2017SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities
2017ASCE Moisseff Award — recognizing an important paper in an ASCE journal dealing with the broad field of structural design. The award committee particularly noted the "team's contributions to the development of a new structural system that is safe, effective, and provides advantages over current systems."
2017Garcia Memorial Prize for Best Fiction Book of the Year — for "My Author is Dead"
2017Reader Views — Reviewers Choice Literary Award, 1st Place, General Fiction/Novel — for "My Author is Dead"
2016ASCE Raymond C. Reese Research Prize — for best paper in an ASCE journal describing a notable achievement in structural engineering research, with special consideration for how the research can be used
2016ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Short Visit Fellowship
2016 & 2015University of Canterbury Quake Center, Visiting Professor Fellowship
2015SEAS Senior Researcher of the Year Award — School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University at Buffalo (1st recipient of this award established by SEAS in 2015)
2013Best Second Novel, 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards
2012AISC T.R. Higgins Award — for outstanding contribution to the engineering literature on fabricated structural steel. Higgins Lecture available here (introduction starts 9:15 min from beginning; presentation starts 12:45 min)
2011ASCE George Winter Award — Citation: "For contributions to structural engineering and seismic hazard mitigation and contributions to creative fictional literature which succeed in telling the hazard mitigation story to a broader audience"
2010Visiting Erskine Fellowship, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
2010Grand Prize, 2nd Place, Fiction, 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards
20101st Place, Regional Fiction, 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards
2007Fellow, American Society of Civil Engineers
2007Beyer Distinguished Lecture Award, University of Houston
2007University at Buffalo Sustained Achievement Award
2006Excellence in Structural Engineering Award in the category "Study/Research/Guidelines" — Structural Engineering Association of Northern California, for the "Steel Plate Shear Walls AISC Design Guide" by Sabelli, R., and Bruneau, M.
2005J. James Croes Medal of the ASCE — awarded to authors of the paper, among all journals published by ASCE, that is judged worthy of special commendation for its merit as a contribution to engineering science
2002–2008Top 100 Grantees/Principal Investigators Award/Recognition, University at Buffalo
1996Honorable Mention (2nd place) for Gzowski Medal — best paper in the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 1996
1996Pratley Award — best paper in bridge engineering in the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 1996
1997Nominated by University of Ottawa for NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, 1997
1996First recipient of University of Ottawa Young Researcher Award — awarded to best young researcher at the University of Ottawa
1996George S. Glinski Award for Excellence in Research — best researcher of the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Engineering
1994Gzowski Medal — best paper in the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 1994
1995Japanese Society for Promotion of Sciences / NSERC Bilateral Exchange Program — funding a 6-month research visit to Japan, 1995 (an equivalent award by the Japan Sciences Technology Fund had to be declined since both awards could not be held concurrently)
1994CSCE/JSCE Japan Travel Grant — to visit engineering firms and research institutes
1988Technology Inflow Program Award, Industrial Research Assistance Program, National Research Council of Canada
1987–90Industrial Research Fellowship — Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
1983–871967 Science and Engineering Scholarship — Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
1986Giar Award — Sigma-Xi Scientific Society
1985 & 1987W.H. & I.S. Popert Research Fellowship — U.C. Berkeley
1983Prix d'Excellence de l'Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec — Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec