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

Sejin Kim

Post-doctoral Scholar

Sejin received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Seoul National University in February 2020. Her area of focus was Probabilistic Stability Evaluation of Vehicles under Strong Winds for Bridge Traffic Control. He was subsequently a Post-doctoral Scholar at Florida State University.

Sejin is currently working on developing computational frameworks for the estimation of community resilience to extreme wind hazards.

Bowei Li

Post-doctoral Scholar

Bowei received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Michigan in April 2022. His area of focus was Rapid Stochastic Response Estimation of Dynamic Nonlinear Structures: Innovative Frameworks and Applications. Previous to joining Michigan ,Bowei received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China) in 2015 and a M.S. in Engineering from Tongji University (China) in 2018. 

He is currently working on developing metamodeling approaches for uncertain and dynamic structural systems subject to stochastic excitation as well as technology for the implementation of performance -based wind engineering. 

Srinivasan Arunachalam

Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering (expected graduation 2024)

Srinivasan received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar in 2017, and a M.S. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2019. He is currently working on developing frameworks and models for the next generation of performance-based wind engineering.

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.

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.

Haimiti Atila

Ph.D. pre-candidate in Civil Engineering

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.

Isabela Durci Rodrigues

Visiting Ph.D. student (2023-2024)

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

Former members

Min Li

Post-doctoral Scholar - 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

Wei-Chu Chuang

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

Currently a Design Engineer at Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA), Seattle, WA

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

Master's Students 

Undergraduate Students