Curriculum Vitae

Armen Der Kiureghian received his B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran, and his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975. After three years at the University of Southern California, he joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, where he served as Assistant Professor (1978-81), Associate Professor (1981-85), Professor (1985- ), Vice Chair (1990-93) and Chair (1997-2001) of the Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Materials Program and as Vice Chair for Academic Affairs (2007-2009) in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. He held the Taisei Chair in Civil Engineering from 1999 until his retirement from UC Berkeley in July 2015.

After the devastating Spitak earthquake of 1988 in Armenia, he was instrumental in establishing the American University of Armenia in Yerevan as an affiliate of the University of California. He is a Founding Member of the Board of Trustees of AUA. He served as the Founding Dean of the College of Engineering from 1991 to 2007, as the Founding Director of the Engineering Research Center from 1991 to 2004, and as Interim Provost from 2011-2012, all concurrently with his position at Berkeley. From July 2014 to June 2019, he he served as the fourth President of AUA. He continues to serve on the Board of Trustees of AUA.

Der Kiureghian is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a Fellow of its Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI), and member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), the Seismological Society of America (SSA), the Earthquake Engineering Association of Armenia (EEAA), the International Association for Structural Safety and Reliability (IASSAR), and the Civil Engineering Risk and Reliability Association (CERRA). He is a past President of CERRA and was in charge of its ICASP9 conference in San Francisco, July 6-9, 2003. During 1998-2004, he served on the Board of CUREE (Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering), including four years as the Treasurer of the Board. In the past, he has served as the Chair of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Division Technical Committee on Probabilistic Methods and as Vice Chair of the Editorial Board of its Journal of Engineering Mechanics. He has served or is currently serving on the editorial boards of several journals, including Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics, Structural Safety, Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics, International Journal of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering, Reliability Engineering and System Safety, and Structure and Infrastructure Engineering.

Der Kiureghian is the receipient of several awards, including:

• 1988:   Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, ASCE
• 1989:   Fulbright Distinguished Professor, University of Lubljana, Slovenia
• 1989:   Mitsubishi Chair Visiting Professor, Tokyo University, Japan
• 1998:   Elected Foreign Member, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia
• 1999:   CERRA Award, Civil Engineering Risk and Reliability Association
• 2001:   Movses Khorenatsi Medal, Government of Armenia
• 2004:   Distinguished Alumnus, Faculty of Engineering, Tehran University, Iran
• 2006:   Distinguished Alumnus, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 2006:   Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal, Engineering Mechanics Division, ASCE
• 2006:   Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award, Goe-Institute, ASCE
• 2008:   2007 Best Paper Award, Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, ASCE
• 2011:   Elected Member, US National Academy of Engineering
• 2013:   Distinguished Research Award, International Association for Strctural Safety and Reliability
• 2014:   George Winter Medal, Structural Engineering Institute, ASCE
• 2016:   Saint Sahag-Saint Mesrop Medal, by His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians
• 2016:   Gold Medal of Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia.

Der Kiureghian's teaching and research interests are in the areas of structural reliability, risk analysis, random vibrations and earthquake engineering. He has pioneered methods for safety and reliability assessment of complex structures and for stochastic seismic analysis of buildings, bridges and critical equipment. He has more than 400 publications, including more than 130 in archival journals and book chapters.