Presentation Title: IAEE at Fifty: A Visual Record

Bio: Polat Gülkan is currently professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, Çankaya University, Ankara.

Mr. Gülkan is an earthquake structural engineer, and has been active in many areas of global risk mitigation from 1971. He has been a visiting research scholar at the Earthquake Engineering Research Center of University of California, Berkeley. Other professional appointments have included staff consultancy at Basler and Hofmann of Zürich, Switzerland and visiting professorship at Purdue University. He has served on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE) during 1996 - 2004, and was appointed for a four-year term as executive vice president of the same organization in 2004. He was elected to the presidency of IAEE in 2008, and following a two-year period as President Elect he is serving as President for the period 2010-2014.

He was on the Board of Directors of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) for the period 2005-2008. He has served as Editor for Earthquake Spectra from 2008.

Presentation Title: IAEE at Fifty: A Visual Record

Bio: Robert (Bob) Reitherman is the Executive Director of Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE), a non-profit organization established in 1988 that has two dozen member universities from across the United States.

He received his Master of Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in earthquake engineering, and has been the principal investigator of several National Science Foundation-funded research projects in that area and also on projects to communicate engineering to the general public. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, studying government, history, and sociology, and he combines those backgrounds with the engineering discipline in his treatment of the history of the earthquake engineering field. He has published a number of papers on that subject and is the author of Earthquakes and Engineers: An International History (American Society of Civil Engineers Press, 2012).

Reitherman directs the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's Connections publication program, which produces oral history books documenting the lives and careers of individuals who have been influential in the development of the earthquake engineering field.

Presentation Title: Emergency Mapping Team supplies nationwide common operational pictures to help effective emergency relief and recovery after 2011.3.11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan

Bio: Haruo Hayashi is a Professor of Research Center for Disaster Reduction Systems at Kyoto University's Disaster Prevention Research Institute where he has taught since 1994.

He also belongs to Kyoto University Graduate School of Informatics.

He received both his Bachelors and Master's degrees from Waseda University, and Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles.

The general focus of Dr. Hayashi's work is on Societal and Human Reactions to Disasters, Risk Communication and Education, Information System for Disaster Management, Standardization of Emergency Operations, and Multi-hazard Risk Assessment.

Presentation Title: The Integration of Emerging Trends in Engineering Seismology

Bio: Dr. Gail Atkinson is Professor & Canada Research Chair in Earthquake Hazards and Ground Motions at Western University, Canada. She has been very active in these fields in both publications and public service (such as building code committees).

Her work on prediction equations for ground-motion amplitudes as a function of magnitude and distance have been used earthquake hazard and risk assessments around the world.

Gail served on the Board of Directors of SSA for 10 years, including being President of SSA from 2001-2003, and was a member of the Editorial Board of SSA from 2005-2012.

Presentation Title: Eleven tsunamis from Aceh to Tohoku: Are we getting wiser?

Bio: Emile A. Okal was born in Paris in 1950, and graduated with the Agregation teaching degree from the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1971. He earned an M.S. in Geophysics from Universite Pierre-et-Marie Curie in 1972 and a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 1978.

He taught at Yale University for five years, and has been on the Faculty of Northwestern University since 1984. He has carried research in various aspects of Seismology (including quantification of sources, the nature of deep earthquakes, structural studies of igneous provinces), in hydroacoustics (including the origin of iceberg "symphonies"), and in many facets of the science of tsunamis, including theoretical investigations of their generation; he has also participated in or led more than 25 post-tsunami field surveys, including historical ones.

He is a member of the Seismological Society of America, and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union; he served as Editor of Pure and Applied Geophysics (1988-1993), and Editor-in-Chief of Geophysical Research Letters (1993-1997).

Presentation Title: Reality-check and renewed challenges in Earthquake Engineering: Implementing low-damage structural systems - from theory to practice

Bio: Stefano Pampanin is Associate Professor (formerly Reader) in Structural Design & Earthquake Engineering and Chair of the Structural and Geotechnical Cluster of the Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

He is currently the President of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE).

He received a Laurea (magna cum laude) in Civil (Structural) Engineering from the University of Pavia, a Masters in Structural Engineering at the University of California, San Diego and a PhD in Earthquake Engineering from the Technical University of Milan.

