Keynote Speakers

Thank you to all our keynote speakers for CCEE-PCEE 2023!

Dr. Stavroula Pantazopoulou

Dr. Voula (S. J.) Pantazopoulou, ACI Fellow, is Professor and former Chair of Civil Engineering, Lassonde Faculty, York University. She holds an Undergraduate Degree in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and MSc and PhD Degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. She specializes in Reinforced Concrete Structures, Performance-based Earthquake Engineering, Structural Retrofit, and novel structural materials (such as CNTs in concrete, FRPs, UHPC, and structural biomaterials). Recent work deals with the development of sustainable geopolymer concrete, forensics of bridges damaged by Alkali-Aggregate Reactivity, Strain-hardening fibre-reinforced cementitious materials, whereas a significant part of her past activity was dedicated to Seismic Assessment and Retrofit of Reinforced Concrete Buildings and Bridges, evaluation and repair of corrosion-induced deterioration of structures, and the use of emerging materials in structural retrofit.

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She has served as faculty in several Universities having obtained an international expertise through training and the various posts she has taken up during her academic career. She begun her academic career at the University of Toronto, as Assistant Professor in 1988, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1992; in 1997 she was appointed Associate Professor at Democritus University of Thrace, in Greece, where she was promoted to Full Professor in 2001; she took the position on Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Cyprus in 2011, where she was appointed Department Chair in 2013-2015.  Since 2016 she has returned to Canada as Professor in the Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, in Toronto.  She has 35 years of experience in funded research and has supervised 19 PhD students (4 ongoing) and over 50 Master of Science (Thesis) students. The research thus conducted has yielded more than 120 Journal papers with over 5500 citations to her work (she belongs within the top 1.2% of most highly cited researchers in the field). She has co-organized several International Conference Sessions on Seismic Assessment and Retrofit of RC and Masonry Structures and has co-edited a dedicated volume by Springer on Seismic Assessment of Heritage Unreinforced Masonry Constructions.  She serves the profession through participation as a member in several Technical Committees by the ACI, ASCE, FIB, and CSCE, as well as a panel member of several National and International Panels reviewing proposals and academic university programs. She has also served in the Committee developing KADET on behalf of OASP in Greece, and is currently member of the Canadian Standards’ Association Bridge Design Committee Specializing in the use of Ultra High Performance Fiber Reinforced Concrete in Bridge Construction.  She is also Member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Society for Earthquake Engineering and the International Association of Earthquake Engineering.

Dr. Pantazopoulou has been selected as a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada for 2019, is a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute, and has received a meritorious award from ASCE (Moisseiff award for “notable contributions to the science and art of Civil Engineering”).

Topic of Keynote: Novel Materials and Technologies in Seismic Retrofit of Existing Reinforced Concrete Structures

Plenary Abstract

Dr. Masayoshi Nakashima

Masayoshi Nakashima is Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University, Japan. He earned his bachelor and master degrees from Kyoto University (1975, 1977) and Ph.D. from Lehigh University, the Unites States of America (1981). After the doctoral study, he started working for the Building Research Institute (BRI) of Japan between 1981 and 1988 and then for Kobe University between 1988 and 1992 before joining Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University in 1992. During 2004 to 2011, he also worked as Director of E-Defense, a research institution that manages the world largest shaking table, and led a large international project commonly called “NEES/E-Defense Joint Research”.

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His fields of research include seismic analysis and design of steel building structures and large-scale experimental techniques for the simulation of earthquake responses. Together with his students, he has published about four hundred technical papers, over two hundred and fifty of them appearing in archived journals. He has earned various national and international awards, including the Best Paper Prize of AIJ (Architectural Institute of Japan), the Best Paper Prize of JSSC (Japanese Society for Steel Construction), the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) Moisseiff Award (2000), the Special Achievement Award of AISC (American Institute for Steel Construction) (2009), the ASCE Ernest E. Howard Award (2013), and the EERI (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute) George W. Housner Medal (2014), among others.

