EERI is delighted to announce the Board of Directors has appointed Jack Baker (M.EERI 2004) Editor-in-Chief and Helen Crowley (M.EERI 2008) Editor of Earthquake Spectra. They will take up their new positions in January 2023. “EERI thanks David Wald for his four years of outstanding service as Editor-in-Chief,” said Executive Director Heidi Tremayne. “Under his leadership, Spectra’s 2021 Impact Factor rose to 4.330, and he navigated a complex and very successful transition from our prior self-published model to our current publisher SAGE. Congratulations to Jack and Helen—we look forward to seeing the journal continuing to grow and thrive with the new editorial team!”
Baker has been Editor of Spectra since 2018, and previously served as an Associate Editor for both Spectra and the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. He is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs at Stanford University, and is the director of the Stanford Urban Resilience Initiative, which applies engineering analyses to social impact and human behavior in the context of disasters and extreme events. His research is at the forefront of the interface of earthquake seismology and earthquake engineering, and he also has industry experience in seismic hazard assessment, construction management, and modeling of catastrophic losses for insurance companies. He received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University, where he also earned M.S. degrees in Statistics and Structural Engineering. Baker is the 2011 recipient of the Spectra Outstanding Paper Award and was awarded the Shah Family Innovation Prize in 2010. He was recently named the recipient of the 2023 William B. Joyner Lecture Award by EERI and SSA.
Crowley, an Associate Editor of Spectra from 2012-18, is an independent seismic risk consultant. She currently works with the European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering (EUCENTRE) on a number of projects related to seismic risk and loss modeling, and she recently coordinated the development of the first openly available European seismic risk model. Crowley holds an M.Eng. in Civil Engineering from Imperial College London and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Earthquake Engineering from the University of Pavia (ROSE School). After her doctorate, she worked as a seismic risk researcher at EUCENTRE before moving to the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Foundation to coordinate their seismic risk activities at a global scale. She also served as Deputy Secretary General of the GEM Foundation from 2012 to 2014. She is a recipient of the 2012 Shah Family Innovation Prize and the 2009 European Geosciences Union Plinius Medal.