He is author of more than 250 scientific publications in the field of earthquake engineering and received several awards for his research activities including the fib Diploma 2003 for Younger Engineers (under 40-years old) and the 2005 EQC/NZSEE Ivan Skinner Award "for the advancement of Earthquake Engineering in NZ" (inaugural recipient).

In the past 15 years he has been dedicating a significant effort in the research and development, codification and practical implementation, as well as knowledge-dissemination, of innovative solutions for the seismic design of low-damage structural systems, as well as for the seismic retrofit of existing structures.

He is a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng) in Italy and New Zealand and has acted as external consultant and peer reviewer for the actual implementation of several damage-resisting solutions based on jointed ductile connections in reinforced/precast concrete (PRESSS-technology) buildings and in post-tensioned laminated timber (Pres-Lam) buildings, which received a number of design/innovation awards.

Following the 22 February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, Dr. Pampanin has played an active role in the recovery and post-earthquake investigation activities. He led the Recovery Project "Seismic Performance of RC Buildings" under the Natural Hazard Research Platform and was part of the Expert Panel of the Department of Building and Housing, investigating the collapse of critical buildings and reporting to the Canterbury Earthquake Royal Commission of Enquiry.

Presentation Title: Six Decades of Earthquake Engineering in Portugal

Bio: Eduardo Carvalho graduated at the Technical University of Lisbon in 1974 as a civil engineer and obtained the specialist degree in Structures by the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC) in Lisbon in 1980.

He worked as a Principal Researcher at LNEC for 30 years, with activity in the fields of Applied Dynamics, Earthquake Engineering, Structural Analysis, Structural Concrete, Masonry, Structural Rehabilitation and Design Regulations. This activity included both analytical and experimental studies and is reflected in more than one hundred publications – reports, papers and monographs – for which he is the author or co-author.

He headed the Centre for Earthquake Engineering at LNEC from 1994 to 2004. Presently he is the Chairman of CEN/TC250/SC8, after being its Secretary from 1990 to 2005. Along this period participated intensely in the preparation of Eurocode 8.

Is a Member of the Technical Council of fib – Federation International du Béton, having received the fib medal in 2009.

He is a senior partner of Gapres, a structural design office in Lisbon.

Presentation Title: The Road to Seismic Safety with Particular Reference to the Developing Countries

Bio: Dr. Sudhir Jain is an active academic in Earthquake Engineering and a passionate academic administrator. He obtained a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Roorkee, and Masters and Doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. He has been on the faculty of IIT Kanpur since 1984, and is currently on leave to the new Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) in Ahmedabad to shoulder additional responsibilities of its first Director since June 2009.

He initiated Earthquake Engineering activities at IIT Kanpur in 1984. He set up and developed the National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE) at IITK. He also developed the National Programme on Earthquake Engineering Education (NPEEE), supported by the Government of India. He has carried out post-earthquake surveys of most of the disastrous earthquakes in India since 1988 and disseminated "Learnings From Earthquakes" through publications and seminars.

Dr. Jain has provided comprehensive earthquake engineering consultancy for major bridge projects, buried pipelines for petrochemicals, concrete dams, and the like to numerous organizations. He has contributed significantly to the development of Indian seismic codes, conducted numerous short courses and seminars on seismic design for practicing engineers and college teachers, which have been extremely popular in the country.

Dr. Jain has been elected to the Board of Directors of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering of which he is currently the Executive Vice President. He was also on the Board of Directors of the World Seismic Safety Initiative from 2002 to 2009. He was elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering in the year 2003.

Presentation Title: Resilience, Recovery and Community Renewal

Bio: Mary Comerio is an internationally recognized expert on disaster recovery. She joined the faculty in the Department of Architecture at U. C. Berkeley in 1978 and served as Chair of the Department from 2006-2009. As an architect, she has designed numerous public and private facilities including market rate and affordable housing. Her research focuses on the costs and benefits of seismic rehabilitation (particularly housing), post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, and loss modeling. She is the author of Disaster Hits Home: New Policy for Urban Housing Recovery. In 2011, she received the Green Star Award from the United Nations for her work in post-disaster reconstruction in China and Haiti.

