Seismic Scholar Reginald DesRoches to Speak at UC Davis
September 29, 2016
12:00 am
Seismic Scholar Reginald DesRoches to Speak at UC Davis
“From Haiti to California – Challenges and Opportunities for Reducing Earthquake Risks”
DAVIS, CA; August 1, 2016–World-renowned earthquake expert Reginald DesRoches will visit UC Davis this fall to discuss a problem we have yet to solve: how to prevent earthquakes from causing mass destruction to communities around the world.
DesRoches will speak on the UC Davis Campus Wednesday, September 28 at 4 p.m. at the Student Community Center in the Multipurpose Room.
Reginald DesRoches is the Karen and John Huff School Chair and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. DesRoches was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and will talk about the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which was one of the most devastating natural disasters in modern times. Officials estimate the earthquake killed and injured more than 600,000 people. DesRoches served as the key technical leader in the US response to the Haiti earthquake and led a team of engineers, architects, city planners, and social scientists to analyze its aftermath.
Beyond Haiti, urban areas around the world face similar risks. As cities with aging infrastructures become more overcrowded earthquakes can cause even more damage and financial devastation. In the United States, nearly half of Americans live in earthquake-prone regions. DesRoches will discuss how his body of research, and experience with the Haiti earthquake, can be applied to seismic threats in California and abroad.
DesRoches will outline how engineers are using improved computational methods, coupled with new “smart” materials and structural systems, to minimize the impact of earthquakes.
He has focused his research on the design of resilient infrastructure systems under extreme loads and has published more than 300 articles on resilience and seismic risk assessment. He has also participated in numerous congressional briefings to underscore the critical role that university research must play in addressing the country’s infrastructure crisis and resilience to natural hazards.
This lecture is presented by the UC Davis College of Engineering and organized by the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Admission is free.
BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. Reginald DesRoches is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the society’s Structural Engineering Institute. DesRoches serves on the National Academy of Sciences Resilience Roundtable and the Academy’s Board on Army Science and Technology as well as on the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for Engineering, the Global Earthquake Modeling Scientific Board, and the advisory board for the Natural Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure and Emergency Management Research Center. He has chaired the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Seismic Effects Committee as well as the executive committee of the Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering.
DesRoches received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2002 — the highest honor bestowed upon scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers. Most recently, he was a recipient of the 2007 ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, the 2015 ASCE Charles Martin Duke Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Award, the Georgia Tech Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award (2010), and the Georgia Tech ANAK Award (2008). DesRoches has served as thesis advisor to 29 doctoral and 17 master’s thesis students. DesRoches earned his bachelor of science in mechanical engineering, master of science in civil engineering, and PhD in structural engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was recently elected to the civil engineering department’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni.
Location
Student Community Center