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Keynotes

Dr. Des Hartford (PDF file)
“From Abstraction to Reality: Roles of probability, loss, cost-benefit analysis and risk in safety decision-making”
Dr. Des Hartford, BA, BAI, MA, Ph.D, F.EIC, F.ICE, F.IEI, C.Eng, P.Eng, Eur.Ing, is Principal Engineering Scientist at BC Hydro reporting to the Director of Dam Safety. Dr. Hartford who has received several national and international awards and honours is an overseas member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and in 2011 was voted one of the 20 most influential engineers in the world of Hydropower and Dam Engineering. Dr. Hartford’s responsibilities at BC Hydro span the development of risk management policy, risk informed decision processes, and risk-informed management systems for BC Hydro’s Hydropower and Dams risk profile. He is also responsible for introducing Systems Engineering techniques into the analysis of functionality of river systems and associated hydropower sub-systems; guiding the application of Engineering Principles-based assessment of spillway gate reliability comparable to those of the UK nuclear safety case regime; and leading BC Hydro’s research and development activities for dam safety. Dr. Hartford was appointed Adjunct Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Western Ontario to provide industry guidance and supervision on a new research project to develop a prototype systems engineering model suitable for application in BC Hydro’s natural and operating environment.

Dr. Armen Der Kiureghian (PDF file)
“New developments in tail-equivalent linearization method for nonlinear stochastic dynamics”
Dr. Armen Der Kiureghian is currently the fourth President of the American University of Armenia and a Taisei Professor Emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley, where he served for 37 years in various positions. Der Kiureghian is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of its Institute of Engineering Mechanics. He is a past President of CERRA and served as Chair of the IASSAR Committee on System Reliability and Optimization. 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. Der Kiureghian’s teaching and research have been in the areas of risk and reliability of constructed facilities and systems, stochastic structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, and engineering decision making. He has authored more than 400 publications, including 117 in archival journals. He has supervised 30 doctoral candidates to completion, all of whom are highly successful specialists in academia or industry. Der Kiureghian’s research has been recognized by numerous awards, including the ASCE’s Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (1988), Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal (2006), Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award (2006), George Winter Medal (2014), CERRA Award (1999), and the IASSAR’s Distinguished Research Award (2013). He is an elected foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia since 1998 and an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering since 2011. Der Kiureghian received his B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from Tehran University, Iran, and his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.