LaboratoryStructures Wing Lab

Dr Rajesh Dhakal is the Head of the Civil Engineering Department at University of Canterbury (UC) in NZ. He received a Bachelor of CIvil Engineering Degree in 1993 (winning a gold medal as the top student) from Tribhuvan University (Nepal), Master of Structural Engineering in 1997 (with a gold medal as the top student) from the Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand) and a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2000. After a post-doctoral tenure at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Dr Dhakal joined UC in 2003.

Prof Dhakal is a globally known Structural and Earthquake Engineering leader with an impressive research profile including close to 500 technical publications (about 200 of them journal articles attracting an H-index of 46), research grants worth more than $7M, and more than a dozen prestigious research awards for research excellence. Prof Dhakal has served in multiple national/international panels, served as an editorial board member for five international journals and delivered invited/keynote lectures in more than a dozen conferences. Prof Dhakal has been serving as the Chief Editor of the journal Bulletin of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering since 2014. In recognition of his contribution and leadership in earthquake engineering, Prof Dhakal was made a Fellow of Engineering NZ (since 2015) and the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering (since 2017). In 2021, Prof Dhakal was elected the President of the International Association of SPONSE (Seismic Performance of Non-Structural Elements).

Prof Dhakal has proven his teaching credentials by developing and delivering multiple courses at UC and overseas universities, and is a recipient of the 2013 UC Teaching Award. In addition, Prof Dhakal’s mentoring effectiveness is evident from the fact that he has supervised 65 PG research students and was conferred the UCSA Supervisor of the Year Award in 2014. Prof Dhakal is also a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng) and a fellow of Engineering New Zealand and New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE).

Dr Ke Jiang's principal research interests lie in the areas of high-performance steel/aluminium structures (connections and members), sustainable structures with green and recycled materials, structural resilience of steel structures after fire hazards. Her comprehensive research portfolio encompasses a diverse range of methodologies include laboratory testing, numerical modelling and the assessment and development of mechanic-based and machine-learning-based design methods for advanced structures.

Greg MacRae has been teaching and researching structural and earthquake engineering since 1986 in Japan, the USA, India, China and New Zealand. He was initiated into Chi Epsilon at the University of Washington, Seattle, for teaching excellence and he has coordinated, or taught, short courses on earthquake design in Myanmar with the World Seismic Safety Initiative, as well as in India.

Having previously worked with the structural engineering division of Morrison Cooper and Partners, Wellington, he is a registered professional engineer in Washington State. He continues his close involvement with the profession through collaborative projects, standards committees, and as a consultant. MacRae led the University of Canterbury Structural Engineering Cluster, has been on the Quake Centre Board, on the Structural Engineering Society management committee, and the NZ representative to the International Association of Earthquake Engineering.

MacRae’s research has been incorporated into standards in the USA, Japan and New Zealand, and it has directly influenced decisions regarding major buildings and bridges around the work.

He currently leads the ROBUST project, testing a 3-storey steel frame with non-skeletal elements on the ILEE shaking tables, collaborating with Tongji University, China and over 8 other NZ institutions. Editorial roles are with the Bulletin of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering, with the Journal of Earthquake Engineering, and formerly with the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Journal of Structural Engineering.

Greg was an author for the Royal Commission on the Canterbury Earthquakes and has been a director of the board of the World Seismic Safety Initiative (WSSI) as well as senior advisor to the board.

Santiago Pujol is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Canterbury. Prior to moving to New Zealand, he was Professor of Civil Engineering at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University. His experience includes: earthquake engineering, evaluation and strengthening of existing structures, response of reinforced concrete to impulsive loads and earthquake demands, instrumentation and testing of structures, and failure investigations. He is a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute (ACI), and member of ACI committees 445 (Torsion and Shear), 314 (Simplified Design), 133 (Disaster Reconnaissance), and 318R (High-Strength Reinforcement). He is also member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), associate editor of Earthquake Spectra, and founder of datacenterhub.org (a site funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and dedicated to the systematic collection of research data). He received the Chester Paul Siess Award for Excellence in Structural Research from ACI, the Educational Award from Architectural Institute of Japan, and the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from ASCE.

Tim’s research focusses on improving the fundamentals of seismic design, assessment and retrofit for structural and non-structural elements and systems. He has been leading national research projects related to Next Generation Infrastructure, Resilient Buildings and Low-damage Design. Tim uses experimental testing and loss-assessment techniques to demonstrate the performance of different engineering design and retrofit strategies and enjoys developing new technologies and systems that improve seismic performance. His research includes examination of medium-rise and tall commercial buildings, bridges and more recently, housing. He has a particular interest in the use of base-isolation and energy dissipation to enhance the seismic performance of buildings and building contents. Tim has considerable consulting experience and enjoys collaborating with industry.

Derek Warner joined the Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering at the University of Canterbury in 2023. Prior to this, he was a Professor at Cornell University where he directed the Cornell Fracture Group and served as the Interim Director of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Derek’s academic training consisted of a postdoc in the Solid Mechanics Group at Brown University and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. During the 2013 and 2020 academic years, Derek was a Visiting Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.