Jack Moehle receives top earthquake engineering award

The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) has awarded its most prestigious honor to a Berkeley researcher.

Jack Moehle, a professor with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, won the George W. Housner Medal, which recognizes “members who have made extraordinary and lasting contributions to public earthquake safety through the development and application of earthquake hazard reduction practices and policies.”

Throughout his career, Moehle has specialized in making buildings, bridges and other infrastructure more secure against earthquakes. He has helped developed codes for new buildings and engineering guidelines to retrofit existing buildings deemed vulnerable to seismic activity. Moehle has done work for Caltrans, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and New York City aqueducts.

Moehle, who joined the Berkeley faculty in 1980, is a former director of the university’s Earthquake Engineering Research Center and was a founding director of the multi-university Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center.