Pulse Newsletter

February 15, 2025

News of the Institute

In Memoriam: David M. Johnston (1966 – 2025)

David JohnstonIt is with great sadness that we announce the passing of David Johnston (M. EERI 2013) on January 19, 2025. David was the Distinguished Professor of Disaster Management and Director of the Joint Centre for Disaster Research (JCDR), in the School of Psychology at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand. As well as being the Director of the JCDR which he established in 2006, he was also the Deputy Director of Te Hiranga Rū QuakeCoRE, the multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional New Zealand Centre for Earthquake Resilience research program.

He was one of New Zealand’s leading researchers and educators in the fields of social science and natural hazards, with more than 30 years of research experience focusing on human responses to earthquake, tsunami, and weather warnings, crisis decision-making and the role of public education and participation in building community resilience and recovery. In 2016, he received the New Zealand Civil Defence Emergency Management Ministerial Award for outstanding and sustained contribution to the New Zealand emergency management sector over the past 25 years. He was awarded a Fellowship of the New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering in 2019 and was a nominee to the EERI Board of Directors in 2021. In July 2024, he was awarded the title of Distinguished Professor at Massey University.

As noted by David’s colleagues at JCDR, David “had a deep understanding of the power of building relationships and working with (and indeed for) communities, and he was always willing and eager to go to where the needs were and to meet people dealing with the personal impact of disasters. He was dedicated to improving the lives of all those affected by disasters and emergencies.”

David is survived by his wife Carol Stewart, son Joshua, siblings Chris and Sarah, extended family, current and former students, and many colleagues and friends around the world.

Read the full obituary by Laurie A. Johnson (M.EERI 1990) on the EERI website here.

Cristina Cordova-Arias and Kaleigh Yost Receive 2025 Younger Member Award

EERI is pleased to announce that the recipients of the 2025 Younger Member Award are Cristina Cordova-Arias (M.EERI 2018) and Kaleigh Yost (M.EERI 2012). The EERI Younger Member Award is awarded to recognize early-career members of the Institute who have made outstanding contributions to the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the pursuit of its objectives in the early stages of their career, especially contributions that have improved opportunities for and increased the impact of younger members within the Institute.

2025 YMA Cristina Cordova Arias PhotoCristina Cordova-Arias is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatic Engineering at University College London, focusing on developing functional recovery models to enhance community resilience in post-earthquake environments. She was recognized as one of the 2024 New Faces of Civil Engineering Professionals by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Cristina formerly served as the Program Director of Civil Engineering at Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola (USIL) in Lima, Peru, and founded the EERI Student Chapter at USIL. She has contributed to a World Bank project on structural-upgrading policy-making for school buildings and participated in EERI's Learning From Earthquakes Travel Study Program trip in New Zealand. Cristina holds a M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. She and her sister are the founders of the "Tu historia tiene poder" initiative, which empowers low-income and first-generation students in Peru to pursue higher education.

As co-chair of EERI's Younger Members Committee (YMC), Cristina has played a key role in organizing Meet the Leaders events, expanding opportunities for early-career members. She receives this award in recognition of her work to increase professional learning opportunities for younger members, to promote diversity and international representation, and to foster an inclusive environment within EERI through actively encouraging the involvement of younger members from the Latin America and Caribbean region.

2025 YMA Kaleigh Yost PhotoKaleigh Yost is the Kimball Early Career Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. Her expertise is in geotechnical site characterization and numerical methods for geohazard applications. Kaleigh is currently working on projects studying soil liquefaction and levee stability under changing hydroclimatic conditions. Kaleigh holds a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech, an M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame.

Kaleigh joined EERI when she formed Notre Dame's first undergraduate Seismic Design Team in 2011, and has served in various capacities for EERI ever since. While working towards her PhD, she was co-president of Virginia Tech’s student chapter and helped organize the Post-Earthquake Reconnaissance Workshop as a member of the Student Leadership Council (SLC). She currently serves as a co-chair of the Public Policy and Advocacy (PPA) Committee, where she has helped develop policy position statements, advocated for the reauthorization of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program and the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, and developed new initiatives to involve younger members in the PPA. She also serves the Younger Members Committee as Mentorship Coordinator and advises the Penn State EERI student chapter. She receives this award in recognition of her determined advocacy for EERI’s student and younger members by spearheading outreach and mentoring opportunities, and for her leadership within the SLC, YMC, and PPA.

LFE 2024 Year End Campaign Exceeds Goal

When we set our milestone goal to raise $20,000 for EERI and the Learning from Earthquakes (LFE) program by December 31, 2024, we knew you all would be on board. But you surprised us and we exceeded our goal!

