Description

Within a week of the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) deployed Ayse Hortacsu as part of a two-person advance team to support the Learning from Earthquakes (LFE) program. The team traveled over 1,000 miles in southeastern Turkey conducting field reconnaissance. In addition to a week-long field mission, Ayse Hortacsu also spent two weeks in the country engaging in conversations with structural engineers in research and practice. In this presentation, she will share her observations regarding the earthquakes, response of the built environment, impacts of the damage on the community, as well as potential improvements for reducing future losses.

Presented by

Ayse Hortacsu, Director of Projects at the Applied Technology Council (ATC), a non-profit structural engineering organization headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is originally from Istanbul, Turkey, and has lived in California since moving there to study engineering at Stanford University in 1996. At ATC, she manages projects on various technical issues that have resulted in over 50 publications to date. She has conducted post-earthquake field reconnaissance after the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, as well as Nepal (2015), Haiti (2010) and Izmit, Turkey (1999) earthquakes. She is currently serving as a Director for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) and served in similar roles for the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC) and EERI Northern California Chapter. She is also the founder of Women in Structural Engineering, and a founding member of the Structural Engineering Equity and Engagement (SE3) Committee of SEAONC. Ayse resides in San Francisco with her husband and two school age children.