Resources
Biographies
The following bios provide information about the key engineers involved with the 2009 NEESWood Capstone test at E-Defense in Japan:
NSF Principal Investigators
John van de Lindt, Colorado State University
Credit: Colorado State University
John van de Lindt is a civil engineering professor in the College of Engineering at Colorado State University. Since joining CSU in 2004, he has led numerous projects funded by the National Science Foundation. In 2005, he received a four-year, $1.24 million grant from NSF to develop a new design approach for taller woodframe buildings in earthquake-prone areas in collaboration with several other major universities, which led to the capstone test in Japan.
After Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, he led a team of scientists from around the country to examine how building codes in Louisiana and Mississippi contributed to the massive destruction left by the hurricane. See the press release here.
In 2007, van de Lindt also collaborated with Oregon State University to study the effects of the force of hurricane-strength waves and their damage to woodframe residential buildings.
Van de Lindt has also worked under an NSF grant with Bogusz Bienkiewicz, a wind engineering professor in CSU's civil engineering department, to connect a state-of-the-art wind tunnel with a large structural load frame to simulate the effect of wind on structures. They built a connection in "real time" over the Internet 2 backbone--a faster Internet used primarily for research purposes.
Before joining Colorado State, van de Lindt worked as an assistant professor at Michigan Technological University. He obtained his master's and doctoral degrees from Texas A&M University.
Rachel Davidson, University of Delaware
Credit: University of Delaware
Rachel Davidson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Delaware, and a core faculty member at the Disaster Research Center. After completing her Ph.D. from Stanford University, she spent two years at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, then six years at Cornell University, both as an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering. Following a year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia University, she joined the faculty at the University of Delaware in 2007. Davidson conducts research on natural disaster risk modeling and civil infrastructure systems. A co-PI of NEESWood, she is leading the effort to assess the societal risk implications of the new performance-based seismic design philosophy for woodframe buildings. Specifically, she and her graduate research assistant, Greg Black, are developing and analyzing empirical relationships between loss, seismic ground motion intensity, and performance expectations to inform the specification of seismic performance objectives for woodframe buildings and to understand the implications of those performance objectives for societal risk.
André Filiatrault, University at Buffalo
Credit: André Filiatrault, Professor of Structural Engineering, University at Buffalo, SUNY
André Filiatrault received a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1988. After a two-year stay as an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, he joined the Department of Civil Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique of the University of Montreal, where he became a Full Professor in 1997. Filiatrault joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego in 1998 where he was a Professor of Structural Engineering until 2003. Currently, Filiatrault is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo (UB), State University of New York. From 2003 to 2007, Filiatrault served as the Deputy Director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) at UB. Filiatrault is now serving as the Director of the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory and Director of MCEER at UB. His research over the last twenty one years has been centered on the seismic testing, analysis and design of Civil Engineering structures, particularly light-frame wood buildings. Professor Filiatrault is a co-principal investigator of the NEESWood Project. He directed the benchmark shake table test of a full-scale two-story light-frame wood building at the University at Buffalo NEES Site in 2006 and has participated in the planning of the capstone seismic test conducted on the E-defense shake table in Japan.
David V. Rosowsky, Texas A&M University
Credit: Texas A&M University
Dr. David V. Rosowsky is Professor and Head of the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University. He is also the holder of the A.P. and Florence Wiley Chair in Civil Engineering. Rosowsky's research has been in the areas of structural reliability, probabilistic modeling of structural and environmental loads, and probability-based design. Rosowsky serves on both national and international technical committees relating to structural safety, reliability-based design of engineered wood structures, and design for natural hazards. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Structural Safety and was formerly an Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering and Natural Hazards Review. Dr. Rosowsky has received a number of awards including the ASCE Norman Medal in 1998 and the ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 2001. Prior to coming to Texas A&M University in 2004, Rosowsky was a professor at Oregon State University where he held the Richardson Chair in Wood Engineering and Mechanics. Rosowsky's primary role as co-PI on the NEESWood project was to lead the development of the design procedures. Working closely with Dr. Weichiang Pang, they developed multiple generations of displacement-based design procedures, resulting in the final procedure used to design the capstone structure tested in Japan in July 2009.
