CORVALLIS - Oregon State University has become a member institution in the Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering, or CUREE, a position that recognizes the university's growing research programs on earthquake hazards, effects and management.

This consortium was formed in 1988 by a number of California universities doing studies in this area, including UC-Berkeley, Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology. It was recently expanded to include other major research universities active in earthquake research.

Other members outside California, besides OSU, are the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Colorado, University of Buffalo, University of Texas and Washington State University.

"This is an important recognition of OSU's engineering programs and efforts to become a top tier engineering college," said Solomon Yim, a professor of civil engineering. "This will help us work more closely with our colleagues in earthquake research at some of the leading institutions in the world."

Yim is the principal investigator on a major new grant from the National Science Foundation to create a tsunami research center at OSU under that agency's Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation. He also will serve as a board member of CUREE during the next year.

According to David Rosowsky, a professor of wood products and the first OSU faculty member to conduct research for the consortium, CUREE is designed to obtain major funding from governmental and industrial agencies for long-term research.

"Being a member of CUREE will allow us to have direct access to some earthquake funding not otherwise available to an individual institution," Rosowsky said. "It will significantly enlarge our earthquake research program funding sources."

Nine other OSU faculty members from the OSU College of Engineering and College of Forestry also were approved by the new consortium for individual membership. The areas of professional expertise at OSU relating to earthquakes includes earthquake causes, risks, effects, soil liquefaction, construction engineering techniques to mitigate earthquake damage, and many other topics.

Source: 

Solomon Yim, 541-737-6894

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