Aleš Žnidaric obtained B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in structural engineering from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Since 1988 he has been working as a researcher and project leader at the Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG Ljubljana). His main professional interests are:

• safety of bridges,

• bridge loading,

• structural vibration problems,

• traffic loading based on weigh-in-motion data and

• research and development of bridge weigh-in-motion systems.

Mr. Žnidaric is a member of the International association for bridge management and safety (IABMAS), the International Society for Weigh-in-Motion and the SAMCO association (Structural Assessment, Monitoring and Control). He is also a member of the national committee for loading and of the Expert group of the Slovene Technology platform for Vehicles, Roads and Traffic – ERTRAC Slovenia, the national group of ERTRAC (European Road Transport Research Advisory Council).

He has been actively involved into development and implementation of condition and structural safety assessment system for bridges in Slovenia, research on influence of traffic vibration on buildings, various traffic studies. He has coordinated development of SiWIM, the new generation of bridge weigh-in-motion system that is being used in many countries around the world. His latest studies involve optimised assessment and dynamic behaviour of bridges as well as further improvements of the SiWIM system.

He has been the coordinator of the Slovene-US project on “Redundancy of post-tensioned beam bridges”, member of the COST 323 action on “Weigh-in-Motion of Road Vehicles” and partner in the EU 4th framework research project “WAVE – Weighing-in-motion of Axles and Vehicles for Europe”. Lately he was the vice-chairman of the COST 345 action on “Procedures for Assessing Highway Structures” and a leader of one of its working groups. From 2003 to 2006 he has been acting as one of the 2 scientific coordinators in the EU 5th framework research project “SAMARIS – Sustainable and Advanced Materials for Road Infrastructure”. Currently he is the coordinator of the EU 6th framework coordination action CERTAIN “Central European Research in Transport Infrastructure” and is actively involved into the work of another three EU 6th framework STREP projects: NR2C “New Road Construction Concepts”, SPENS “Sustainable Pavements for New Member States” and ARCHES “Assessment and Rehabilitation of Central European Highway Structures”. He is also a member of the PIARC committee C 4.4 “Bridges and Other Related Structures”.

Mr. Žnidaric has written over 100 technical papers and was invited to lecture in Brazil, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Thailand. He also serves as the ZAG’s research coordinator in FEHRL, the Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories, and as the Chairman of the Program Committee of the Transport Research Arena conference TRA 2008 (www.traconference.com).