Erol Kalkan

Erol Kalkan, a research engineer-seismologist with the California Geological Survey, has been selected as the 2008 NEHRP Professional Fellow in Earthquake Hazard Reduction, awarded by EERI under a cooperative program funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This activity is undertaken by FEMA as part of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. The fellowship is designed to provide an opportunity for a practicing professional to gain greater skills and broader expertise in earthquake risk reduction. The Institute extends thanks to the review committee, consisting of Thalia Anagnos, San Jose State University; Marshall Lew, MACTEC Engineering; and Jonathan Bray, University of California, Berkeley.

Kalkan will work with Professor Anil Chopra at the University of California, Berkeley, to develop practical guidelines to select and scale earthquake records for nonlinear response history analysis of structures. According to Chopra, Kalkan’s project has the potential to influence directly the current practice of earthquake engineering by addressing a critical technical problem facing the profession. “There is an urgent need for practical guidelines indicating how a certain suite of records would affect the response results and how they should be selected and scaled to achieve reliable estimates of seismic demand.” Kalkan proposes to bridge the gap between seismologists and structural engineers, bringing together both sets of knowledge and understanding, to help select and scale records to provide robust prediction of the earthquake response of structures.

Kalkan holds a Ph.D. in structural engineering with a minor in geotechnical engineering from the University of California, Davis. He holds two masters degrees, one in engineering seismology from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey, and the other in structural engineering from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from METU in civil engineering with an emphasis on structural engineering. Kalkan is currently acting as a guest co-editor for a special edition of the journal Engineering Structures, published by Elsevier.

The professional fellowship is awarded annually and provides a stipend of $30,000, commencing in January 2008 for tuition, fees, and living expenses for a 2-month period.

The objective of EERI is to reduce earthquake risk by advancing the science and practice of earthquake engineering, by improving understanding of the impact of earthquakes on the physical, social, economic, political and cultural environment, and by advocating comprehensive and realistic measures for reducing the harmful effects of earthquakes.

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
499 14th Street, Suite 320
Oakland, California 94612-1934
tel: (510) 451-0905 • fax: (510) 451-5411