Matthew Eatherton

Matthew Eatherton, a Ph.D. candidate in civil engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), has been selected as the 2009-2010 NEHRP Graduate Fellow in Earthquake Hazard Reduction. EERI awards this fellowship each year in a cooperative program with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. The award is given to foster the participation of capable individuals in furthering the goals and practice of earthquake hazard mitigation. The fellowship provides $12,000 for a nine-month stipend and $8,000 for tuition, fees, and research expenses.

The fellowship applications were reviewed by Associate Professor Ellen Rathje at the University of Texas at Austin, who is chair of the EERI Student Activities Committee; Assistant Professor Scott Brandenberg at the University of California, Los Angeles; Associate Professor JoAnn Browning at the University of Kansas; Assistant Professor Terri Norton at the University of Nebraska, Omaha; and Professor Julio Ramirez at Purdue University. Eatherton was chosen from a group of ten well-qualified applicants from the fields of social policy and structural and geotechnical engineering at universities in Illinois, Iowa, Utah, Michigan, Georgia, and California.

After Eatherton earned an M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1999, he practiced structural engineering for seven years, primarily in California. He was active on the Seismology Committee of the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California and worked with Build Change to reduce earthquake-related damage and loss of life in developing countries.

His goal is to join the faculty at a university to both share his passion for earthquake engineering and to research new topics. His research at the University of Illinois focuses on development of an innovative self-centering seismic force-resisting system. The controlled rocking system combines post-tensioning, which produces self-centering ability, with replaceable energy dissipating elements to significantly improve post-earthquake structural repairability. He has conducted large-scale cyclic and hybrid simulation tests at UIUC’s NEES facility. He is currently assisting in preparations for large-scale shake table tests to be carried out at the Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center in Japan in August 2009. Subsequently, he will be performing detailed system analyses and extensive data reduction, followed by integrating the results into design recommendations so that the new system can be implemented in practice. His faculty advisor at UIUC, Professor Jerome F. Hajjar, indicates that Eatherton’s research will contribute seminal work in the field of earthquake engineering.