Michael D. Symans, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Credit: Rensselaer/Qua
Michael D. Symans is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he conducts research in the field of earthquake engineering. His research activities are conducted within the Center for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (CEES) which is the Rensselaer branch of the national NSF-supported Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). Within the NEES program, he has been an investigator on three projects, two that focus on the development of seismic protection systems, his primary area of research, and one that focuses on the seismic response of buried pipelines. Symans is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and the Rensselaer School of Engineering Outstanding Research Team Award. He is an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, having served in leadership positions within various technical committees and as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Structural Engineering on behalf of the Seismic Effects Committee. He has also served as the instructor for the Energy Dissipation and Seismic Isolation Systems topic of the Advanced Earthquake Protective Design Course formerly offered by the FEMA Emergency Management Institute. Symans is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the United States Panel of the International Association for Structural Control. Symans' research within the NEESWood Project focuses on the development of seismic protection systems (base-isolation and damping systems) for application to wood-framed construction and their integration within the displacement-based seismic design procedures that have been developed as part of the project.
Other NSF-Supported Investigators
Douglas Allen, Colorado State University
Credit: Colorado State University
Douglas Allen is an undergraduate student of Civil Engineering at Colorado State University. Allen spent 13 years as a carpenter before returning to Colorado State University to pursue degrees in Civil Engineering with a focus on Structural Engineering. Between university terms, Allen has been employed at the Engineering Research Center of Colorado State University and has gained experience in various areas of Structural Engineering, including specific experience related to earthquake damage to structures and the construction of structures resistant to such disasters. Allen is an NSF-REU student and has participated in the preparation of the 2009 NEESWood Capstone structure prior to testing, as well as serving as a member of the damage inspection team following the tests.
Shiling Pei, Colorado State University
Credit: Shiling Pei, Colorado State University
Shiling Pei received his Ph.D. in structural engineering from Colorado State University in December 2007 and currently serves as a post-doctoral research associate in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Colorado State University. His dissertation focused on modeling and analysis of light-frame wood buildings against earthquake loading and related performance-based seismic design, with a particular focus on the economic impact of earthquake events to residential infrastructure. Pei is particularly interested in the mechanistic modeling of the dynamic behavior of building systems and developed the Seismic Analysis Package for Woodframe Structures (SAPWood) as part of the NSF (NEESR) funded NEESWood project. Pei helped to establish and supervise the shake table testing program at Colorado State University, including design and operation of the uni-aixial shake table. He is currently participating in the design and planning of the 17,000-square-foot, seven-story, wood-steel hybrid building that is the subject of the 2009 NEESWood Capstone effort. Pei has helped to supervise the day-to-day operations, construction, and instrumentation for the project. In addition to his research related to dynamic response analysis and structural testing, Pei has been actively involved in projects related to the safety and reliability of infrastructure systems under extreme natural or man-made hazards.
Kathryn S. Pfretzschner, Colorado State University
Credit: Kathryn Pfretzschner, Civil Engineering Department, Colorado State University
Kathryn Pfretzschner will graduate from Colorado State University with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a Minor in Construction Management in December of 2009. Throughout her undergraduate experience, Pfretzschner has participated in several organizations including the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for which she is the current Student Chapter President. In the summer of 2009, Pfretzschner was invited by Dr. John W. van de Lindt to participate in the NEESWood Capstone project in Miki, Japan. Her experience was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program. As a member of the project team, Pfretzschner has been involved in the construction of the building, administration and organization of damage inspections in accordance with each test, as well as assisting with management and logistics of the project as a whole. After graduation, Pfretzschner plans to continue her graduate studies in Structural Engineering and Mechanics of Solids at Colorado State University with particular interest in both light wood and heavy timber framing. She also plans on pursuing a Ph.D., but hopes to first gain experience working in industry.
