2026
[July] Our research group attended the 13th National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Portland, Oregon, where Parham, Negin, Ali, and Olivia presented their research to the community. The USU EERI team also participated in the Seismic Design Competition.
[August] Parham and Shiva received travel grants from NSF to participate in the NHERI Strategic Program to Accelerate Researchers in Computing (SPARC) at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), The University of Texas at Austin. Congrats!
[June] Parham and Ali participated in the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Conference at the University of Colorado Boulder. Parham presented two works on “Physics-Informed Foundation Models for Structural Digital-Twin Updating via 4D Gaussian Splatting” and “An Uncertainty-Aware Computer Vision Approach to Quantifying Element-Level Conditions in Bridges“. Ali also presented on the use of generative models to support performance-based design.
[June] A paper by Dr.Esteghamati and several colleagues titled “Making the Black Box Transparent: State of the Art in Explainable Machine Learning for Structural Design and Assessment” was selected as Editor’s Choice by the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering.
[May] Dr.Esteghamati was interviewed by USU News, where he chatted about his research, the recent awards he received, and his vision for education and research in the era of AI. [Link to media]
[May] Dr.Esteghamati was selected as the Educator of the Year by Utah Engineering Council (UEC). This award recognizes one educator across all engineering disciplines in Utah. Dr.Esteghamati was nominated by SEAU.
[May] Brig and Shailaja presented at the 2026 Intermountain Engineering, Technology and Computing Conference at BYU. Congrats to Shailaja for her paper getting the Premium Engineering Paper Award for her work on automated defect assessment of highway signs!
[May] Shiva presented his work on damage assessment of tall steel frames under fire-following-earthquake scenarios at the 3rd NHERI Computational Symposium in Berkeley.
[May] Congrats to four of the StoStruct Lab members who walked in the graduation ceremony! From left to right: Brig, Shailaja, Olivia, and Ali.
[May] Dr. Esteghamati attended Structures Congress and held an interactive session on XAI with Dr.Stephanie Paal.
[April] Dr. Esteghamati received the 2026 Terry Peshia Early Career Faculty Award from AISC during the NASCC Steel Conference [USU news] [Modern Steel]
[April] Shailaja defended her thesis on using computer vision for automated defect detection in highway signs. Congrats, Shailaja!
[April] Annalee and Nick attended and presented at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in Richmond. Annalee presented our recent work on improving the seismic design of Steel SMRFs in Utah, while Nick presented his work on developing tools to estimate the embodied carbon of modern steel SMRFs.
[March] Dr. Esteghamati served on the technical committee of the Architectural Engineering Institute/Infrastructure Resiliency Division Conference in San Antonio, Texas.
[March] Dr. Esteghamati was selected as the “outstanding graduate mentor” by the CEE department at USU.
[February] Dr. Esteghamati gave an invited presentation on “Are we designing for the correct level of seismic hazard across the Wasatch Fault?” at the 14th annual education conference of SEAU.
[January] Dr. Esteghamati gave a presentation on “Explainable Machine Learning Models to Accelerate Performance-Based Design of Structural Systems” to the NHERI Graduate Students Council. Thank you for the invite! [Link to the recording]
2025
[December] Olivia defended her thesis titled “Developing Fragility Curves for Special Steel Moment-Resisting Frames in Utah”. Special thanks to committee members Dr. Halling and Dr. Cox. Congrats, Olivia!
[September] Dr. Esteghamati was recognized as “Educator of the Year” by the Structural Association of Utah. The purpose of this award is to recognize outstanding engineering educators who promote and inspire engineering students to strive for excellence in Utah universities with accredited professional engineering programs Utah
[July] 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
[June] Dr. Esteghamati attended the CompDyn25 Conference in Rhodes, Greece, and presented two papers. He also co-organized a session on “Explainable and Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Natural Hazards, Exposure, and Risk Modeling” with Dr. Fayaz.
[June] Dr. Esteghamati attended the ICOSSAR25 Conference at the 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.
[June] 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!
[May] 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 “AI 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.
[May] Parham, Shailaja, and Ali participated in the Red Rock Data Science Conference in St George, Utah.
[May] 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.”
[May] Logan walked in the graduation Ceremony! He will work as a Structural Engineer at ARW Engineers. Congrats, Logan!
[May] Congratulations to Ashesh for defending his Ph.D. on understanding concrete barriers’ behavior under vehicular impact. He will start working as a bridge engineer for Gannett Fleming TranSystems in Florida!
[April] Shailaja was selected as the recipient of the 2025 WTS Graduate Scholarship from the Northern Utah Chapter. Congrats, Shailaja!
[February] Dr. Esteghamati has been selected as the Undergraduate Mentor of the year by both the Department of Civil Engineering and the College of Engineering.
[February] Dr. Esteghamati and Shiva participated in the Second NHERI SimCenter Computational Symposium. Shiva presented his work comparing different seismic loss assessment methodologies for steel-framed buildings.
2024
[December] Dr. Esteghamati gave an invited talk on the application of explainable ML-based surrogate models to accelerate PBEE at NJIT. From left to right: Doyin, Mohsen, Matt, and Arjun.
[August] 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.
[August] 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.
[August] Nick was awarded the URCO research fellowship, the most prestigious university-wide undergraduate research award at USU. Congrats Nick!
[August] Parham and Negin joined the group as Ph.D students. Welcome, Parham and Negin!
[August] Shailaja and Logan joined the group as MS students. Welcome, Shailaja and Logan!
[July] Dr. Esteghamati moderated a session on advancing risk management and analysis, and co-organized another session on the barriers to interdisciplinary research at the Natural Hazard Researcher Meeting in Boulder.
[June-July] 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 connect with colleagues and friends in the broader community of earthquake engineering!
[April] 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.
[April] Nick presented his research at the USU College of Engineering research symposium.
[March] 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.
[February] Dr. Esteghamati gave a webinar on transitioning to an academic job market to the NHERI Graduate Student Council.
[February] Dr. Esteghamati presented a poster on using neural networks for loss assessment of steel structures in the second NHERI SimCenter computational symposium.
[January] Shiva joined the group as a Ph.D. Student. Welcome Shiva!
2023
[November] 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.”
[November] Dr. Esteghamati gave a virtual talk to the EERI student chapter at the University of Nevada, Reno, on using ML for seismic loss assessment. Thank you for the invitation!
[August] Dr. Esteghamati gave a virtual talk on the academic faculty job market to the Postdoctoral Association of Virginia Tech.
[August] 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 who are bringing the experimental and simulation world together!
[July] 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.
[June] Dr. Esteghamati was awarded a travel grant for the NHERI Summer Institute to learn about the NSF-sponsored facilities and NHERI capabilities to advance natural hazard engineering research
[April] 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!
[March] 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.
[January] Henry joined the lab as an undergraduate researcher. He is co-advised by Dr. Banerji. Welcome!
[January] Nick and Max joined the group as undergraduate researchers. Welcome, Max and Nick!
2022
[October] Dr. Esteghamati attended the Natural Hazard Research Summit 2022 in Washington D.C.
[September] 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 the San Diego EERI chapter.
[August] Dr. Esteghamati joined the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering as an Assistant Professor starting in Structural Engineering.
Stochastic Structures 