He served as Director of DPRI, Kyoto University between 2011 and 2013, Program Director of Cabinet Office of Japan in charge of Cross-Ministerial Project on disaster resilience between 2014 to 2017, and President of the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) between 2015 and 2017. He also served as Director of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) between 2008 and 2011, and since 2018 and until 2022, he was President of International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE). Furthermore, He continues to work as Editor of International Journal of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics (EESD) since 2006 and was appointed as Executive Editor of EESD in 2020.

Nakashima is Member of the Engineering Academy of Japan (2013) and also inducted to International Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the United States (2015), Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy of Engineering (2016), and Corresponding Member of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts (2021). He holds the honorary positions that include Honorary Professor of Tsinghua University, China (2018), Honorary Professor of Institute of Engineering Mechanics (IEM) (2017), China Administration of Earthquakes, Honorary Member of IAEE (2017), Honorary Member of AIJ (2018), and Honorary Member of EERI (2019).

Nakashima retired from Kyoto University in March 2017, and since then, he works as Chief Technical Counselor of Kajima Corporation and President of Kobori Research Complex Inc. (KRC), a consulting firm affiliated with Kajima Corporation specialized in earthquake engineering and engineering seismology.

Topic of Keynote: Monitoring the land and built-environment in Japan, its roles for earthquake disaster mitigation, and people’s perception and expectation

Plenary Abstract

Dr. Michel Bruneau

Michael Bruneau is a SUNY Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo, a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and Emeritus Director of an NSF-funded Earthquake Engineering Center that focused on enhancing the disaster resilience of communities.  He has spent more than three decades developing engineering strategies to enhance the resilience of infrastructure. His extensive body of research has been instrumental to the inclusion, in national and international standards, of specifications for multiple innovative structural systems, leading to implementation in countless structures worldwide.  He has received more than 20 prestigious awards for this innovative work, including a lifetime achievement award.  Dr. Bruneau has conducted numerous reconnaissance visits to disaster-stricken areas, is a member of many professional and technical code-writing committees, and has served on many expert peer review panels. He is one of the most cited researchers in structural engineering and earthquake engineering.  He has authored or co-authored over 550 technical publications, including more than 180 referred journal papers, 250 papers in conference proceedings. Notably, he is the lead author of the 900-pages textbook “Ductile Design of Steel Structures,” used worldwide by structural engineers, and is the lead author of the 2003 seminal paper that has formulated a concept and expression of disaster resilience that today is at the foundation of most research on this topic.

Topic of Keynote: From Earthquake Engineering to Nuclear Holocaust, via The Blessings of Disaster: The Lessons That Catastrophes Teach Us and Why Our Future Depends on It

Plenary Abstract

Dr. Ruben Boroschek

Dr. Ruben Boroschek obtained his engineering degree from University of Costa Rica and his PhD degree at the University of California Berkeley. He is a Professor at the University of Chile since 1992. His areas of research are seismic hazards- experimental dynamic and structural health monitoring, vulnerability assessment of critical facilities, base isolation, and passive energy dissipation. Also, he has developed a carrier in the industry in areas of structural health monitoring and structural review of industrial facilities. In 2017 he was designated Engineer of The Year by the Chilean Structural Engineers Association and the Best Industrial project of the year 2019 by the same association. He is an honorary professor at National University of San Antonio Abad of Cusco Peru, a Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy of Engineering, and a representative of the Anti-Seismic System International Society for central and south America. He is the ex- President of the Consortium of Organization for Strong Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS).

Topic of Keynote: SSHM and Computer Vision

Plenary Abstract

Dr. Upul Atukorala, PEng

Dr. Upul Atukorala, PEng is a Fellow and a senior geotechnical consulting engineer attached to WSP-Golder’s Vancouver office.  Over his 35+ year consulting career, he has been responsible for multi-disciplinary in the Lower Mainland, nationally, and internationally.  He is an industry-recognized specialist on ground response analysis and seismic design of earth structures, soil/structure interaction analysis, and ground improvement methods required to mitigate soil liquefaction.  He has in-depth and hands-on knowledge on all aspects of deep foundations, shallow infrastructure tunnels, and design of above and below-grade structures.