Other NEESWood Investigators
These researchers were key to the NEESWood project, though only the NEESWood principal investigators and their students were supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.
David Clyne, Maui Homes
Credit: David Clyne, Maui Homes
David Clyne worked in Los Angeles, California as a project manager for the design and construction of industrial facilities from 1988 through 1993. In 1994, he was relocated to Japan to manage a division of Wrico International importing building materials from the United States to Japan for the construction of 2 x 4 American style wood framed homes. In 1997, he started his own company, Maui Homes Incorporated in Japan as a general contractor and in Hawaii as a building material supplier. Since 1997, he has built over 100 single-family homes in Japan. He holds general contractor's licenses in both Japan and Hawaii.
In 2007, Clyne built a three-story elementary school in Ashiya, Japan. During the first part of 2009, Clyne was honored to be part of the design and construction team for the 7-story wood framed mid-rise structure for NEESwood at the E-Defense earthquake test center in Miki, Japan.
Clyne is husband to a beautiful Japanese wife, Akemi, and the father of two wonderful children, Lisa fourteen years old and Timothy twelve years old.
Hiroshi Isoda, Shinshu University
Credit: Hiroshi Isoda, Shinshu University
Hiroshi Isoda is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering at Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan.
Izumi Nakamura, Japan's National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention
Credit: Japan's National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention
Izumi Nakamura is a senior researcher at Japan's National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED). She graduated from Kyoto University with a bachelor's degree and joined NIED in 1997. She received a doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from Yokohama National University in 2004. She is one of the principal members of the Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center of NIED, and has been involved in several projects at E-Defense, the largest shake table in the world. For the NEESWood project, she is a lead NIED researcher and supports Professor John van de Lindt of Colorado State University and Hidemaru Shimizu, also of E-Defense, in conducting the tests.
Tomoya Okazaki, Shinshu University
Credit: Tomoya Okazaki, Shinshu University
Tomoya Okazaki is a second-year post-graduate student in structural engineering in the Isoda Laboratory at Shinshu University. When Okazaki was an undergraduate, he studied seismic response analysis and tried to track the results of shake-table tests held at the Public Works Research Institute in 2006. The tests examined a Japanese three-story wood-frame house in Japan using software called SAPwood developed by NEESWood project team member Shiling Pei of Colorado state University. As a member of the NEESWood project, Okazaki assisted in recording the structure construction, evaluating seismic capacity according to Japanese building guidelines, and serving on the damage inspection team with Kazuki Tachibana. Okazaki will acquire his degree in March of 2010, and will then join Nihon System Sekkei Co., where he plans to work as a structural engineer.
Steve Pryor, P.E., S.E., Simpson Strong-Tie
Credit: Simpson Strong-Tie
Steve Pryor, P.E., S.E., joined Simpson Strong-Tie in 1997 and is the Building Systems Research and Development Manager for Simpson Strong-Tie. He manages the company's Tyrell Gilb Research Laboratory in Stockton, California, which features state-of-the-art testing equipment. The lab's test rigs simulate earthquakes, high winds and other natural disasters in order to analyze building performance, which ultimately results in new product solutions. Pryor's other responsibilities include developing advanced nonlinear time history and finite element analysis tools to support research and development and oversight of products relating to the lateral load path in a structure. He also provides sales support and training relating to these issues.
