News Archive
Collection of various news, including publication of papers, conferences, and awards.
April 2023
Dr. Bocchini participates as keynote speaker at the Resilience Colloquium organized by Geisinger.
April 2023
Revamped website for the Catastrophe Modeling Center, and new social media presence on YouTube, Linkedin, Twitter, and Mastodon.
April 2023
Resolve magazine celebrates the interdisciplinary work done by the team. Read the article.
March 2023
After 2 years of "quiet phase," the Catastrophe Modeling Center celebrates its public launch with a workshop in New Your City. Read more.
March 2023
News story to accompany Xinyue Wang's paper on wildfire risk. Read the story and the paper.
March 2023
Dr. Bocchini receives the mentor appreciation certificate from Lehigh's Graduate Student Senate for the 6th year in a row.
March 2023
According to the new rankings of the NYT, if the main criterion is earnings 10 years after graduation (NYT says that this is the most important criterion for most students), some weight is given to the social life ("party scene") and the campus is required to be in a city, Lehigh is in the top 5 universities in the US. Setting all the weight only on earnings and requiring that the school has a focus on STEM, is in a city, and admits more than 25% of the applicants, Lehigh is #1.
February 2023
The Catastrophe Modeling Center staff is growing. Dr. Sushreyo Misra will join the center in a few weeks as Research Scientist. Chao Sheng will join the center in the summer as Postdoctoral Research Associate.
November 2022
News article on the new grant received from the National Science Foundation. $1 million for a phase one effort. The thrust led by Dr. Bocchini focuses on the application of the CatModeling framework to epidemic risk assessment, focusing on underserved and isolated communities. Learn more about the project.
September 2022
Dr. Bocchini participates in two important workshops at the end of September. On 9/28 he will be a panelist for the NIST "Workshop on Transportation Systems & Functional Recovery". On September 30 he will participate in the ASCE Workshop on the "Effect of Climate Change on Life-Cycle Performance, Safety, Reliability and Risk of Structures and Infrastructure Systems".
September 2022
News stories cover the publication of a recent article of the team on risk factors affecting the Ebola spillover rate. Read more.
August 2022
Shawn Johnson (program analyst for the Department of Transportation and representative of the DOT at the White House for metters of resilience) visits the team and gives a guest lecture at Lehigh.
August 2022
The Catastrophe Modeling Center officially starts its educational activities launching two new courses for graduate and undergraduate students: "Introduction to Catastrophe Modeling" and "Applications of Catastrophe Modeling".
August 2022
Mohanad Khazaali succesfully defends his doctoral dissertation "Damage and Resilience Assessments of Telecommunication Systems under Hurricanes". Mohanad has received several job offers from academia, private, and public sector. In October, Mohanad will move to Boston, to start working as catastrophe modeler for Verisk.
July 2022
Once again, Lehigh is ranked second in the USA (ninth in the world) for research in Civil Engineering by the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities, which according to Wikipedia is “one of the three most influential and widely observed university measures”, especially focused on research.
June 2022
Seven team members head to Johns Hopkins University to present seven research contributions at the 2022 Conference of the Engineering Mechanics Institute. Read more about all the work presented.
May 2022
Team member Fahim Rustamy defends his doctoral dissertation, received his Ph.D. and is hooded. Fahim will continue his career working for Verizon.
April 2022
Finally, it is safe enough to have an in-person Structures Congress. Meetings of the committee on structural reliability and of the committee on effects of climate change. Fantastic panel sessions on "Data-Driven and Phisics-Based Models: Friends or Foes?" and on "Life-Cycle of Structures and Infrastructure Systems Under Climate Change".
April 2022
Dr. Bocchini is invited to the University of Oklahoma to give a seminar on "Catastrophe Modeling Applied to Natural Disasters and Epidemics". Many thanks to the Department of Industrual and Systems Engineering at OU and to Drs. Kash Barker and Andres Gonzalez for being such wonderful hosts.
December 2021
The work of the group on artificial intelligence applied to natural disasters is mentioned in a news article written by Dr. Anand Kulkarni (MIT-WPU). Translation to English. Original.
November 2021
Long piece on the catastrophe modeling initiative featured in the Lehigh Research Magazine. Take a look to see what we are doing and why.
September 2021
After two years of work, the report of the committee on "Transportation Resilience Metrics" has been published by The National Academies Press (the digital version is free). Dr. Bocchini will disseminate the findings of the report in an upcoming webinar.
August 2021
New team members! Dr. Haifeng Wang joins the team as postdoc, Urinrin Otite is a new doctoral student, and Joshua Tupper joins as part-time doctoral student. Read more.
July 2021
Once again, Lehigh is ranked second in the USA (eighth in the world) for research in Civil Engineering by the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities, which according to Wikipedia is “one of the three most influential and widely observed university measures”, especially focused on research.
