2025
9/25: Dr. Esteghamati was recognized as “Educator of the Year” by the Structural Association of Utah.
7/23: Dr Esteghamati participated in the 7th Global Summit of GADRI at Colorado State University and gave a talk on data-driven risk-based design to support community resiliency objectives through high-performing buildings
6/15-6/18: Dr. Esteghamati attended the CompDyn25 Conference at Rhodes Island, Greece. One conference paper (Influence of Seismic Loss Estimate Methodologies on the Earthquake-related Environmental Impacts of Steel Frame Buildings) and one presentation (Design-centric Explainable Machine Learning Models to Support Functional Recovery of Steel Framed Buildings) were submitted. He also co-organized a session on “Explainable and Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Natural Hazards, Exposure, and Risk Modelling” with Dr. Fayaz.
6/18: Shailaja, Ali, and Parham participated in the AI summit at the University of Utah and presented some of their research.
6/1-6/6: Dr. Esteghamati attended the ICOSSAR25 Conference at University of Southern California. He delivered one presentation on “Influence of Analysis Decisions on Post-Earthquake Functional Recovery of a Steel Frame Building Inventory” and co-organized a session on “Probabilistic and statistical methods for enhanced post-disaster regional recovery analysis” with Dr. Kourehpaz.
6/1: A paper by Dr. Esteghamati and colleagues titled “Beyond development: Challenges in Deploying Machine learning models for Structural Engineering Applications” was selected as Editor’s Choice by the Journal of Structural Engineering!
5/27-5/30: Dr. Esteghamati attended the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Conference in Anaheim, CA. He delivered two presentations on “Developing deep neural networks for ground motion quality assessment under limited imbalanced training data” and “Integrating structural contexts in computer vision-based models for steel bridges condition assessment“. He also co-organized a session on “Al and Machine Learning for Risk, Uncertainty, and Resilience Assessment of Structural and Infrastructure Systems” with Drs. Roohi, Choe, and van de Lindt
6/27-6/30 Shailaja, Ali, and Parham participated in the RedRock Conference in St George and presented their AI-related research.
5/22-5/23: Dr. Esteghamati participated in the 4th annual workshop of “Future of the Building Industry (fobi) and delivered an invited presentation on “Toward AI-assisted performance-based seismic design: Challenges, promises, and the curious case of generalizability.”
5/2: Congratulations to Ashesh (Ph.D.) and Logan (MS) on their graduation! We wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors. Logan will work as a Structural Engineer in ARW Engineers (Utah), whereas Ashesh’s role will be as a Bridge Structural Engineer in Gannett Fleming TranSystems (Florida).
4/27: Shailaja was selected as the recipient of the 2025 WTS Graduate Scholarship from the Northern Utah Chapter. Congrats, Shailaja!
2/27: Dr. Esteghamati has been selected as the Undergraduate Mentor of the year by both the Department of Civil Engineering and the College of Engineering.
2/7: Dr. Esteghamati and Shiva participated in the Second NHERI SimCenter Computational Symposium. Shiva presented his work on the comparison of different seismic loss assessment methodologies for steel-framed buildings.
2024
12/03: Dr. Esteghamati gave an invited talk on the application of explainable ML-based surrogate models to accelerate PBEE at NJIT.
8/7: Dr. Esteghamati gave an invited talk on explainable surrogate models at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Thanks to Dr. Christine Wittich for the invite. I also got a chance to meet with Dr. Milad Roohi and his fantastic team at UNL.
8/19: Dr. Esteghamati joined the editorial board of the “International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction,” a prominent publication on interdisciplinary research in various aspects of disaster risk sciences.
8/1: Nick was awarded the URCO research fellowship, the most prestigious university-wide undergraduate research award at USU. Congrats Nick!
8/1: Parham and Negin Joined the group as Ph.D students. Welcome, Parham and Negin!
8/1: Shailaja and Logan joined the group as MS students. Welcome, Shailaja and Logan!
7/17-7/18 Dr. Esteghamati moderated a session on advancing risk management and analysis, and co-organized another session on the barriers of interdisciplinary research at the Natural Hazard Researcher Meeting in Boulder.
6/30-7/5: Dr. Esteghamati attended the 12th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Milan, presented a stage presentation on a neural-network-based computational platform for seismic performance assessment, and moderated a session on AI for design and assessment. Great to get connected to colleagues and friends in the broader community of earthquake engineering!
4/9-4/12: Dr.Esteghamati attended the EERI 2024 meeting in Seattle and presented a poster on the impact of the Kahramanmaras Earthquakes on cultural heritage as part of the Kahramanmaras Earthquakes special program.
4/4: Nick presented his research at the USU College of Engineering research symposium.
3/22-3/24: Dr. Esteghamati was invited to give a talk on “Developing design-centric ML-based surrogate models to support performance-based seismic design” as part of the SEI TG3 special session at the SEICON24/NASCC conference.
2/23- Dr. Esteghamati gave a webinar on transitioning to an academic job market to the NHERI Graduate Student Council.
2/1-2/2: Dr. Esteghamati presented a poster on using neural networks for loss assessment of steel structures in the second NHERI SimCenter computational symposium.
1/1: Shiva joined the group as a Ph.D. Student. Welcome Shiva!
2023
11/16-11/18: Dr. Esteghamati gave a presentation on deep-learning-based interpretation of seismic demand models at ASCE INSPIRE 2023 as part of the session on “Quantifying the Effect of Natural Hazards using Advanced Models”
11/10: Dr. Esteghamati gave a virtual talk to the EERI student chapter at the University of Nevada at Reno on using ML for seismic loss assessment. Thank you for the invitation!
8/16: Dr. Esteghamati gave a virtual talk on the academic faculty job market to the Postdoctoral Association of Virginia Tech.
8/10-8/9: Dr. Esteghamati was awarded the travel grant for the 5th MECHS workshop on hybrid simulation at Purdue University. Great to learn about such a dynamic community of researchers that are bringing the experimental and simulation world together!
7/13-7/9: Dr. Esteghamati attended the 14th International Conference on Application of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP14), where he gave two presentations on (1) predicting fire resistance of timber columns using ML, and (2) ML-assisted performance-based early design.
6/21-6/23: Dr. Esteghamati was awarded a travel grant for NHERI Summer Institute to learn about the NSF-sponsored facilitates and NHERI capabilities to advance natural hazard engineering research
4/11: Dr. Esteghamati was awarded a travel grant for the EERI annual meeting in San Francisco, served as a judge for the SDC competition, participated in the reconnaissance workshop, and caught up with friends!
3/17: Dr. Esteghamati gave an invited talk on “A Machine Learning-Based Framework to Support Performance-Based Seismic Design of Framed Buildings” in the “Envisioning AI in 10 years” workshop at Purdue University.
1/1: Henry joined the lab as an undergraduate researcher. They are co-advised by Dr. Banerji. Welcome!
1/1: Nick and Max joined the group as undergraduate researchers. Welcome, Max and Nick!
2022
10/6: Dr. Esteghamati attended the Natural Hazard Research Summit 2022 in Washington D.C.
9/1: Dr. Esteghamati presented his research on using machine learning to predict ground motion’s site term at the 4th Kenji Ishihara Colloquium Series on Earthquake Engineering at San Diego EERI chapter.
3/24: Dr. Esteghamati will join the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering as an Assistant Professor starting in the Fall of 2022.
Stochastic Structures 