Bruce Ellingwood was a professor and College of Engineering Eminent Scholar before his retirement. He served as Co-Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology-funded Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning, funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and headquartered at CSU. He received his undergraduate and graduate education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He held professional research and administrative positions at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), Johns Hopkins University and Georgia Institute of Technology prior to joining Colorado State University. His main research and professional interests involve the application of probability and statistics to structural engineering, particularly in structural reliability theory and probabilistic risk assessment.

Ellingwood is internationally recognized as an authority on structural load modeling, reliability and risk analysis of engineered facilities, and as a leader in the technical development and implementation of probability based codified design standards for building structures. He is Editor of Structural Safety, and serves on six other editorial boards. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Distinguished Member of ASCE, a Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute, and a Registered Professional Engineer in the District of Columbia.