Pryor is considered a subject expert in structural building design and has authored several papers presented at national and international conferences on wood and seismic engineering. A member of several national building code committees, Steve earned his BS in Civil Engineering (Magna Cum Laude) from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Hidemaru Shimizu, Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center, NIED
Credit: E-Defense
Hidemaru Shimizu is a researcher at the Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center of Japan’s National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED). He obtained his master's degree from Kinki University and received his Ph.D. in structural engineering from Kyoto University in March 2003. After a two-year stay as a researcher at Kyoto University, he joined NIED as a researcher in August 2005. Shimizu is interested in improving the seismic performance of old wooden houses and multi-story wooden buildings. He focuses his efforts on analytical approaches, full-scale tests, and investigations of damaged houses after strong earthquakes. Since joining NIED, Shimizu participated in the Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Urban Areas (Dai-Dai-Toku), funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan. This project used E-Defense at NIED, which is the largest shake table in the world, and in this effort, Shimizu participated in the first collapse tests at E-Defense. Shimizu has helped conduct many additional full-scale tests at E-Defense, and he is a member of the lead research team for the NEESWood Capstone test in Japan where he helps lead progress management for the project and aspects of safety for building construction, in collaboration with John van de Lindt of Colorado State University.
Kazuki Tachibana, University of Tokyo
Credit: University of Tokyo
Kazuki Tachibana is a Ph.D. student in structural engineering at the University of Tokyo. He obtained his master's degree from Shinshu University. Between his graduate programs, Tachibana studied seismic performance evaluation of wooden shear walls. Such studies included various load-displacement relationships derived from combined woodframe or high-damping-shear walls. With Tomoya Okazaki, also from Shinshu University, Tachibana helped to verify the NEESWood structure in accordance with Japanese building codes, checked the building under construction, and analyzed the damage following the tests. Tachibana is interested in mid- to high-rise wooden structures, and plans to write his doctoral thesis about them.
Jagadish Vengala, Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute
Credit: Jagadish Vengala, IPIRTI
Jagadish Vengala is head of the Products Application Division for the Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute (IPIRTI) in Bangalore, under the Ministry of Environment and Forests for the government of India. He obtained his Master’s degree in Construction Technology from BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, in 2002. After two years as a design engineer at Torsteel Research Foundation, also Bangalore, he joined IPIRTI as a scientist in August 2004. He is presently pursuing his doctoral work on Earthquake Engineering. He was the recipient of a BOYSCAST Fellowship in 2008 from the Indian government’s Department of Science and Technology, under which he worked with John van de Lindt of Colorado State University. During his fellowship period, he was involved in few shake table tests as a part of the NEESWood program studying a two story house using friction pendulum base isolators. He has published research papers in various national and international journals and conferences. Vengala is currently participating as a member of the damage inspection team following the NEESWood Capstone tests. His research interests include earthquake engineering; bamboo-based and pre-fabricated housing, and self compacting concrete.
NSF Program Officer for the NEESWood Project
Joy Pauschke, Program Director, George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, NSF
Credit: National Science Foundation
Joy Pauschke is the Program Director for the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Operations and Research Programs in the Directorate for Engineering (ENG), Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI), at NSF, Arlington, VA. NEES is a national, multi-user research infrastructure consisting of earthquake engineering experimental facilities, located at universities across the United States, connected by cyberinfrastructure. NEES is Congressionally authorized under NEHRP.
Pauschke is also a co-coordinator for ENG's Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation 2008 awards on Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructures. Prior to joining CMMI in 2000 as the NEES Program Director, Pauschke had oversight responsibility from 1994–2000 in ENG's Division of Engineering Education and Centers for awards in the following programs: Earthquake Engineering Research Centers, Engineering Research Centers, State/Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers, Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers, Engineering Education Coalitions, and Technology Reinvestment Project Manufacturing Education and Training.
While at NSF, Pauschke has received the Director's Award for Meritorious Service, Superior Accomplishment, Collaborative Integration to the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Program Coordinating Team, Collaborative Integration for Cyberinfrastructure Strategic Planning, Collaborative Integration for the NSF Facilities Panel Team, and Collaborative Integration for the Extended Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation Working Group.
Prior to joining NSF in 1994 (IPA from 1994–1996), Pauschke was the Associate Dean, College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, and Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, and Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. She has also worked for several construction and consulting firms.
Pauschke holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, and M.S., Engineer, and Ph.D., Civil Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA. She is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Illinois.