Bruneau recognized for contributions to seismic design and steel structural systems by ASCE

By Peter Murphy

Bruneau, who is also a distinguished member of ASCE—the highest honor the society can bestow—was recognized for “his contributions to advancing seismic design and improving the safety and resilience of steel and steel-concrete composite structures through research codification activities, and authoring articles, books and presentations benefitting the engineering community around the world,” according to ASCE.

“The work on resilience is what we pioneered here in 2002,” says Bruneau, who was the lead author on the paper that helped define the concept of disaster resilience.

Bruneau and researchers across academia, including SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus George Lee and Andrei Reinhorn, professor emeritus and professor emeritus, published “A Framework to Quantitatively Assess and Enhance the Seismic Resilience of Communities” as part of UB’s Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, now known as MCEER. 

According to Bruneau, the researchers developed the concept after embarking on a retreat where they set out to identify the concept that would have the biggest impact on earthquake engineering over the next several decades. They identified resilience, a concept that is now ubiquitous throughout earthquake engineering and multi-hazards engineering research. Bruneau’s research over the decades since has focused on developing and improving various resilient steel structural systems.

The Howard Award also honors Bruneau for his work in the area of SpeedCore, a structural system consisting of concrete-filled composite steel plate shear walls. SpeedCore cuts the construction time for high-rises with core walls nearly in half.

“I’ve worked for almost the past 20 years on what is nowadays known as SpeedCore, and it’s great that it’s now in the code—it’s been adopted as a structural system,” Bruneau says. “It’s been built across the U.S. It has been used in seismic regions in the west, and the recent work on a bolted version of it will be instrumental to its implementation across the rest of the country where field-bolting is preferred over welding.”

Codifying concepts is no simple feat. The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) is a not-for-profit technical institute supported by the steel industry that partners with the architecture, engineering and construction community to develop safe and efficient steel specifications and codes. The AISC develops several standards for different structures, including seismic and non-seismic specifications for steel buildings. Bruneau’s work with SpeedCore made it into both specifications since it’s used in seismic and non-seismic regions.  

“SpeedCore was nonexistent in the AISC Specifications, so we’ve been contributing to that,” Bruneau says. 

Past recipients of the Howard Award include some of the most influential structural engineers in the history of the field, including many Bruneau looked up to throughout his academic career.

“The list of previous winners goes way back. I saw Egor Popov, Helmut Krawinkler, Ted Galambos, Ray Clough, John Fisher, and so many more,” Bruneau says. I thought, “Wow! These are all giants I looked up to when I was a graduate student.”

Bruneau studied structural engineering at the University of California, Berkely under several of these renowned engineers. Popov was co-supervisor on a project that Bruneau worked on as a graduate student. Bruneau also mentions Fisher as “possibly the most famous name when it comes to the topic of fatigue and fracture of steel members and connections” whom he had interacted with as part of some of his early research projects.

“I look at the list of past winners, and they were the icons of the day,” Bruneau says. “When I saw these names, I thought, ‘They’re on the list, Fisher, Popov, Krawinkler. Do I really belong?’ There’s still, to this day, a Krawinkler equation in the code. There’s still work that Popov and Fisher did that’s in the code. It’s a lasting legacy, and it’s humbling.”

Bruneau joined UB in 1998 and served as deputy director (1998-2003) and then director (2003-2008) of MCEER. He has published over 190 journal articles and over 250 papers in refereed conference proceedings. He is also the lead author of “Ductile Design of Steel Structures,” a unique textbook whose third edition will release in late 2025.

Bruneau has been honored by ASCE, AISC, and is a fellow of the Candian Academy of Engineering. Over the course of his career, he has been recognized with the J. James Croes Medal, Raymond C. Reese Research Prize and Moisseff Award, all from ASCE.

He received his PhD in structural engineering with a specialization in earthquake resistant design from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987.