EERI is pleased to announce that Ayse Hortacsu (M. EERI 2000) and Robb Moss (M.EERI 2003) have been selected as the new Co-Chairs of the Learning From Earthquakes (LFE) Program. Ayse and Robb have begun to shadow outgoing Co-Chairs Eduardo Miranda (M.EERI 1987) and Mike Mieler (M.EERI 2010) and will officially begin their term in the new year.
Ayse Hortacsu is the Director of Projects at the Applied Technology Council (ATC). She has 23 years of experience in the field of structural engineering with a primary focus on earthquake engineering, as well as blast-resistant design. At ATC, she is responsible for project management, oversight, and quality control on the development of ATC products and publications, as well as organizing workshops on various technical issues ranging from selection and scaling of ground motions for seismic hazard analysis to the rapid visual screening of buildings for potential seismic hazards. Ayse has served on the EERI Board of Directors as well as the board of the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC). She served as LFE program co-lead for post-earthquake field reconnaissance after the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes; she was also deployed for the following earthquakes: Nepal (2015), Napa (2014), Haiti (2010) and Izmit, Turkey (1999). She is the founder of Women in Structural Engineering, an international network with over 1,000 participants. As a practicing engineer, she has conducted earthquake risk analysis and post-earthquake damage investigation on buildings in California.
Robb Moss is a professor of Geotechnical Engineering in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is an expert in geotechnical earthquake engineering, engineering seismology, and risk and reliability with respect to earthquake engineering. His research and consulting focuses on the physics and probability of natural hazards such as strong ground motions, seismic soil liquefaction, surface fault rupture, seismic induced landslides, debris flow and others. He has worked in more than 15 countries on projects to address earthquake hazards, and with the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association and LFE, has participated in ten earthquake earthquake reconnaissance teams, in locations including Nepal, Japan, Chile, Alaska, Turkey, India, Mexico and around California. His teaching includes undergraduate and graduate courses in geotechnical engineering, engineering risk analysis, geological engineering and earthquake engineering. He has served on the GEER steering committee since 2021.
