Gregory L. Fenves (Co-chair) is Dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin, overseeing the education of more than 7,500 undergraduate and graduate students, and leading some 270 faculty and a research enterprise exceeding $150 million a year. He also is actively involved in improving the commercialization process for intellectual property at UT Austin. Prior to his appointment at UT Austin in September 2008, Dean Fenves served as Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2002 to 2007 at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. He served on the faculty of UC Berkeley for more than 20 years and during his tenure there was a key contributor to the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, a multi-disciplinary engineering program funded by the National Science Foundation. Dean Fenves also served on the research committee for the center’s 10-year duration. In addition, he developed and managed a $12 million industry-sponsored program to improve the seismic safety of utility and transportation systems. An internationally recognized structural engineer, Dean Fenves’ research focus is on computational simulation of structures subjected to earthquakes and technology for performance-based engineering. He was one of the early civil engineering researchers to develop wireless sensor networks for assessing the structural health of buildings, bridges, and infrastructure. Dean Fenves earned his bachelor’s degree with distinction from Cornell University and his master’s and doctoral degrees from UC Berkeley. He has received numerous national awards, which include the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Walter L. Huber Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Chris D. Poland (NAE) (Co-chair) has a structural engineering career that spans more than 35 years and includes a wide variety of new design work, seismic analysis and strengthening of existing buildings, structural failure analysis, and historic preservation. As an internationally recognized authority on earthquake engineering, Mr. Poland routinely participates in policy-changing research projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As a passionate advocate and voice for seismic safety, he actively participates in the academic, ethical and social advancement of his field and lectures often. Mr. Poland currently presides as Chair of two congressionally mandated advisory committees, on earthquake hazards reduction for the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program and on the structural safety of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities. His latest interests involving advocacy for resilient cities led to his involvement in the SPUR Resilient City Initiative as the Chair of the Seismic Hazard Mitigation Taskforce. That work led to his Co-chair appointment to the San Francisco Lifelines Council. He chairs the ASCE Standards Committee on Seismic Rehabilitation and led the effort needed to produce the ASCE 31 and ASCE 41 Standards. He is a member of Boards of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. He is the 2006 recipient of the Alfred E. Alquist award from the California Earthquake Safety Foundation, and he was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of his career-long work in support of Performance Based Earthquake Engineering.
Adam J. Crewe is a senior lecturer in Civil Engineering at the Earthquake Engineering Research Centre at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Since joining Bristol University in 1994, he has worked to gain a better understanding of how various types of structure respond to earthquake and other types of dynamic loading, frequently using large-scale laboratory tests to validate his theories. His research areas include civil engineering dynamics, dynamics of bridges, full-scale testing, shaking table modeling, advanced test systems, earthquake resistant design and construction, and public understanding of engineering. He is a member of
many professional bodies, including the Society of Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics, the Institution of Structural Engineers, and the Institution of Civil Engineers. Dr. Crewe received his Ph.D. from Bristol University.
Ronald T. Eguchi is President and CEO of ImageCat, Inc., a risk management company specializing in the development and use of advanced technologies for risk assessment and risk reduction. Mr. Eguchi’s areas of expertise include remote sensing, loss estimation, and disaster management, and he has more than 30 years of experience in risk analysis and risk management studies. He has directed major research and application studies in these areas for government agencies and private industry. He currently serves or has served on several editorial boards including the Natural Hazards Review published by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, University of Colorado; the Journal on Uncertainties in Engineering Mechanics published by Resonance Publications, Inc.; and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s (EERI’s) journal SPECTRA. He is currently a member of the National Research Council’s Disaster Roundtable, whose mission it is to identify urgent and important issues related to the understanding and mitigation of natural, technological, and other disasters. He is a past member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the U.S. Geological Survey, a committee that reports to Congress on recommended research directions for the USGS in the area of earthquake hazard reduction. In 2006, he accepted an ATC Award of Excellence on behalf of the ATC-61 project team for work on “An Independent Study to Assess Future Savings from Mitigation” Activities that showed that a dollar spent on hazard mitigation saves the nation about $4 in future benefits. He was recently recognized by EERI as the 2008 Distinguished Lecturer where he discussed the topic of “Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and Other Disasters: A View from Space.” He was also invited as a keynote speaker to the 14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, held in Beijing, China in 2008. He has authored more than 250 publications, many of them dealing with the seismic risk of utility lifeline systems and the use of remote sensing technologies for disaster response. Mr. Eguchi has B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Jerome F. Hajjar is professor and Chair at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University, Boston. Previously he was Professor and Narbey Khachaturian Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Deputy Director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center. His expertise includes earthquake engineering, computational analysis, experimental testing, structural stability, and design of steel and composite structures. He serves on the American Institute of Steel Construction Committee on Specifications and is a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, and the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Consortium. In 2009 he received the Shortridge Hardesty Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Dr. Hajjar received his B.S. in engineering mechanics from Yale University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in structural engineering from Cornell University.
Jerome P. Lynch is Director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Structural Technology and Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. His research is focused on the development of wireless sensor networks for structural monitoring, the field deployments of wireless monitoring systems, the development of micro- and nanoelectromechanical system sensors to monitor the response of structures, exploring the piezoresistive properties of engineered high-performance fiber reinforced cementitious composite, and the development of decentralized algorithms for smart structures. Dr. Lynch received the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2005, and the EERI Shah Innovation Award and an NSF CAREER award in 2009. He has a B.E. in civil and environmental engineering from The Cooper Union, M.S. degrees in civil and environmental engineering and in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford University.
Masayoshi Nakashima is Director of the Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center (EDefense), National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED), and Professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University, Japan. He is also Visiting Professor for the European School for Advanced Studies in Reduction of Seismic Risk at Pavia University, Italy. Dr. Nakashima is Vice President of the Architectural Institute of Japan, where he also chairs the Research Committee on Structures, and he serves on the board of directors at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). He was council member for the Science Council of Japan from 2000 to 2003. In April 2009, he received the Special Achievement Award from the American Institute of Steel Construction for sustained strong support of collaboration between the United States and Japan on research to improve the seismic performance of steel building structures. Dr. Nakashima received his B.S.C.E. and M.S.C.E. from Kyoto University and his Ph.D. from Lehigh University.
