"We're teaching an approach. Our graduates take away a set of skills, but they also take away a certain philosophy or style."
"The people with the greatest impact on my career were people working at the top of their fields, the ones who wrote the books, the ones who were truly living the field. We're a faculty that writes the books."
Michel Bruneau describes what he and his fellow researchers in structural engineering and their students are doing as the equivalent of crash testing whole structures. "We can put a building on a shake table and replicate specific earthquake events." Bruneau heads the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, whose affiliated CSEE faculty have made significant contributions to the theory and practice of protecting structures from earthquake damage.
For Bruneau, earthquake engineering is a true frontier of structural engineering: He and his colleagues are now working on replaceable systems for large structures—bridges and buildings—that will absorb earthquake damage and protect the investment in the structure. If he were looking at structural engineering studies now, he'd go to UB: "The field is intensely interesting, and our faculty is doing some of the most advanced level of work in the field."
Read more about Dr. Bruneau
|
Michel Bruneau