Meet Our Directors
The COSMOS Board brings together leaders in academia, government, and industry in earthquake engineering and seismology to advance strong-motion science and foster global collaboration.
Board of Directors
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Debra Murphy, PE, is a co-founder of Slate Geotechnical Consultants. She has nearly 20 years of consulting experience with a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Her work focuses on geotechnical and earthquake engineering projects for sites throughout the United States and abroad for new and existing buildings, dams, and offshore structures. Debra is a member of the 2017 class of EERI Housner Fellows.
Debra Murphy
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Dr. Alexandros Savvaidis is the Manager and Seismology Research Team Lead of the Texas Seismological Network and Seismology Research (TexNet). He has extensive 30-years’ experience in Applied Geophysics and Engineering Seismology both through his research position as a Research Professor and collaboration with Industrial partners in multidisciplinary external funded projects. Dr. Savvaidis research on Seismology includes the study of source characteristics, the wave path and site characterization in case of an earthquake event, the real time acquisition of ground motion data, for earthquakes of tectonic or volcanic activity, Shakemaps implementation and data fusion for disaster risk mitigation. Additionally, in Applied Geophysics his attention is directed towards acquiring, processing, and modeling geophysical data using passive and active seismic and electromagmetic techniques in urban and free field areas to reveal 1D, 2D and 3D earth models and to improve the knowledge in exploration, mining and three-dimensional basin structure using geophysical methods. Also, he is an expert of surface wave data inversion for crustal modeling. Since 2016 he has been working on observational seismology and causal assessment of induced seismicity.
Alexandros Savvaidis
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Sean Ahdi is a Senior Engineer in the Geotechnics, Tunneling, & Geology team at Arup in Los Angeles. His expertise lies at the intersection of a broad range of interrelated topics across the domains of civil engineering and earth sciences, including geotechnical and earthquake engineering, engineering seismology, near-surface geophysics, and geology and geological engineering. Sean earned B.S. degrees in Civil Engineering and in Geology/Engineering Geology, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, all at UCLA. Sean has prior work experience at geophysical, civil engineering, and forensic geotechnical consulting firms, and at the U.S. Geological Survey as a Research Geophysicist in Golden, Colorado. He also served as a Lecturer within the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences (EPSS) at UCLA for four years. You can often find Sean trying to explain geology, earthquakes, or tectonics to anyone interested enough to listen.
Sean Ahdi
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Associate Professor and Researcher at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Guzmán holds a Master's degree in Structural Engineering from the School of Engineering of the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2008) from Carnegie Mellon University. From 2008 to 2011, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Geological Hazards Group at the United States Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. In 2012, he joined the Institute of Engineering at UNAM as a professor. In 2013, he assumed the direction of the institute’s Seismic Instrumentation Unit, which manages the country's largest strong ground motion network. He also currently serves as the Seismological Engineering Coordinator. Guzmán holds a Master's degree in Structural Engineering from the School of Engineering of the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2008) from Carnegie Mellon University. From 2008 to 2011, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Geological Hazards Group at the United States Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. In 2012, he joined the Institute of Engineering at UNAM as a professor. In 2013, he assumed the direction of the institute’s Seismic Instrumentation Unit, which manages the country's largest strong ground motion network. He also currently serves as the Seismological Engineering Coordinator. Dr. Ramirez shares the Analytics Challenge Award from the 2006 Supercomputing Conference and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's 2008 Annual Graphics Contest with Carnegie Mellon's QUAKE group. He was named a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers in 2012 and of Mexico’s National Academy of Engineering in 2023.