April 2021
The team celebrates Fahim Rustamy who received the "TA of the Year Award" of Lehigh University and Mohanad Khazaali who received the "Rossin College Graduate Leadership and Service Award". We are immensely proud of Fahim and Mohanad and glad that their contributions to the University and the College community are recognized. Read more.
March 2021
Dr. Bocchini was invited to give a talk as part of the NIST Center of Excellence Seminar Series, with title "Regional-level approach to resilience assessment". A video of the talk is available here.
March 2021
New team member! Urinrin Otite (currently at Arup Nigeria) receives the prestigious Lehigh University Fellowship and will join the team as a doctoral student. We look forward to having Urinrin with us.
February 2021
Dr. Bocchini is elected a Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE). The SEI Fellow (F.SEI) grade "recognizes accomplished SEI members as leaders and mentors in the structural engineering profession".
February 2021
After being for a long time the "most cited article from the past three years" in the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, our paper on Resilience and Sustainability rotates out of the 3-year window. The paper is still one of the most read in the journal, as it has been every month since its publication.
December 2020
After some rescheduling due to the COVID19 pandemic, Dr. Bocchini gives a virtual seminar at Case Western Reserve University on "Probabilistic Resilience Assessment of Interdependent Systems".
November 2020
Liyang Ma successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Multi-Scale Methodologies for Probabilistic Assessment of Structural and Functional Performance of Power Transmission Systems under Hurricanes". Dr. Ma will remain a team member as Postdoctoral Research Associate, to work on our project on regional joint hazard modeling of hurricane wind and storm surge.
September 2020
New duties for Dr. Bocchini. In the last three months he has become the Director of Graduate Programs of the CEE department, he has joined the editorial board of the Journal of Infrastructure Preservation and Resilience, and he has been invited to become Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, for papers on safety and reiliability.
August 2020
Our paper on Resilience and Sustainability continues to be the most cited article from the past three yearsin the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, and is one of the most read each month since its publication.
July 2020
Dr. Christou leaves the team to join Fermat Capital Management. Read more about his success story.
July 2020
Lehigh is ranked second in the USA (sixth in the world) for research in Civil Engineering by the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities, which according to Wikipedia is “one of the three most influential and widely observed university measures”, especially focused on research.
July 2020
The pandemic has made it difficult to have internships and start jobs, so Lehigh is offering additional summer courses. Dr. Bocchini offers a new course on Resilience of Systems.
June 2020
Despite COVID, all the analytical and numerical research continured in the team. This June, with very serious protections and mitigation actions, also the experimental work resumes at ATLSS. Xingjian restarts 3D printing concrete.
November 2019
Dr. Jamie Padgett will be at Lehigh to deliver the annual Objective Resilience Lecture of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Find out more!
October 2019
Dr. Bocchini receives the Mentorship Appreciation Award from the Graduate Student Senate of Lehigh University.
October 2019
Dr. Bocchini becomes Chair of the ASCE-SEI task group on Reliability-Based Structural System Performance Indicators.
August 2019
New members join the team at all levels: postdocs, PhD, and undergrads. We have a great roster for the upcoming year, 15 group members: check it out.
July 2019
Vasileios Christou successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Advanced Simulation of Uncertain Quantities in Civil Engineering with Applications to Regional Hazards". Dr. Christou will remain a team member as Postdoctoral Research Associate, to work on our new project on hurricane and surge hazard.
July 2019
NSF funds the PRAISys Project for an additional year. The project will run for 5 years and it has had more than 50 contributing researchers, including faculty members, postdocs, and students.
July 2019
Our paper on Resilience and Sustainability has been (and still is) among the top 5 most-read every month since 2013 in the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems (currently the most read), and now it is also the most cited article from the past three years!
July 2019
Lehigh is ranked best in the USA (fourth in the world) for research in Civil Engineering by the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities, which according to Wikipedia is “one of the three most influential and widely observed university measures”, especially focused on research.
June 2019
Our paper on Ebola spreading published in Nature - Scientific Reports, ranks in the 96th percentile of the most impactful articles of a similar age in any journal. In the meanwhile, the team is gearing up for a long trip to Africa to collect more data.
June 2019
Team member Dr. Wenjuan Sun presented the latest results of the PRAISys project at CalTech, as part of the 2019 Conference of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute.
June 2019
Our paper on Resilience and Sustainability has been (and still is) among the top 5 most-read every month since 2013 in the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems (currently the most read).
May 2019
Our own Liyang Ma receives the CERRA Student Award for applications of probability in civil engineering, for his research on resilience of power transmission systems, as part of the PRAISys project. Congratulations to Liyang and great thanks to the association for this recognition of our work!
