2020 PEER Annual Meeting Presenters & Moderators

Adjunct Professor, UCB and UCD.
Prof. Abrahamson is an internationally known expert in seismic hazard and risk analyses with over 30 years of experience in the practical application of engineering seismology.

Director, Berkeley Seismology Lab; Professor, UCB. Prof. Richard Allen is an expert in earthquake alerting systems, developing methodologies to detect earthquakes and issue warnings prior to shaking.

Assistant Professor, UCB. Prof. Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos' research focus and expertise is on assessing and mitigating the impact of multi-hazard stressors on geotechnical engineering infrastructure.

Associate Professor, Stanford University. Prof. Baker Jack Baker's research focuses on the use of probabilistic and statistical tools for modeling of extreme loads on structures.

Professor, UCLA. Dr. Yousef Bozorgnia is a professor at both UCLA Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences.

Professor, UCLA. Professor Brandenber's research interests include geotechnical earthquake engineering, geophysical imaging, data acquisition and signal processing, and numerical analysis.

Professor, UCB. Prof. Bray earned engineering degrees from West Point, Stanford, and Berkeley. Dr. Bray is a registered professional civil engineer.

Professor, UNR. Prof. Buckle's research interests include: seismic performance of bridges and structures, tsunami performance of coastal bridges and structures, and earthquake protective systems.

Graduate Student, UCB. Deigo de la Mora is a student in the Master's degree program at UC Berkeley.

J. A. Blume Professor of Engineering, Stanford University. Prof. Deierlein directs the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at Stanford University. Deierlein previously served as the deputy director for the PEER Center.

Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley. Matt DeJong is an Assistant Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor, UCSD. Professor Elgamal is an expert in earthquake engineering and computational geomechanics.

Professor, UCB. Prof. Govindjee is a Professor of Civil Engineering and the Horace, Dorothy, and Katherine Johnson Endowed Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1993-2006, 2008-present).

Research Scientist, UCB. Dr. Gunay is actively involved in the operation and research activities of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center.

Ph.D Candidate, UCB. Daniel's research interests include the assessment of liquefaction hazard consequences particularly ground subsidence, lateral spreading and flow slides.

Assistant Research Professor, UNR. Dr. Denis Istrati's research interests include tsunami performance of coastal structures, fluid-structure interaction and multi-hazard risk assessment.

Senior Project Manager, Otak. Bruce Johnson is a Senior Project Manager and Structural Engineer and the State Bridge Engineer in Oregon from 2004 to 2019.

Professor, UCD. Prof. Kanvinde is interested in the seismic response and design of steel structures with an emphasis on understanding extreme limit states such as fracture, fatigue, and collapse.

Associate Director, PEER. Amarnath Kasalanati is the Associate Director at PEER, responsible for coordinating PEER’s research activities, overseeing the lab operations and developing strong industry ties.

Postdoctoral Scholar, UNR. Dr. Kenawy's research focuses on characterizing the performance of reinforced concrete structures subjected to extreme events, with an emphasis on predicting structural collapse.

Associate Professor, Notre Dame. Tracey Kijewski-Correa’s research focuses on disaster risk reduction and civil infrastructure challenges posed by increased urbanization and vulnerability.

President, Magnusson Klemencic Associates.
Ron Klemencic oversees 180 engineers and works on hundreds of concurrent projects in nearly every state and 20 foreign nations.

Professor, Michigan State University. Prof. Kodur is a professor in the department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Director of the Center on Structural Fire Safety and Diagnostics at MSU.

Professor, UCD. Prof. Kunnath's research focuses on structural dynamics and earthquake engineering, multiple hazards and extreme loading (blast, impact, fire), inelastic modeling of structural systems.

Senior Research Scientist, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He co-leads the Innovative Software and Data Analysis Division at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Professor, Dean, UC Berkeley. Dean Tsu-Jae King Liu received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Professor, USC. Prof. Lynett's research interests include coastal processes, such as nearshore circulations, wave evolution, multi-scale hydrodynamic interactions, and sediment transport.

Chief Mitigation Officer, California Earthquake Authority. Janiele Maffei directs the statewide residential retrofit program and supporting mitigation-related insurance-premium discount for CEA policyholders.