Leonardo Ramirez Guzman
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Dr. Aysegul Askan is a professor of civil engineering, earthquake studies and applied mathematics at Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. She received her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006 with her thesis focusing on full wave form inversion for seismic velocity structures. Dr. Askan’s field of expertise includes engineering seismology, earthquake engineering, scientific computing and numerical methods, effects of simulated ground motions on structures, multi-scale seismic risk and loss estimations in urban regions, structural reliability and parameter estimation problems for site characterization. She holds several administrative positions in education and research. She is the department head of Earthquake Studies program at METU. She is the current general secretary of Earthquake Engineering Association of Turkey (EEAT) and a member of the National Disaster and Emergency Consultancy Board of Turkey led by AFAD.
Aysegul Askan, PhD
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Brad Aagaard is a Research Geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Hazards Science Center in Golden, Colorado, USA. His primary research interests are in earthquake rupture physics and ground motions. He is the lead developer of PyLith, an open-source, finite-element modeling code for simulating crustal deformation with an emphasis on earthquake faulting applications.
Brad Aagaard
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Professor of Civil Engineering at The University of British Columbia
Carlos Ventura
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State Geologist and Director of the California Geological Survey. At the California Geological Survey, Jeremy directs a group of motivated and brilliant professionals that are focused on developing geologic framework data to promote informed decisions about hazards and wise use of the state’s resources. The team includes data scientists (GIS), and geoscience professionals performing 2D and 3D geological mapping/modeling and landslide mapping/modeling. I am committed to improving what we do and how we do it, every day. This commitment translates to advancements in the science and application to address societal needs, including, public safety and economic welfare, water resource management, and climate adaptation.
Jeremy Lancaster
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Earthquake Research Institute, the University of Tokyo - Associate Professor.
Koichi Kusunoki is an Associate Professor at the Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, specializing in earthquake engineering, structural health monitoring, seismic design, and field investigations. He has developed methods for evaluating building damage after earthquakes using sensors, and his research focuses on structural resilience and seismic risk.
Koichi Kusunoki
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Olga is an engineering seismologist with civil/geotechnical engineering background. She studied at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), Imperial College London (UK) and UNAM (Mexico). She has taught or researched at the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, the Institute of Earth Sciences in Grenoble (France), the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center at Berkeley, the German Research Centre for Geosciences, and the University of Greenwich (UK). She is now a senior researcher at the National Observatory of Athens, where, having been headed the 24/7 seismicity monitoring team, she is now responsible for strong-motion data analysis. Her topics includeseismic hazard and ground motion with focus on station characterisation and a special interest in kappa. She has served as ground motion expert for PSHA projects in the energy sector in the US, UK, South Africa and Switzerland. She is an elected member of the Executive committees of EFEHR (European Facilities for Earthquake Hazard and Risk) and the ESC (European Seismological Commission), having been part of the first user advisory groups of ORFEUS. She is active in gender equality and diversity issues, heading NOA’s first gender equality and anti-discrimination committees, and is fluent in Greek, English, Spanish and French.
Olga-Joan Ktenidou
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Professor in Disaster Prevention at the Research Institute, Kyoto University. Shinichi Matsushima is a Professor and a Vice Director of the Disaster Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University, Japan. His research fields are Seismic hazard evaluation considering seismic fault and deep basin structure, and Development of method for detailed modelling of heterogeneous subsurface structure. Before becoming a faculty member of DPRI, he was a researcher at the Institute of Technology of Shimizu Corporation for 15 years. He is a board member of the Japan Society of Natural Disaster Science and Japan Association for Earthquake Engineering. Shinichi obtained his Master of Engineering from Nagoya University and Doctor of Engineering from Kyushu University and specializes in earthquake engineering and engineering seismology. He has been conducting research to understand the characteristics of ground shaking by earthquakes and the mechanism of structural damage to buildings and houses under severe ground shaking since the 1995 Kobe Earthquake, in order to estimate the strong ground shaking for future earthquakes. He also worked as a researcher at the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion of Japan and contributed to developing the National Seismic Hazard Map of Japan. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers, 60 conference papers and 15 chapters in books.
Shinichi Matsushima
Organizational Members and Sponsors:
Meet the Team