Thank you to each of our donors who helped us achieve this milestone. Your generous support ensures that EERI is ready when the next earthquake hits. With the LFE Endowment, we will be able to swiftly launch reconnaissance activities after future earthquakes, share valuable information on lessons learned through our reports and webinars, and create unique learning experiences for our members.

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Learning From Earthquakes

NEW LFE-SSEER Report on Recovery from 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquake Sequence

On February 6, the second anniversary of the devastating 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquake Sequence, EERI’s Learning From Earthquakes program published a new joint report with the Social Science Extreme Events Research Network (SSEER) sharing the findings from the follow-up reconnaissance team LFE and SSEER sent to Türkiye in October 2024.

LFESSEER report cover updated The report summarizes preliminary observations of housing and business recovery in the provinces of Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Adıyaman, and Hatay. The report provides an overview of the structure and processes that were put in place to support recovery after the earthquake, summarizes the team’s observations of progress made in redeveloping communities and restoring housing and businesses 20 months after the earthquake, documents observations of building recovery and reconstruction in urban and rural settings, and synthesizes key factors and barriers to successful recovery identified by the team, as well as general reflections and potential future studies.

The accompanying data repository published at DesignSafe includes the engineering and social sciences data from the team. Photos from the mission are shared with relevant metadata (such as latitude and longitude). The social science interview questionnaire for the study of organizational response and recovery and de-identified notes from interviews are also shared. Data can be reused to inform similar research studies and further analysis.

Read more about the LFE-SSEER team and report in the news post here. A recording of the webinar held on February 11 with members of the team will be shared soon on EERI’s YouTube channel and at the LFE virtual clearinghouse for these earthquakes.

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Public Policy and Advocacy

CalLeg Welcomes New Co-Chair

EERI’s California Legislative (CalLeg) Subcommittee, a subcommittee of EERI’s Public Policy and Advocacy Committee (PPA)  is excited to announce the appointment of Samuel Mengelkoch (M.EERI 2000) as a new Co-Chair, effective January 2025. Sam is a Principal with Structural Focus, a structural engineering firm based in Gardena, California. Sam will replace Anna Lang (M.EERI 2002), who is stepping down after over four years of dedicated service to CalLeg. At the same time, Zoe Yin (M.EERI 2016) is also stepping down after four years as Secretary of CalLeg. The subcommittee is grateful for Anna’s and Zoe’s leadership and service.

CalLeg Co-Chair Justin Moresco (M.EERI 2012) and Secretary Isela Dy (M.EERI 2022) will both continue to serve for the remainder of their terms alongside Sam. Under this new leadership team, CalLeg will continue to advocate for policies that help to reduce earthquake risk in communities across the state. A statement of the CalLeg 2025 legislative priorities and actions can be found here.  

CalLeg meets monthly on the third Wednesday of every month from 12:00 - 1:30 pm PT. If you are interested in learning more or getting involved, please reach out to Isela at iselady2016@gmail.com.

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Oral History

Interviews by Stanley Scott Series: Frank E. McClure

Don’t miss the first publication in EERI’s new oral history series! Interviews by Stanley Scott: An EERI Oral History Collection preserves and shares the valuable unfinished work of Stanley Scott (1921-2002), who conducted tape-recorded interviews with pioneers in the field of earthquake engineering in the 1980s and 1990s that formed the basis for 17 volumes in the Connections series of oral histories. This new series makes available interviews that Scott was unable to finalize and publish during his lifetime. Members of the EERI Oral History Committee have edited the transcripts to produce the manuscripts, and several more volumes will be published in 2025.

McClureFrank E. McClure, the subject of this first volume, served as structural engineer on scores of schools, hospitals and building retrofit projects in Northern California. The 1952 Kern County earthquake was a turning point in his career, after which he traveled widely to study building damage after earthquakes and draw lessons for resilient structural design. In 1976, McClure left private practice to become the University of California’s top engineer, overseeing projects on all its campuses. Two years later, he became senior structural engineer for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, retiring in 1991. A longtime member of EERI, he served on the Board of Directors, as Secretary, and then as President of the Institute.

The volume, edited by Charles Scawthorn (M.EERI 1981) covers McClure’s early life and education, his experiences in the navy during World War II, his career as an engineer in private practice and at public institutions, his experiences with earthquake reconnaissance, and his involvement with and leadership of EERI. These interviews also explore McClure’s perspective on the Bay Area structural engineering community and major seismic design issues in the second half of the twentieth century, as well as his family’s recollections of his life and career.

Download the PDF of Frank E. McClure from the EERI Digital Library here.

