Prof. J. Bray elected to NAE

Professor Jonathan Bray, from UC Berkeley, is among the 67 individuals elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), which is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. 

Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature and to the "pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."

Professor Bray, who holds the Faculty Chair in Earthquake Engineering Excellence, was elected for his contributions to earthquake engineering and advances in mitigation of surface faulting, liquefaction, and seismic slope failure. He is a member of CEE's GeoSystems (GeoEngineering) program.

Bray earned engineering degrees from West Point (B.S.), Stanford University (M.S. in Structural Engineering), and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. in Geotechnical Engineering). He joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1993. He is acknowledged internationally as a leader in geotechnical earthquake engineering. He founded and leads the National Science Foundation-sponsored Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association. GEER organizes and executes reconnaissance surveys that capture key geotechnical observations of ground and building performance and other perishable data following important extreme events, such as earthquakes, massive landslides, and storm surge.

He has served as a consultant on major activities that include the California High-Speed Train Project Technical Advisory Panel, Advisor to the New Zealand Earthquake Commission, and the BART Earthquake Safety Program Peer Review Panel. Additionally, he served as the Vice-President of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and as a member of the Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazards Reduction. Prof. Bray has authored over 300 research publications. He pioneered procedures to evaluate seismic slope displacements, the hazards associated with surface fault rupture, and soil liquefaction and its effects on structures. He has also received several honors, including the ASCE Peck Lecture Award, SSA-EERI Joyner Lecture Award, ASCE Huber Research Prize, Packard Foundation Fellowship, and NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award.