EERI is pleased to announce that the recipients of the 2022 Younger Member Award are Jack English and Maha Kenawy. The EERI Younger Member Award is awarded to recognize early-career members of the Institute who have made outstanding contributions to the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the pursuit of its objectives in the early stages of their career—especially contributions that have improved opportunities for and increased the impact of younger members within the Institute.
Jack English is a Structural Designer at Holmes. He grew up in San Francisco's Richmond District, gaining an early interest in service through school and Boy Scouts. He earned a dual bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering and Political Science from Case Western Reserve University, and went on to earn a dual master's in Structural Engineering and Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2021. Internships with four members of Congress enabled him to see the positive impacts sound policies make on people's lives, and the importance of involving the STEM community in policy making.
As a member of EERI's Public Policy and Advocacy Committee, English helped build the Citizen Advocate Toolkit, empowering every EERI member to advocate for seismic policies with their Federal, State, and Local representatives. He lives in San Francisco.
Dr. Maha Kenawy is an associate at Exponent, where she works on performance assessment of buildings and other structures. Her expertise is in nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete structures, and assessment of earthquake risks to civil infrastructure. She holds a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California ar Davis, and a M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Construction Engineering from the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She is the recipient of the ASCE O.H. Ammann Research Award in Structural Engineering and the NHERI Summer Institute Grant for early-career researchers in natural hazard risk reduction from NSF. Kenawy has several publications on advancing the analysis of engineering structures, and has held multiple leadership positions in the earthquake engineering community.
Kenawy served as a chair of the EERI Younger Members Committee, where she led several initiatives to support the professional development of early-career EERI members. She currently serves on the EERI Student Awards Committee and the 12NCEE technical program committee.
To learn more about the Younger Member Award, visit the awards page here.
