02/01/10 Los Angeles Times — In the aftermath of events like the Haiti quake, teams of 'disaster researchers' rush to the scene to study what happened. It's not morbid curiosity: Their work will alleviate future catastrophes. "We're not waiting for these things to happen, and we don't want them to happen," said Jonathan Bray, chairman of the Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association and professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. "But when they do, we want to be able to learn the lessons that can be learned."

01/23/10 CBS News — Researchers tell us America gets a "B+" for knowing what causes earthquakes, but a "C+" when it comes to securing infrastructure. Short-term predictions are simply not possible yet, and earthquakes can happen in places you wouldn't expect. Khalid Mosalam, an engineering professor at UC Berkeley, works in one of 15 university labs across the U.S. testing port stability, how much stress steel beams can handle and what happens inside a building during an earthquake. "Any heavy content of the building if not secured to the walls of the building, they would tend to be tossed around," Mosalam said, adding that such objects would also cause injuries or worse.