President 
Term: 2023

Biography

Janiele Maffei is the Chief Mitigation Officer at the California Earthquake Authority (CEA), where she manages the California Residential Mitigation Program, the retrofit incentive program Earthquake Brace and Bolt, various research projects, and other mitigation efforts that will benefit both policyholders and California homeowners. She received an M.S. degree in Civil (Structural) Engineering and A.B. degree in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and is licensed as a Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer, with over 40 years of experience in the design of new buildings, retrofit designs of existing buildings, seismic evaluations, seismic loss estimation studies, design of equipment anchorages, preparation of construction documents, project management, and construction administration. After fifteen years as a project manager and regional office director with Degenkolb Engineers, she opened her own practice where she managed complex design projects, before joiniing CEA in 2011. She is a past President of the Northern California Chapter and previously served on the Board of Directors as Secretary-Treasurer.

Past President
Term: 2023

Biography

David Cocke, S.E. is the founder and President of Structural Focus in Gardena, CA with expertise in seismic evaluation, historic preservation, retrofits, and new design. David brings a long history of involvement and leadership with EERI. He joined EERI in 1992 and is a Charter Member of the Southern California Chapter, and has participated for many years in the EERI Initiatives Development Committee and the Friedman Family Visiting Professionals Program. David served on the EERI Board of Directors from 2015 to 2017 and was Vice-President in 2017.  In addition to his engagement with EERI, David has served on the board of directors of many organizations, including the California Preservation Foundation, Pasadena Heritage, USC Architectural Guild, and SEAONC. A few of David’s notable professional projects include the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Red Bull North American Headquarters, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, and a new Amazon campus at Culver Studios.

Vice President
Term: 2020-2023

Biography

Terri R. Norton, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean for Students and Strategic Initiatives and professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Bucknell University. She also serves as the executive director of the Engineering Success Alliance. Terri’s technical expertise is in the area of structural dynamics and structural vulnerability. Her research interests involve evaluating the effects of hazards on civil structures, debris management, and disaster reconstruction. Prior to Bucknell, Terri was faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  She was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Japan for her debris management and reconstruction research following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. She has been a member of several post-disaster reconnaissance teams including Molise Earthquake (2003), Hurricane Charley (2004), Tohoku (2011), Hurricane Harvey (2017), and Hurricanes Irma and Maria (2017). Terri is a founding leader of the William “Bill” Anderson Fund (BAF) and an invited member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Resilient America Roundtable. 

Secretary/Treasurer
Term: 2018-2023 (previously served as Director on the board from 2015-2017)

Biography

Lucy Arendt, Ph.D., is the Associate Dean and Director of the Cofrin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She is also an Associate Professor of Management. She earned her Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has been a full-time faculty member since 2006. She was the recipient of the 2008 Founders Association Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the 2010 Student Nominated Teaching Award. She conducts research on individual and organizational decision making vis-à-vis disasters and on community resilience and recovery. She participated in reconnaissance research in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the September 2010 Canterbury, New Zealand earthquake, the former funded by MCEER and the latter as part of EERI’s Learning from Earthquakes program.

Director
Term: 2021-2024

Biography

Carlien Bou-Chedid an Independent Consulting Structural Engineer in Ghana. Her career has spanned more than 35years and covers a breadth of activities. She worked as a structural engineer with the Architectural and Engineering Services Corporation (AESC now AESL) where she was engaged in the design, supervision of construction and rehabilitation of several structures in Ghana. She was later engaged as Director, Education and Training of the Ghana Institution of Engineering (GhIE) during which period she was involved in designing policies and programs for the education and training of engineers. She also served as the Executive Secretary of the GhIE responsible for management of its administrative and financial affairs.

Director
Term: 2021-2024

Biography

Ayse [eye-sha] Hortacsu is Director of Projects at the Applied Technology Council (ATC) in the San Francisco Bay Area and has been a member of EERI since 2001, ever since she graduated from Stanford University. She is currently serving as the Chair of the EERI Oral History Committee that seeks to connect current members to those who have had pioneering careers in the field of earthquake engineering by recording their impressions, judgments, and experiences. As a Housner Fellow in 2014, Ayse helped complete a project on building code implementation in Nepal. She served as a Director for the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC) in 2016-2018 and the EERI Northern California chapter in 2009-2012.