Comerio led the FEMA sponsored Disaster Resistant University Program. Her research together with the UC Berkeley campus seismic rehabilitation program was recognized by Engineering News Record as one of the ten best seismic rehabilitation projects in the United States in 2006. Comerio also led the Building Systems Research in the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, during the ten years when PEER was one of three NSF funded national earthquake centers. Comerio is currently working on a NSF Grand Challenge project focused on the mitigation of collapse risk in nonductile concrete buildings. She recently led the PEER/EERI reconnaissance teams to both earthquakes in New Zealand and has participated in several other teams.

Presentation Title: Alternative Choices and Criteria for Seismic Strengthening

Bio: Gian Michele Calvi is professor of Structural Design and Director of the Centre for Research and Graduate Studies in Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology at the University Institute for Advanced Studied (IUSS), Pavia.

He received a Master of Science from the University of California, Berkeley, a PhD from the Politecnico di Milano and a Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cujo, Mendoza, Argentina.

Professor Calvi is the founder and director of the ROSE School and of the Eucentre Foundation and of the School in Understanding and Managing the Extremes (UME); he is also member of the Board of Directors of the GEM Foundation.

He is author of more than 250 publications and of two major books: Seismic design and retrofit of bridges (with M.J.N. Priestley and F. Seible, 1996) and Displacement-Based Seismic Design of Structures (with M.J.N. Priestley and M.J. Kowalsky, 2007).

He is also designer, consultant or checker for hundreds of structural projects, among which the Rion-Antirion cable stayed bridge (2883 m, in Greece), the Bolu viaduct (119 spans, in Turkey) and the new housing system after L'Aquila earthquake (2009), with 185 buildings seismically isolated with more than 7,000 devices, completed in about six months.

Presentation Title: New Trends and Some Unfounded Presumptions in Soil-Structure Interaction Studies

Bio: George Gazetas has a Diploma in Civil Engineering by the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (NTUA), a Ph.D and a M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

He taught at the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY and at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Currently he is Professor of Soil Mechanics at the National Technical University of Athens. Researcher in the fields of Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, Soil Mechanics and Foundations, Professor George Gazetas is the author of over 400 research publications in journals and conference proceedings.

Presentation Title: The Italian National Seismic Prevention Program

Bio: Mauro Dolce is currently Director General at the Italian Department of Civil Protection (2006-), Head of the seismic and volcanic risk office. He is also Professor of Structural Engineering (1994-) at the University of Naples Federico II (2007-).

As the head of the Seismic and Volcanic Risk Office, he coordinates the monitoring, prevention and mitigation activities for Civil Protection in the fields of the seismic and volcanic risks. He has been deeply involved in the coordination of the emergency technical management of the 06.04.09 Abruzzi earthquake.

The research activities carried out in his academic involvement have been mainly related to Earthquake and Structural Engineering problems, resulting in about 350 scientific papers and four books, dealing with the seismic behaviour and vulnerability of masonry and R/C buildings, of bridges, with advanced materials and techniques for the seismic protection of bridges and buildings, and with seismic retrofitting techniques, as well as in 8 patents. He is currently the Vice-president of the European Association of Earthquake Engineering (2010-) and Italian delegate at the GEM (Global Earthquake Model) Governing Board (2008-).

Presentation Title: to be announced

Bio: Thomas H. Jordan is the W. M. Keck Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California and director of the Southern California Earthquake Center. As SCEC director, he coordinates a research program in earthquake system science that involves over 600 scientists at more than 70 universities and research organizations.

Jordan's research is focused on system-level models of earthquake processes, earthquake forecasting, and continental dynamics. He is a member of the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council, the Governing Board of the U.S. National Research Council, and the Board of Directors of the Seismological Society of America.

He received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1972. He taught at Princeton University and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He served as the head of MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences for the decade 1988-1998.

He has been awarded the Macelwane and Lehmann Medals of the American Geophysical Union and the Woollard Award of the Geological Society of America. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Presentation Title: State of the art: Structure-Specific Strong Ground Motion Selection by Emphasising on Spectral Shape Indicators

Bio: Professor Mohsen Ghafory-Ashtiany has received his BS, MS and PhD. with honor from Va. Tech (USA) in 1983 in Structural Dynamic and Earthquake Engineering.

He has been the founder of the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES) in Iran in 1989 and was its president until Dec. 2006.

