EERI is pleased to announce that the 2022 recipient of the Shah Family Innovation Prize is Gerard J. O'Reilly, in recognition of his significant and diverse research output and its impact on engineering practice, as well as his leadership in designing and coordinating international collaborations across the seismic world. The Shah Prize is awarded to early- to mid-career individuals who have emphasized creative and innovative thinking and demonstrated the potential to make major contributions to the field of earthquake risk mitigation and management. The prize recognizes a combination of past accomplishments and future potential.
Gerard J. O’Reilly is an Assistant Professor at the Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS) in Pavia, Italy. He holds a PhD in Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology from IUSS, as well as MSc and BE(Hons) degrees in Civil Engineering from the National University of Ireland in Galway. He was a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012 and at the Kobori Research Complex in Tokyo, Japan in 2019.
O’Reilly’s research focuses on seismic design and assessment of structures to incorporate innovative aspects of performance-based earthquake engineering. These include loss and risk targeting approaches in a general effort design towards the next generation of design codes, as well as the Sismabonus risk classification guidelines in Italy. He is the principal investigator of the ROSSINI project to develop a risk-based navigation system for industrial plant workers at risk of NaTech events. He also serves as the coordinator of the €11.6M EU-funded ERIES (Engineering Research Infrastructures for European Synergies) project, which provides transnational access to conduct experimental research and advance frontier knowledge related to seismic, wind and geotechnical hazards.