Upul has led a number of assignments related to the development of seismic design guidelines for earth structure systems (including dikes) and has participated in Task Forces and Codes/Standards addressing geotechnical earthquake engineering aspects.

Topic of Keynote: Input Ground Motions for Performance-Based Seismic Design of Soil-Structure Systems

Plenary Abstract

Dr. Caroline Holden

Caroline is a seismologist based in Aotearoa-New Zealand (NZ) with 20yrs experience in earthquake ground shaking and its impact on the natural, human and built environment. She started her research company SeismoCity Ltd in 2021 and actively collaborates with NZ research institutes. 

In addition to her experience in earthquake science hazard research and its impact on communities she has gained a wide range of experience and unique skills in earthquake research, emergency response and leadership within the natural hazard, and resiliency communities in NZ. She was a dedicated first responder “earthquake duty officer” and a member of the “NZ tsunami expert panel” for nearly a decade. She currently leads research projects on the “Development of improved ground motion models of the Alpine Fault, NZ”, the “Implementation of earthquake early warning systems for Aotearoa-New Zealand”, and the “Analysis and assessment of structural response to ground shaking”. She is a member and a Fellow of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE)

Topic of Keynote: Earthquake Early Warning Systems

Plenary Abstract

Dr. John Hare

John commenced work with Holmes since 1985 and has been in leadership and governance roles with the Group since 1997. He has experience working in New Zealand, the United States. United Kingdom and Hong Kong, and holds professional practice qualifications in both NZ and the US. Through his early career, John developed his design and assessment capability through a wide range of buildings and civil structures, both in new design and in strengthening, based mostly in Christchurch. In 1994, John was seconded to EQE International for a period immediately following the Northridge earthquake, to perform post-earthquake assessments, and for general reconnaissance. This led to his involvement in EQE NZ, a joint venture in New Zealand for purposes of seismic hazard assessment.

On transferring to Auckland in 1997, John worked closely with Trevor Kelly in upgrading and extending Holmes Consulting Group’s analytical and design services. He has been responsible for the groups overall technical development programme, and continues to provide input for technical advancement and business development.

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In 1999, John began working on design-build applications for new composite materials in strengthening of existing buildings.

In 2000, he relocated to San Francisco when Holmes established Holmes Culley (now Holmes Structures). As President of Holmes Culley, he was responsible for the overall business development of the company, and was active in advancing their capability in  seismic strengthening of existing structures, and in particular the use of composites in that application.

In 2005, John returned to Auckland, where he was the Technical Development director and Auckland Office manager for Holmes Consulting Group, before returning to Canterbury in 2006 to run the Christchurch office. Following the Canterbury Earthquakes, John spent a period acting as the Principal Engineering Adviser for Christchurch (CERA), providing advice on building safety and evaluation. He has been a member of the Ministry for Building, Innovation and Employment’s Engineering Advisory Group, during which time he was the principal author for the commercial building Detailed Damage Evaluation guidance and Industrial Building Assessment guidance. He is a member of the Ministry of Education Engineering Strategy
Group, providing advice on design standards and safety for education buildings and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment’s Seismic Working Group, providing advice on the incorporation of the new National Seismic Hazard model into the NZ Building Code.

In September 2015, John was appointed CEO of Holmes Group Limited, the parent company of the Holmes, covering the operation of all parts of the business, currently located in NZ, Australia, Netherlands and the US. In 2013, John was the sole winner of the Fulton-Downer award from
Engineering NZ, recognising his contribution through leadership of SESOC and participation with CERA and MBIE through the post-earthquake recovery.

John is a former President of the Structural Engineering Society.

Topic of Keynote: Challenges for Earthquake Engineering Practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

Plenary Abstract