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Spectra

2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquakes Special Collection

The editors of the Earthquake Spectra  special collection, “Impact of the February 6, 2023 M7.8 and M7.6 Earthquakes in Türkiye on the Built Environment, and Implications on Seismic Hazard,” announced ahead of last week’s anniversary of the 2023 earthquakes that the collection now holds some 31 papers, with more to come. The full special collection is available here at the journal’s website

The published papers can be categorized as follows:

  • Ground motion characteristics and damage potential (6 papers)

  • Post-earthquake reconnaissance, response, urban resilience (5 papers)

  • Geotechnical observations, ground deformations, soil liquefaction (5 papers)

  • Damage to reinforced concrete and steel building structures (4 papers)

  • Damage to historical masonry structures (2 papers)

  • Damage to road bridges (2 papers)

  • Damage to earth dams, hydraulic structures, and water systems (3 papers)

  • Seismic performance of hospitals (2 papers)

  • Damage assessment via neural networks and satellite imagery (2 papers)

The extensive scope of this collection reflects the massive research effort dedicated to understanding these earthquakes, including substantial multi-disciplinary data collection. Read the news post from the editorial team here.

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Students

SDC 2025 T-Shirt Competition: Voting is Now Open!

The time has come to select the official T-shirt design for the 2025 Seismic Design Competition (SDC). We received 20+ submissions from students all around the globe, and now it is your turn to help decide which one will represent this year’s competition.

Voting Deadline: February 20 at 11:59 PM (Pacific Time)

How to Cast Your Vote:

  • Browse the high-resolution designs here: Slides
  • Select your top three favorite designs.
  • Submit your votes through the official Voting Form

Competition Awards:

First Place: The winning design will be featured on all official SDC T-shirts worn by participants and SLC members. Additionally, the winner will receive:

  • A $200 prize
  • A complimentary T-shirt featuring their design
  • Recognition as the official SDC T-shirt designer for 2025

Second and Third Place: These designs will be highlighted on the competition banner or featured on the award certificates presented during the ceremony.

Voting is open to everyone, so we encourage all of our EERI members to participate—vote via the form here. Thank you for supporting our EERI student members with your vote!

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Regional Chapters

SoCal 2024 EERI Distinguished Lecture Events

Michael Olsen’s 2024 EERI Distinguished Lecture at UC Irvine

Thursday, February 27th, 2025, 4:30 PM

Structural Engineering Testing Hall, UC Irvine 

The Southern California Regional Chapter will host Dr. Michael Olsen (2004) recipient of EERI’s 2024 Distinguished Lecture Award, to present his lecture “Geospatial Technology– Saving the World's Past, Present, and Future from Natural Hazards” in Southern California. 

This presentation explores examples of how expanded and effective usage of geospatial technologies now can help us proactively “save” the world through detailed mapping of our critical lifeline infrastructure to improve 1) monitoring, modeling, and analysis efforts to more precisely identify vulnerable infrastructure, 2) planning for and understanding the potential impacts and damage extents associated with multiple hazards, 3) the conduct of post-disaster reconnaissance, damage assessments, and rebuilding efforts, and 4) digital preservation of infrastructure and other resources with significant cultural and historical importance that are unlikely to withstand major seismic forces lurking on the horizon. Ultimately, geospatial technology serves as the unifying glue to enable meaningful collaboration between science, engineering, and public policy necessary for a resilient society capable of effectively responding and adapting to natural hazards.

On February 27th, at 4:30pm the doors will open for a 5pm lecture followed by a social hour and networking event at UCI Irvine, 323 Engineering Laboratory Facility. The event is free.

A second lecture will likely be held at UCLA, jointly hosted with the UCLA Student Chapter. Details will be announced shortly and shared in the next edition of the Pulse.

New England 2025 Joyner Lecture Event

Laurie Baise’s 2025 Joyner Lecture in Boston

Thursday, March 13, 2025, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM (Eastern Time)

Hybrid: Verisk Boston office and Zoom

EERI’s New England Regional Chapter will host Dr. Laurie Baise (M.EERI 2002), recipient of the EERI’s 2025 William B. Joyner Lecture Award, to present her lecture "Risk and Reward: Working at the Boundaries of Earthquake Science.”

Working at the boundary of geology, seismology, and earthquake engineering can be both rewarding and challenging. In this lecture, Prof. Laurie Baise will talk about bridging the gap between earthquake engineers and earthquake scientists through geospatial proxies for site effects and liquefaction and the importance of regionally informed models. She will highlight her contributions developing both geospatial liquefaction and site effects models for both global and regional use. In the lecture, she will discuss some of the challenges that were the impetus for these contributions. Challenges related to using geostatistics to interpolate liquefaction potential across Boston led her to explore geological and geospatial approaches to characterizing liquefaction potential. Similarly, her identification of challenges in predicting one-dimensional site response using vertical arrays in Japan and the importance of regional wave propagation in San Francisco Bay led to her work on site response complexity and her recent contributions on geospatial topography derived site and basin terms for ground motion models.

