BLUME CENTER TO SPONSOR QUAKE '06 CENTENNIAL ALLIANCE LECTURE SERIES

Professor Greg Deierlein and Blume Center Admin Racquel Hagen are serving on the Steering Committee for Stanford University's Quake '06 Centennial Alliance. Commemorating the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake with several events, including an exhibit in Meyer Library, a walking tour of the campus with informational displays, and a lecture series co-sponsored with UC Berkeley, Stanford, as a member of the 1906 Earthquake Centennial Alliance (http://06centennial.org) aims to increase community awareness of the effect of the earthquake on the university campus, and broaden understanding of the way this event has contributed to technological advances in seismic hazard and earthquake preparedness and mitigation. The Blume Center, together with UC Berkeley, is hosting a series of lectures that will examine various aspects of the 1906 Earthquake. Running from September 2005 through April 2006, each lecture will be given both at Stanford and at Berkeley, in order to reach both communities. The series will be in two parts. Part 1 will feature the Historical and Social Perspectives in three lectures by Kevin Starr, Malcolm Barker and Stephen Tobriner. Part 2 with focus on the Earth Science, Earthquake Engineering, Preparedness and Disaster Response with Mary Lou Zoback, Eric Elsesser Chris Poland and Kathleen Tierney. For more information including dates and information on the speakers, please see the Quake '06 website at http://quake06.stanford.edu.

PUBLISHED PAPERS

STRGEO & DCI SEMINARS

During the Winter and Spring we were honored to have a number of seminars given by both practitioners and faculty of other Universities. The seminars are a wonderful opportunity for our students to hear about current research and innovations at other institutions and in the private sector. Dr. Jeremy Isenberg of Weidlinger Assoc. gave the John A. Blume Distinguished Lecture on April 7, "A Rational Defense Against Irrational Acts: Civil Engineering Aspects of Homeland Security." Special seminars were given by Bret Lizundia of Rutherford & Chekene, "Design and Construction of The New de Young Museum;" Youssef M.A. Hashash of the Univ. of Illinois, "A Novel Approach to the Extraction of Complex Soil Behavior;" Leslie E. Robertson of LERA, "Recent and Current Work: Hong Kong to Shanghai;" Theodosios Tassios from NTU, Athens, "Build, Operate and Transfer: Public Works in Ancient Greece;" Victor Li of the Univ. of Michigan, "Next Generation Structural Concrete - Development and Applications;" John Ochsendorf of MIT, "Static and Dynamic Analysis of Masonry Structures: From Arch Bridges to Gothic Cathedrals;" and Reginald DesRoches of Georgia Tech, "Applications of Shape Memory Alloys in Seismic Resistant Design and Retrofit."

RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

DRIFT-BASED FRAGILITY FUNCTIONS FOR SLAB-COLUMN CONNECTIONS

Hesameddin Aslani and Eduardo Miranda

BLUME CENTER NEWS

Profs. Allin Cornell and Eduardo Miranda participated in the International Symposium on Earthquake Engineering Commemorating Tenth Anniversary of the 1995 Kobe Earthquake (ISEE Kobe 2005) organized by the Japan Association for Earthquake Engineering. The symposium was held on Awaji Island on January 13 - 16, 2005. Prof. Miranda also attended the E-defense Inauguration Symposium on January 16th which included a full-scale testing of a Japanese two-story wood house subjected to full scale 1995 Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) Kobe record (PGV=160 cm/cm2) in the new E-Defense shake table.

Prof. Allin Cornell was the co-winner of the 2003 Earthquake Spectra Outstanding Paper Award for “Translating Research to Practice: FEMA/SAC Performance-Based Design Procedures.” The award was presented at the 2005 EERI Annual Meeting held in Ixtapa, Mexico, Feb. 2-6.

Ph.D. Candidate Paul Cordova presented his paper, "“Full-Scale Test of a Composite Moment-Frame System” at the 2005 EERI Annual Meeting. Paul was the 2003-2004 NEHRP Graduate Fellow in Earthquake Hazard Reduction.

Prof. Helmut Krawinkler gave a keynote lecture on “Design for Collapse Safety” at the Second International Conference on Urban Earthquake Engineering, held at the Tokyo Institute for Technology on March 7-8.

Prof. Ronnie Borja participated in an International Workshop on Micro-Geomechanics Across Multiple Strain Scales held in Cambridge, England, on March 20-23, 2005. The workshop was sponsored by NSF.

Dr. Renate Fruchter organized and chaired the 4th International Social Intelligence Design Workshop (SID2005), March 24-26, Stanford. University. She presented three papers together with her students - Zhen Yin, Pratik Biswas, and Subashri Swaminathan.

Prof. Sarah Billington attended the ACI Convention in New York City (April 17-19).

Prof. Ronnie Borja presented a paper on the theoretical formulation for partially saturated porous media at the Third Biot Conference on Poromechanics held in Norma, Oklahoma on May 24-27, 2005.

Prof. Helmut Krawinkler was on sabbatical leave during Spring Quarter, spending about half of the time at Stanford catching up with research commitments and the other half visiting the following universities: April 19-May 11: Universidad Politecnica de Valencia in Spain (host: Prof. Pellicer (MS '92)), June 13-20: U. of Patras, Greece (host: Prof. Beskos), June 26-28: U. of Ljubljana, Slovenia (Host: Prof. Fajfar), June 29-July 2: Technical U. Vienna, Austria (hosts: Profs. Ziegler and Adam, and July 3-7: Technical U. Budapest, Hungary (host: Prof. Kollar. During these visits he participated in research discussions and gave seminars on prediction of collapse and other research at the Blume Center. In between, from June 20 to 23, he attended the ICOSSAR conference where he gave a presentation on collapse prediction.

Ph.D. Candidate Jiro Takagi and his wife Ritsuko welcomed their first child, a daughter, Mei, on May 3.

WINTER/SPRING 2005 GRADUATES

The following students graduated with a Masters Degree in Structural Engineering and Geomechanics or Design Construction Integration in Winter Quarter: Adam Burkett (Rutherford & Chekene), Giselle Chanona (KPFF-LA), Rupa Garai (SOM), Sabrina Macedo-Moran (Robert Silman Assoc.), Symoane Mizell (Camp Dresser & Mckee), Serge Rizk (Wall Street Analytics) and Rajkiran Vojjala (RMS). Receiving a Masters Degree in Structural Engineering and Geomechanics or Design Construction Integration in Spring Quarter were Liz Agnew (Hinman Consulting), Rex Arashi (Buehler & Buehler), Richie Armstrong (UC Davis-PhD), Noor Atari (SOM), Justin Bocian (Severud and Associates), Will Boenig, Yu-Ning Chen (Dasse Design), Carlos Fernandez, Kenneth Fung (LERA), Josh Guerard, Jason Holland, Cameron Hufford (Magnusson Klemencic Assoc.), Pardeep Jhutti (Ficcadenti Waggoner and Castle), Hyung Kim (John A. Martin & Assoc.), Jennifer Kimura (SOM), Carl Kloos, Erik Kneer (Degenkolb), Dimitrios Kolios, Nick Kuffel, Satoshi Matsuki, Julian Nahan (Beck Group), Steve Patton (Nabih Youssef Eng), Meredith Resnick (Lockheed Martin), Neal Turbow (Pruitt, Eberly & Stone), Zixiao Zhang, Molly Ziergiebel (Sensametrics, Inc.). Hesaam Aslani received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering and is now working at RMS.