Yousef Bozorgnia

Research and Interests

Structural engineering, earthquake engineering, engineering seismology.

Biography

Yousef Bozorgnia is a professor of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, and the founding Director of the Natural Hazards Risk and Resiliency Research Center (NHR3), at UCLA. Dr. Bozorgnia’s expertise includes earthquake engineering and ground motion hazard, with emphasis on multidisciplinary aspects of earthquake science and engineering. He has extensively published scientific papers on earthquake ground motion models, seismic hazard analysis, and structural earthquake engineering. Bozorgnia received his B.S. degree from Sharif University of Technology, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a licensed Professional Civil Engineer (PE) in the State of California. He has been a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) since 1998. In 2019, EERI, COSMOS and SSA jointly awarded Bozorgnia with the Bruce Bolt Medal for his extensive contributions to seismic hazard analysis and earthquake engineering.

Education

Ph.D., University of California Berkeley
M.S., University of California Berkeley
B.S., Sharif University of Technology

Selected Awards and Honors

• Awarded the 2023 UCLA Public Impact Research Award. The award announcement stated: “Bozorgnia is widely recognized for his extensive contributions to seismic engineering and the quantification of earthquake hazards.” This is a campus-wide award among all departments at UCLA, and is given by the UCLA Chancellor. The award is given for major impactful research projects.
• Awarded the 2021 UCLA Watanabe Excellence in Research Award. “The Watanabe Excellence in Research Award honors the achievements of a faculty member in the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering who demonstrates innovation in pursuing critical research.” Annually one professor from all UCLA engineering departments is awarded.  
• Awarded the “2021 Excellence in Structural Engineering Research”, by Structural Engineering Association of Northern California for the research project on Seismic Risk Quantification of Residential Wood-frame Buildings. Yousef Bozorgnia was the project Principal Investigator (PI) of this very large research project funded by the California Earthquake Authority.