I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Born and raised in Germany, I completed my undergraduate education in structural engineering at the University of Applied Sciences (HTWK) Leipzig and continued my graduate education as Fulbright Scholar in the US. I received an MS in Geotechnical Engineering at the California State University Long Beach (CSULB) and an MS and PhD degree in Structural and Earthquake Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I conducted my PhD research working on the seismic performance of bridge foundations systems.
From 2009 – 2011 I worked as Assistant Professor at California State University Fullerton, where I taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in structural and geotechnical engineering.
In 2011, I joined the University of California, Irvine where I manage and teach the geotechnical curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I supervise an active group of students with research foci in the field of geotechnical and structural earthquake engineering.
My research interests intersect in the framework of geo-structural response mechanisms of elements residing at the soil-structure interface. I conduct small- and large-scale experiments, numerical simulations, and collect case history observations to study the behavior and interaction of super- and substructure systems and elements during hazard events. I have enjoyed my participation and leadership of reconnaissance deployments and subsequent studies and have been able to integrate and translate knowledge learned from case histories into state-of-the-art tools, techniques, and methodologies to improve geo-structural resilience during natural hazard events.
Among many professional involvements and interests, I serve as Editor in Chief of the Deep Foundations Journal, Associate Editor of ASCE’s Journal of Geotechnical and Geo-environmental Engineering; past Chair of the National ASCE Earth Retaining Structures committee, and was honored to be chair or technical program chair for many renown national and international conferences (e.g., EERI’s National Conference on Earthquake Engineering 2018, 2022; DFI Annual Conference 2018).
I love to travel, I love photography and am passionate about skiing.
