This award supports a three-year collaborative research project between Professor Richardson Christenson of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Professor Toru Watanabe of Nihon University in Tokyo, Japan and Professor Anat Ruangrassamee at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. They will organize an International Research Experience for Students (IRES) program in earthquake hazard mitigation. Each year for three summers One US graduate student and two US undergraduate students will travel to Japan and Thailand to work with Japanese and Thai students and faculty. The main goal of the program is to attract and stimulate motivated students to pursue careers in research by providing them with a unique, international, hands-on experience. This will aid in ensuring that the US remains at the forefront of world science and engineering technology by providing an educated science workforce capable of operating in the international research environment and in a global market.
This IRES will provide the students with an international experience in Japan and Thailand, countries with world-class research personnel and facilities in earthquake mitigation and structural technology. They will have access to the collaboratory cyberinfrastructure of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) and the NEESgrid (NEES network) which helps facilitate the planning and performing of large, more complex, research projects by interfacing geographically distributed sites. NEES is designed to include international researchers and facilities. Asia is leading the world in the full-scale implementation of structural control and so it is appropriate that this research project be conducted with the foreign counterparts in Asia. This experience will allow the students to engage in sophisticated research projects while developing an appreciation for earthquake engineering is taught, spoken, done and presented in another culture. It will also help forge relationships between young researchers from both the US and Southeast Asia in the early stages of their careers. Through this high-level program, students will go from general course work to independent research, experiencing the excitement of discovery, developing intellectual maturity, and broadening their vision of biology.