The event will be held at Verisk Extreme Event Solutions (Lafayette City Center, 2 Avenue de Lafayette, 2nd Floor, Boston, MA), and online via Zoom. Register here to attend either in person or virtually.

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Announcements

Shah Lecture at Stanford by Veronica Cedillos

Veronica Cedillos (M.EERI 2012), President of GeoHazards International, will present the Shah Family Fund Distinguished Lecture at Stanford University on Wednesday, March 5, 2025.

Title: Catalyzing Pre-Disaster Action: Strategies for Addressing Rising Global Disaster Risk

Abstract: The challenge of minimizing the global impacts of natural hazards is becoming increasingly complex. Disaster risk is escalating due to rapid urban expansion into high-hazard areas, coupled with planning and construction practices that fail to account for local hazards. The rising frequency and intensity of extreme climate events are further amplifying these challenges, expanding the geographic extent of at-risk areas, and increasing unpredictability. The dynamic, evolving nature of climate-related disasters and their interconnectedness with other perils adds an additional layer of complexity, making proactive risk reduction more urgent than ever. At the same time, lower-income communities continue to bear the most severe consequences of disasters. The vast majority of disaster-related fatalities occur in emerging economies, where natural hazard events are a major driver of extreme poverty. Despite clear evidence that proactive risk mitigation is cost-effective and life-saving, global attention and funding remain disproportionately focused on post-disaster response rather than pre-disaster action.

In this lecture, I will share strategies for catalyzing proactive disaster risk reduction based on lessons learned throughout my career. These include (1) designing initiatives that acknowledge that building resilience requires sustained efforts over many years, (2) collaborating with local professionals and leaders by equipping them with the skills and knowledge to drive risk reduction within their communities, and (3) strategically leveraging post-disaster attention to accelerate mitigation efforts. I will highlight how these and other approaches can help guide collective efforts toward addressing increasing disaster risk around the world. Drawing on case studies from GeoHazards International—a nonprofit dedicated to disaster resilience in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions—this talk will provide practical, on-the-ground insights to inform and strengthen future efforts in disaster risk reduction.

The lecture will be held at 4:30 PM (with a pre-lecture reception starting at 4 PM) on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, in Tresidder Oak Lounge, Tresidder Student Union, Stanford University. View more information here.

Call for Papers: HeaMES 2025

The call for papers is open for the 6th International Conference on Health Monitoring of Civil & Maritime Structures (HeaMES 2025), to be held June 23-24, 2025 at London Croydon Aerodrome Hotel, London, Croydon. There is an urgent need for further progress in structural health monitoring (SHM) for both civil and maritime structures. HeaMES 2024 provides an ideal platform for innovative industry and practitioners, leading researchers, technology developers, and supply chain partners to meet. Bringing the pioneering experts together, the conference aims to promote exchange of ideas. 

Abstracts are due by February 23, 2025 and should be submitted by email to info@asranet.co.uk. For more information about the conference, please see the flyer here or view the conference website.

CEA Brace + Bolt Program Applications Open

The California Residential Mitigation Program (CRMP) has announced the opening of their Earthquake Brace + Bolt grant application window for 2025. California homeowners are now eligible to apply for Earthquake Brace + Bolt (EBB) seismic retrofit grants, to help make their home less vulnerable to earthquake damage. This year, 303 new ZIP Codes have been added, making the total number of eligible ZIP Codes 1,118. Through March 26, 2025, eligible homeowners can apply for up to $3,000 in seismic retrofit grants at the Brace + Bolt website.

The CRMP is a joint-powers-authority entity formed by the California Earthquake Authority (CEA) and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES). 

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Subscribing Member Spotlight

New Platinum Subscribing Member: GeoVera Nova

GVN FinalEERI is delighted to welcome a new platinum-tier subscribing member! GeoVera Nova is a proven leader in serving the needs of insurance policyholders, from everyday household claims to the most severe catastrophic events.  

GeoVera is the longest tenured residential earthquake insurance provider in the United States. Established in 1995 in the immediate aftermath of the devastating Northridge earthquake, GeoVera provides earthquake protection to homeowners in California, Oregon and Washington. GeoVera Nova companies also provide specialized property insurance to families, business owners, and condominium associations, including earthquake and wind risk coverage.

As natural catastrophe risk continues to escalate around the world, GeoVera Nova believes it is critically important to utilize the highest earthquake engineering standards in the design and construction of new structures. GeoVera Nova also strongly supports proactive mitigation measures designed to strengthen older buildings—providing discounts to policyholders who have retrofitted their homes, for example, and actively supporting California’s pioneering Earthquake Brace & Bolt program.

GeoVera Nova is proud to become a Subscribing Member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and support the critically important work of the organization.

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