I  am an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Geophysics in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech.  My research interests include earthquake engineering, computational mechanics, structural dynamics, and computational seismology.  Lately, I have become interested in end-to-end simulations of earthquakes and building response using high-performance computing.

Link to LA Basin Research:  View movies of the seismic wave propagation into the San Fernando valley and Los Angeles basin from a large San Andreas earthquake, and shaking of tall buildings located at eight cities in Southern California (Thousand Oaks, Northridge, West LA, downtown LA, Baldwin Park, Santa Ana, Anaheim, and Long Beach).

Collaborators:

Prof. James L. Beck, Caltech

Prof. Thomas H. Heaton, Caltech

Prof. Chen Ji, University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. Monica Kohler, UCLA/Caltech

Prof. Dimitri Komatitsch, University of Pau, France

Dr. Judith Mitrani-Reiser, Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Marco Stupazzini, Technical University of Milan

Prof. Jeroen Tromp, Caltech

 

Software links:

SPECFEM3D:  A parallel program executable on a computer cluster, based on the Spectral Element Method. It can simulate an earthquake and model the propagation of seismic waves through the earth structure to distant locations and compute the ground motion time-histories at user-defined stations.

FRAME3D:  A nonlinear structural analysis program for damage analysis of buildings.

More about me:

I got my Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Caltech under the guidance of Prof. John F. Hall (Dean of students, Professor of Civil Engineering) who is an expert in computational mechanics and earthquake engineering.  My Ph.D. Thesis was on the behavior of tall buildings during strong earthquakes from nearby sources.  I  developed a three-dimensional nonlinear dynamic structural analysis program, FRAME3D, for this study.  I continue to upgrade the program at this time.  You can find detailed information about the program along with references at the following web-site: http://www.frame3d.caltech.edu.