Professor, UNR. David McCallen is the Director of the Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research at UNR and a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Doctoral Candidate, UCB. Daniel Miller completed his Ph.D. in 2019 and began working as a designer with Degenkolb Engineers. His doctoral research investigated seismic behavior of reinforced concrete arch bridges.

Professor, John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center Stanford University. Using Acceleration Sensors to Learn and Improve the Modeling of Damping in Buildings.

Director, EERI. Judith Mitrani-Reiser (M. EERI, 2001) is the Director of the Disaster and Failure Studies Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Professor, UCB, PEER Director. Prof. Mosalam is currently Taisei Professor of Civil Engineering, UC Berkeley, Core-PI of TBSI & SinBerBEST, and PEER Director.

Associate Professor, UNR. Dr. Motamed’s research includes shake table tests on deep and shallow foundations, nonlinear site response analysis modeling, and soil-structure-interaction.

Assistant Professor, UNR. Dr. Moustafa is an Assistant Professor at the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Professor, Cornell University. Prof. O'Rourke is the Thomas R. Briggs Professor of Engineering in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University.

Susan Owen, NASA ARIA Project for Natural Hazards. Dr. Owen's research interests include improving GPS data analysis techniques to study the earthquake cycle and volcano deformation.

Professor, University of Florida. Prof. Prevatt specializes in Wind Engineering, wind uplift performance and structural load paths in low-rise buildings, building envelope investigation repairs and renovations.

Principal Consultant, Sharyl Rabinovici Consulting. Sharyl Rabinovici is a researcher and policy entrepreneur in the natural disaster risk reduction space.

Executive Director, US Resiliency Council. Evan Reis works with public and private organizations to promote resilience and improve the performance of our nation’s infrastructure in natural disasters.

Seismologist, LLNL. Arthur Rodgers' research insterests include computational seismology, earthquake and explosion ground motion simulation, seismoacoustics, explosion yield estimation.

Assistant Professor, Auburn University. David Roueche's research includes extreme wind loads on low-rise buildings, post-disaster field investigations, and performance-based wind engineering.

Associate Professor, UNR. Associate Professor, UNR. Prof. Ryan specializes in earthquake engineering and protective systems for high seismic performance, with application to buildings and bridges.

Foundation Professor, UNR. Prof. Saiidi is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, Director of Center for Advanced Technology in Bridges and Infrastructure.

Visting Scholar, PEER. Charles Scawthorn is an internationally recognized authority for the analysis and mitigation of natural and technological hazards.

Professor, OSU. Prof. Scott's research interests include nonlinear structural analysis and dynamics, structural response, object-oriented software design, and fluid-structure interaction.

Research Engineer, Caltrans. Tom Shantz is a senior research engineer for Caltrans, Division of Research, Innovation, and System Information.

Professor, UCB. Prof. Sitar's research expertise includes geotechnical earthquake engineering, wireless sensors, seismic earth pressure, geotechnical engineering, geological engineering.

Professor, UW. Prof. Stanton has an undergraduate degree from Cambridge University (UK) and graduate degrees from Cornell and UC Berkeley.

Prof. Stojadinović is the Chair of Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich.

Director and Chief Resilience Officer, Office of Resilience and Capital Planning. Brian Strong is responsible for the City’s ten-year Capital Plan, its Capital Budget, and the implementation of the Resilient SF strategic vision.

Professor, UCLA. Prof. Ertugrul Taciroglu earned a Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998 and after post-doctoral work, joined UCLA in 2001.

Mechanical Engineer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Henry Teng is currently a mechanical engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Associate Dean, Research, UCB. Prof. Karl Van Bibber's research focuses on basic and applied nuclear science, particle astrophysics, and accelerator science and technology.

Senior Principal, Forell/Elsesser Engineers. Mason Walters is a Senior Principal and the Technical Director at Forell/Elsesser.

Post-Doctoral Researcher, Stanford University. David Welch is part of a multi-university PEER-CEA project to quantify the seismic performance of retrofit of cripple walls and sill anchorage in single family dwellings.

Associate Professor, UC Irvine. Dr. Zareian’s research includes analytical and experimental studies in Structural and Earthquake Engineering with emphasis on Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering.