Craig Comartin is internationally recognized for his expertise in the development and application of performance-based earth-quake engineering (PBEE). He has pioneered the evaluation and design of structures to meet complex performance object-tives and the consequential management of seismic risks associated with groups of individual facilities.

Craig has given freely of his time and considerable talents to advance the profession of earthquake engineering, including serving as EERI President (2005-06). He was EERI’s team leader for the post-earthquake investigations of the 1993 Guam and the 1995 Kobe earthquakes. He also investigated the Kocaeli earthquake in Turkey for ATC in 1999. He was EERI Secretary-Treasurer from 1994 through 1999 and has been a member of the Editorial Board of Earthquake Spectra. He was active in the establishment of EERI’s Endowment Fund and participated in several of its projects, including service as editor for North America and Oceania for the World Housing Encyclopedia. He continues to serve as chair of the Development Committee.

Since 1997, Craig has been the campus seismic consultant for the University of California, Berkeley, where he has developed performance-based standards for the evaluation, design, and retrofit of campus buildings. Craig is an active participant in the development of procedures and guidelines for PBEE and has published numerous technical papers, mostly on the practical aspects of PBEE. He advised the administration of Stanford University on the repair and retrofit of many buildings damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has helped to manage a peer review panel for the seismic retrofit program of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART).

After graduating from Santa Clara University and the University of California, Berkeley, he learned structural design at Rutherford & Chekene in San Francisco.

James Jirsa is one of the foremost researchers in the United States in the behavior and design of reinforced concrete structures, including the anchorage and development of reinforcement, detailing, durability, and rehabilitation of structures in seismic zones. As the holder of the Janet S. Cockrell Centennial Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, he is also one of the leading educators in earthquake engineering, having served on the faculty at UT since 1972, where he has supervised more than 100 master’s and 40 PhD students.

Jim served on the EERI Board of Directors and is an Honorary Member and Past-President of the American Concrete Institute. He has given outstanding service to the earthquake engineering community as a member and chair of numerous ACI committees, including ACI 318, Structural Concrete Building Code, and ACI 369, Seismic Repair and Rehabilitation. Jim has been recognized by his peers on numerous occasions for his truly remarkable accomplishments as a teacher, researcher, and author, including membership of the National Academy of Engineering.

He has engineering degrees from the Universities of Nebraska and Illinois and was on the faculty at Nebraska and Rice University before joining UT Austin in 1972. He served as director of the Ferguson Structural Engineering Lab and as Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering at UT.