He is the author of more than 150 papers, 3 books and 40 research reports in the field of random vibration, earthquake engineering, seismic hazard and risk analysis, risk management, and risk reduction policy development. He was chief Editor of JSEE and Chairman of Int. Conf. on Seismology and Earthquake Engineering (1991-2007).

He is now the co-Editor of IDRiM Journal, Editor of the Journal of Earthquake Engineering and Structures; and member of Editorial Board of many journals.

He is one of the founders of Iranian Earthquake Engineering Association (IEEA) and a pioneer in Risk mitigation activities in Iran. He has served as member of Iran's Natural disaster Prevention and Management Headquarter, Iran's Risk Reduction Comm., Iran Scientific Research Council, National Building Code Council, etc.

At present he is the professor of earthquake engineering and risk management at IIEES, Chairman of SP Insurance Risk Management Institute. President of IEEA, Director of Int. Assoc. of Earthquake Engineering (IAEE), Chairman of Earthquake Strong Ground Motion, Hazard and Risk Commission of IASPEI, member of UNISDR Science and Technical commission, member of EERI, ASCE, IASBEI,GEM, EMME, etc.

Presentation Title: Seismic risk evaluation of Mexico's infrastructure for risk-transfer purposes: methods, achievements and challenges

Bio: Born in Mexico City, October 1959. Ph.D. (1992, Honors) from UNAM.

Author of about 80 papers published in international journals and 4 book chapters. Has participated in most of the seismic regulations developed in Mexico since 1985, as well as in seismic regulations of several other countries. Has participated in seismic hazard analyses with design purposes in tens of important engineering projects.

Has led the development of the systems used by the Government of Mexico to evaluate the solvency of insurance companies that underwrite seismic and hydrometeorological policies in Mexico. Has advised the Governments of several countries in these matters. Has led the technical development of the software platform of the initiative CAPRA, sponsored by The World Bank, to evaluate multi-hazard risk throughout the World.

Currently, Professor at the Institute of Engineering, UNAM, and President of ERN Consulting Engineers.

Presentation Title: Lifeline System Response to Earthquakes

Bio: Tom O'Rourke is the Thomas R. Briggs Professor of Engineering in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He received a number of distinctions for his research and teaching, some of which are ASTM C.A. Hogentogler Award, ASCE Collingwood, Huber Research, C. Martin Duke, Stephen D. Bechtel Pipeline Engineering, and Ralph B. Peck Awards, and the British ICE Trevithick Prize. He gave the 2009 Rankine Lecture. He served as President of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and as a member of the US National Science Foundation Engineering Advisory Committee.

He authored or co-authored over 350 technical publications. His research interests cover geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, underground construction technologies, engineering for large, geographically distributed systems, and geographic information technologies and database management.

He is a member of the NIST Advisory Committee for Earthquake Hazards Reduction. He has served as chair or member of the consulting boards of many large civil construction projects, as well as the peer reviews for projects associated with highway, rapid transit, water supply, and energy distribution systems.

Presentation Title: Earthquake Loss Assessment for Evaluation of the Sovereign Risk and Financial Sustainability of Countries Economic Impacts, Fiscal Responsibilities and Contingent Liabilities

Bio: Omar-Dario Cardona is Associate Professor of the National University of Colombia.

He is former President of the Colombian Association for Earthquake Engineering and former Director General of the National Directorate of Disaster Prevention and Attention (currently the National Directorate for Disaster Risk Management of Colombia).

He has been a consultant of the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, UNDP, UN-ISDR and other agencies of UN system.

He has been the Representative of the Consortium ERN-AL (the developer of CAPRA platform), CEO of INGENIAR LTDA. and Researcher of the International Center of Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE).

He is a founder member of the Latin American Network of Social Studies on Disaster Prevention (LA RED).

He is member of the IRDR Scientific Committee, the Scientific Board of GEM, Coordinator Lead Author of IPCC SREX and Review Editor of IPCC AR5.

In 2004 he was the winner of the UN Sasakawa Prize for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Mr. Cardona holds a degree in Civil Engineering from the National University of Colombia, Manizales, and a Ph.D. in Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona.

Presentation Title: Impression on Post-Wenchuan-Earthquake Restoration and Reconstruction

Bio: available soon