People

Principal Investigator

Seymour M.J. Spence

Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Seymour M.J. Spence joined the University of Michigan in 2014 from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a Research Assistant Professor. He earned a M.S. in Civil Engineering in 2005 from the University of Perugia and a joint Ph.D. from the University of Florence and Braunschweig in 2009. Spence has authored over 100 publications in leading journals and conferences and was the recipient of the 2015 ASCE’s J. James R. Croes Medal and the 2018 National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award.

Current members

Haimiti Atila

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (expected graduation 2028)

Atila received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Michigan. He started in Fall 2023 and will be working on metamodeling approaches for uncertain and dynamic structural systems subject to stochastic excitation leveraging AI and machine learning.

Tanmay Vora 

Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering (expected graduation 2027, co-advised with Prof. Ann Jeffers)

Tanmay received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (India), and his M.S. from the University of Michigan. He started in the Fall of 2023 and will be leveraging Computational Fluid Dynamics to simulate firebrand transport in wildfires.

Jieling Jiang 

Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering (expected graduation 2026)

Jieling received her B.S. in Civil Engineering from Chang'an University (China), and her M.S. from Tongji University (China). She started in Fall 2022 and will be working on performance-based wind engineering and machine learning.

Liuyun Xu

Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering (expected graduation 2025)

Liuyun received her B.S. in Civil Engineering from Suzhou University of Science & Technology (China), and her M.S. from Tongji University (China). She started in Fall 2021 and will be working on performance-based wind engineering.

Isabela Durci Rodrigues

Visiting Ph.D. student (2023-2024)

Isabela is a visiting PhD student from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She is working on developing metamodeling schemes for accelerating multi-objective optimization within the setting of state-of-the-art Performance-based Earthquake Engineering. 

Former members

Srinivasan Arunachalam

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2024) - Title of dissertation: Performance-based Wind Engineering through Stochastic Simulation and High-fidelity Computational Modeling 

Currently a Research Engineer at AIR Worldwide, Boston, MA

Bowei Li

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Scientific Computing (2022) - Title of dissertation: Rapid Stochastic Response Estimation of Dynamic Nonlinear Structures: Innovative Frameworks and Applications 

Post-doctoral Scholar (2023 - 2024) - Topic of study: metamodeling approaches for uncertain and dynamic structural systems subject to stochastic excitation as well as technology for the implementation of performance -based wind engineering. 

Currently an Assistant Professor at the Texas Tech University in the Department of Civil, Environmental, & Construction Engineering

Sejin Kim

Post-doctoral Scholar (2022 - 2024) - Topic of study: AI-enabled damage estimation of hurricane-impacted residential communities through CFD simulations.

Currently Assistant Professor at Chungbuk National University, South Korea

Min Li

Post-doctoral Scholar (2021 - 2023) - Topic of study: Multi-fidelity frameworks for rapid estimation of failure probabilities associated with rare events and complex computational models.

Currently Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Ahmed U. Abdelhady

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Scientific Computing (2021) - Title of dissertation: Resilience of Residential Wooden Structures against Wind Hazards (co-advised with Prof. Jason McCormick, University of Michigan)

Currently a Research Engineer at AIR Worldwide, Boston, MA

Zhicheng Ouyang 

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Scientific Computing (2021) - Title of dissertation: Computational Frameworks for Probabilistic Performance-based Wind Assessment of Envelope Systems of Engineered Buildings

Currently at Research Scientist at Meta (formally Facebook, Inc.).

Arthriya Subgranon 

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2020) - Title of dissertation: System-Level Performance-Based Design and Optimization of Wind Sensitive Structures

Currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida in the Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering

Wei-Chu Chuang

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2019) - Title of dissertation: Innovative Frameworks for the Probabilistic Performance-Based Design of Inelastic Wind Excited Structures. 

Currently Engineer at Sargent & Lundy, Seattle, WA

Master's Students 

Undergraduate Students