Director
Term: 2020-2023

Biography

Jonathan P. Stewart is a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UCLA, where he has been a faculty member since 1996 and served as department chair from 2012-2018. He brings expertise in geotechnical earthquake engineering and engineering seismology. Jonathan serves on the Building Seismic Safety Council Provisions Update Committee and the Southern California Earthquake Center Planning Committee, and is co-principal investigator of the Geotechnical Extreme Event Reconnaissance Association.

Director
Term: 2022-2025

Biography

Zahraa Saiyed, P.E., Associate AIA, LEED AP, M.EERI, 2011, is a multi-disciplinary disaster risk reduction, public policy, and risk governance consultant with background and training as an architect, building scientist, structural engineer, and educator. She is a co-founder and principal of Scyma Consulting located in the Bay Area, a Research Affiliate with MIT’s Urban Risk Lab, and is a Senior Disaster Risk Reduction Consultant for the World Bank, where she works on earthquake engineering, wildfire management, mental health, and community engagement. Zahraa has co-chaired the EERI Public Policy and Advocacy Committee since 2018. In this role, she has contributed to the advancement of seismic safety policies at all governmental levels, advocated on behalf of EERI, and facilitated the creation of regional public policy committees. She is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley in Architecture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Architecture and Structural Engineering with coursework from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Director
Term: 2022-2025

Biography

Nick Gregor, Ph.D., is a consulting seismologist located in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area and has been an active member of EERI since 1992. His primary discipline and focus for the past 25 years is for the understanding and application of seismological principles, research, and models for seismic hazard assessments. After completing his Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley, he joined the seismology group at Bechtel, which provided a great learning environment for technical interactions between seismologists, geotechnical, structural, and earthquake engineers. His tenure of nearly 25 years culminated in 2019 as the senior seismologist for the company. Since leaving Bechtel, Nick has been an independent consultant working on small and large projects both domestically and internationally. Nick is currently the EERI representative for the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) National Steering Committee and a member of the technical workshop meeting planning committee for the Consortium of Organization for Strong Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS).

Director
Term: 2023-2028

Biography: Ashley Morales-Cartagena is a disaster risk reduction professional with 15 years of experience working in academia, industry, the public sector and international development. She is a professor and researcher at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM), where she served as Director for the past four years and founded the EERI PUCMM student chapter. She also served as head of the Disaster Risk Management and Geotechnical Engineering departments at the Domincan Republic’s National Bureau of Seismic Evaluation and Infrastructure Vulnerability (ONESVIE). Ashley co-chaired the EERI Younger Members Committee from 2019-2021 and received the EERI’s Younger Members Award in 2018. Ashley pursued her graduate studies (MS) as a Fulbright Scholar in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She also holds an MS in Construction Management from the Santo Domingo Institute of Technology (INTEC) and a BS in Civil Engineering from the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra. Most recently she founded Mujeres en la Ingeniería (MIRD), the first NGO focused on supporting women to pursue careers in engineering in the Dominican Republic.

Director
Term: 2023-2026

Biography:

Keith L. Knudsen has served as the Deputy Director of the USGS Earthquake Science Center for about a dozen years, and has also served as the Earthquake Hazard Program’s Northern California Coordinator. He is a Quaternary geologist and geomorphologist who specializes in the assessment of earthquake hazards. Prior to joining the USGS, he led and worked on projects characterizing seismic hazards for large engineered facilities at URS Corporation in Oakland. Before joining URS, for eight years, Keith managed the Liquefaction Zoning Unit and the Bay Area Regional Geologic Mapping Unit of the California Geological Survey’s Seismic Hazards Zoning Program. He served on the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Northern California Chapter Board as a Director and as President spanning the 2006 anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. He also served as Secretary of the Seismological Society of America for nine years. In his roles in the public and private sectors, he has been successful in identifying partner organizations and building relationships so that innovative projects get supported and completed. He lives about a kilometer from the Hayward fault.