February 22, 2018 — In 2016 the Computational Modeling and Simulation Center (SimCenter) of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was awarded to UC Berkeley with Professor Stephen Mahin as Principal Investigator (PI) and founding-Director. Under Mahin’s visionary leadership, the SimCenter assembled a talented multi-university team of researchers to advance simulation methods to quantify and mitigate the effects of natural hazards on the built environment.

With Professor Mahin’s recent passing, NSF has announced Professor Sanjay Govindjee from UC Berkeley as the SimCenter’s new PI. The SimCenter is now under the co-directorship of Professor Govindjee and Professor Greg Deierlein (Stanford University), who jointly intend to carry out the SimCenter’s vision to be a vehicle to transform research in natural hazards engineering.

Principal Investigator (PI) Govindjee is joined by co-PIs at Stanford University (Greg Deierlein), University of Washington (Laura Lowes), University of Notre Dame (Ahsan Kareem), and UC Berkeley/CITRIS and the Banatao Institute (Camille Crittenden). More than 35 other affiliated faculty, staff, postdocs, and students from more than 12 major research universities from around the U.S. contribute to the SimCenter’s activities.

The goal of the SimCenter is to provide the natural hazards engineering research and education community with access to next-generation computational modeling and simulation software tools, user support, and educational materials needed to advance the nation’s capability to simulate the impact of natural hazards on structures, lifelines, and communities. The research enabled by the SimCenter will ultimately empower engineers to perform simulations that will inform decision-making by government, industry, and community leaders on risk management and mitigation measures to improve community resilience to earthquakes, storms, and other extreme hazards.

Principal Investigator:

Sanjay Govindjee, UC Berkeley

Leadership team:

Camille Crittenden, CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, UC Berkeley
Greg Deierlein, Stanford University
Ahsan Kareem, University of Notre Dame
Laura Lowes, University of Washington

Management Team

Frank McKenna, Chief Technology Officer
Matthew Schoettler, Associate Director for Operations

The NHERI SimCenter can be contacted at nheri-simcenter@berkeley.edu.

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Related Links

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Stephen A. Mahin passes away, February 10, 2018

Computational Modeling and Simulation Center (SimCenter)