The second Shah Family Innovation Prize was awarded at the EERI Annual Meeting in Monterey. The recipient of the $10,000 prize was Professor Durgesh C. Rai of the University of Roorkee, India, and now at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. The Shah Family Innovation Prize was created with a gift to the EERI Endowment Fund by the Haresh Shah family. The prize honors individuals less than 35 years old who have demonstrated at early stages in their careers the potential to make major contributions to the field of earthquake risk mitigation and management.

Rai represents creativity and innovation in academia. With a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, he has wide ranging involvement in earthquake engineering. He has developed innovative retrofit schemes for elevated water tanks, and pioneered the use of an aluminum beam as a shear-link, acting as an energy dissipation device. He developed a design guide for special truss moment frames. He has been actively involved in many projects following the 1997 Jabalpur and 1999 Chamoli earthquakes. He has demonstrated public entrepreneurship through participation in the development of codes and in continuing education programs for design professionals, focusing on the importance of improving standards to reduce future risk. He will be an active participant in the Indian earthquake engineering community to take lessons from the recent devastating Gujarat earthquake and translate them into improved practice. He has received two prestigious national awards in India, given in recognition of creativity, innovation, and future potential, including the Young Engineer Award of 1999 and the Young Scientist Award of 1998, both given by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

The Shah Family Innovation Prize Selection Committee unanimously selected the two prize recipients. The committee was chaired by Robert D. Hanson, University of Michigan/FEMA.  Committee members included William T. Holmes, Rutherford and Chekene; Wilfred D. Iwan, California Institute of Technology; Peter J. May, University of Washington; and Pratap Shirke, Pan-Gulf Group, Ltd. Follow this link for a description of the nomination process and selection criteria.