December 2018
The PRAISys platform goes public. While not available for external use yet, the PRAISys platform was presented at the NSF CRISP Awardees Workshop, and raised substantial interest. PRAISys is a joint effort that has involved 43 researchers to date (and growing) at Lehigh University and partner institutions.
December 2018
Postdoctoral position available to join our research team and work on a new exciting project. Read more information and apply here: go.lehigh.edu/postdoc
August 2018
Lehigh is ranked best in the USA (third in the world) for research in Civil Engineering by the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities, which according to Wikipedia is “one of the three most influential and widely observed university measures”, especially focused on research.
June 2018
Our paper on Resilience and Sustainability has been (and still is) among the top 5 most-read every month since 2013 in the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, while our paper on Hazard Quantization is in the most-read list of the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty since January 2018.
May 2018
Dr. Bocchini's group, in collaboration with Buzzi Unicem, organizes an exhibit on the life and work of structural engineer and architect Pier Luigi Nervi.
May 2018
Liyang Ma placed second in the student paper competition on Objective Resilience of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Congratulations to Liyang, we are very proud of you!
May 2018
Our paper on Ebola spreading is published in Nature - Scientific Reports, it hits many news outlets (printed, radio, and online) and ranks in the 96th percentile of the most impactful articles of a similar age in any journal. It is open access, check it out!
April 2018
Dr. Bocchini is the inaugural recipient of the "Outstanding Doctoral Student Advising Award" from the College. [read more]
April 2018
Drs. Bocchini and Buceta are awarded a grant from NIH to study the application of Functional Quantization and bat migration dynamics to assess the risk of Ebola outbreaks over large regions. [read more]
January 2018
Our paper on Hazard Quantization jumps to the most-read in the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, while our paper on Resilience and Sustainability has been (and still is) among the top 5 most-read every month since 2013 in the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems.
January 2018
Former group member Dr. Aman Karamlou joins AIR Worldwide, “the scientific leader and most respected provider of risk modeling software and consulting services” in the world. Congratulations Aman! [read more]
August 2017
Lehigh is ranked best in the USA (second in the world) for research in Civil Engineering by the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities, which according to Wikipedia is “one of the three most influential and widely observed university measures”, especially focused on research.
January 2017
More news outlets publish stories on our research and its impact. The latest one is Government Computer News.
January 2017
Dr. Aman Karamlou receives his PhD in Structural Engineering, leaves the team and chooses to accept a position at the renowned structural firm DeSimone. Congratulations Aman!
January 2017
A partnership with the international cement company Buzzi Unicem is established, and the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance awards funding for a pilot project on 3D printing of concrete (co-PIs Drs. Naito and Fox).
October 2016
Our paper on Resilience and Sustainability is the most read of the year in the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems.
28 and 31 October 2016
Two very important events at Lehigh: a 4-hour seminar series on Infrastructure Resilience and a Symposium on Probabilistic Modeling. You can come to Lehigh for the first on Friday, spend the weekend in NY or Philly, and join the second on Monday.
October 2016
A new phase of the project "100 Year Service Life" has been awarded, to continue studying the probabilistic penetration of chloride in concrete structures and predict the service life of all bridges in Pennsylvania (sponsored by PennDOT, in collaboration with Dr. Naito and Dr. Fox's groups).
September 2016
The Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance has awarded our group, in partnership with OSIsoft, a new project on "Processing high-resolution industrial recovery time-series for infrastructure resilience analysis".
August 2016
Dr. Bocchini receives the "Frank Hook Assistant Professorship", given to an outstanding junior scholar-teacher who also fosters personal interaction and mentoring relationships with students
Summer 2016
The group embraces the "Mountaintop Experience", supervising a team of 8 students working over the summer on "Establishing a flow network for experiments on blockages and their detection".
January 2016
Vasileios Christou receives a Scholarship from the Gerondelis Foundation for his research on modeling of multiple correlated natural hazards.
November 2015
Dr. Bocchini is appointed vice-chair of the NIST Standing Committe on Data, Metrics, and Tools for Community Resilience.
November 2015
Lehigh partners with the City of Bethlehem to submit an application for the 100 Resilient Cities Program.
September 2015
Lehigh leads a large project on probabilistic resilience analysis of interdependent infrastructure systems.
August 2015
New project on durability of concrete mixes starts (sponsored by PennDOT).
March, 2015
New website for the group launched.
February 17, 2015
Published paper on "Computation of bridge seismic fragility by large-scale simulation for resilience analysis".
July 13-16, 2014
Dr. Bocchini will be presenting a paper at the ICVRAM-ISUMA 2014 conference in Liverpool, UK.
June 26-27, 2014
