People

We have a great team of graduate and undergraduate students and postdoctoral scholars, committed to research in earthquake engineering and community resilience. Contact Professor Liel for information about joining our group. In the meantime, read more about us below!

JOCELYN GONZALEZ FRANCO, SOPHOMORE IN ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING

Jocelyn is working on advancing methods for calculating post-earthquake functional recovery, focusing on components that break and may flood areas, and data/server systems.

Mia Lochhead, SENIOR Undergraduate at University of Notre Dame

Mia (she/her) is working on modeling informally constructed homes in Puerto Rico in order to study how components and variations of typical homes respond to wind loads.

firaol fekadu, PH.D. Student in Structures

Janice Higuera, Ph.D. Student in Construction Engineering/Management And Global Engineering

Janice (she/her) is investigating the impact of homes built through the Department of Defense's innovative training partnerships on community health and socio-economic resilience as well as, military training objectives.

Janice is co-advised by Professor Amy Javernick-Will.

Lianne Brito, Ph.D Student in Geotech and Structures

Lianne (she/her) is focusing on experimentally studying how stratigraphic variability and layering within the soil profile affects liquefaction manifestation near and away from structures.

Lianne is co-advised by Professor Shideh Dashti and Professor Brad Wham

Maria Jose Echeverria, Ph.d. Student in structures

Maria Jose (she/her) is modeling seismic response of reinforced concrete wall structures, studying damage control and functional recovery.

DUSTIN COOK, PH.D. Student in structures

Dustin (he/him) is working on advancing seismic loss assessments, particularly comparing FEMA P-58 assessments to HAZUS and ATC 13. In addition, Dustin is contributing to a project benchmarking ASCE 41 in comparison to earthquake damage for reinforced concrete buildings.

Hailey Rae Rose, Ph.d. Student in structures and geotech

Hailey (she/her) is a GAANN Fellowship student and starting her research on underground infrastructure which includes box structures and pipelines. She will be doing a lot of centrifuge work once her official research starts this summer.

Hailey is co-advised by Professor Brad Wham and Professor Shideh Dashti.

Briar Goldwyn, PH.D. Student in construction engineering and management

Briar (she/her) is studying the construction of houses in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. Right now, she is focused on household risk perceptions of informally and incrementally constructed houses.

Briar is co-advised by Professor Amy Javernick-Will.

sara glade, POSTDOC, Interdisciplinary research theme in resilience Infrastructure with sustainability and equity

Sara is studying the resilience of incarceration infrastructure and the injustices a lack of resilience creates for incarcerated persons.

Research Group Alumni

Polly Murray, University of Colorado, PhD 2021; Current position: Postdoctoral Fellow at NIST

Dustin Cook, University of Colorado, PhD 2021; Current position: NRC Postdoctoral researcher at NIST

Casie Venable, University of Colorado, PhD 2020; Current position: Risk and resilience consultant, Arup

Zachary Bullock, University of Colorado, PhD 2020; Current position: Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia

Eyitayo Opabola, Visiting Student at Univ. of Colorado, University of Auckland, PhD, 2021; Current position: Research fellow in resilience engineering at University College London

Mohammad Salehi, Texas A&M, PhD 2019; Current position: Postdoctoral research associate at Rice University

Jakub Valigura, University of Colorado, PhD 2019; Current position: Design Engineer, KPFF

Robert Chase, University of Colorado, PhD 2018; Current position: Research Structural Engineer, USGS

Balaji Paramasivam, University of Colorado, PhD 2018: Current position: Project engineer, Fugro

Jenny Ramirez, University of Colorado, PhD 2018; Current position: Geosyntec Consultants

Orlando Arroyo, Visiting Student at Univ. of Colorado, Catholic University of Chile, PhD; Current position: Associate Professor and Department Chair, Universidad de la Sabana, Colombia

Taojun Liu, Postdoc, University of Colorado 2015-2017; Current position: Pipeline risk and integrity engineer, TC Energy

Sarah Welsh-Huggins, University of Colorado, PhD 2017; Current position: Team Lead (Acting)/Infrastructure & Engineering Advisor at USAID - Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance

Cody Harrington, University of Colorado, PhD 2016

Derya Deniz, Postdoc, University of Colorado, 2014-2015; Current position: Assistant Professor, Özyeğin University

D. Jared DeBock, University of Colorado, PhD 2013; Current position: Associate Professor, California State University, Chico

Meera Raghunandan, University of Colorado, PhD 2013; Current position: Assistant Professor, IIT Bombay

Siamak Sattar, University of Colorado, PhD 2013; Research Structural Engineer and Acting Group Leader Earthquake Engineering Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology