"The professors here are very accessible. You can talk with them in a very colloquial way, and those kinds of relationships are important. The relations among the faculty are good and the department feels like it's working in a common direction. The faculty include us in their weekly meetings and invite us to present work, and that in itself is good training for our future professional work."
Ramiro earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and then worked for a construction company for three years before returning to the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama to study for a master's degree and work as a research assistant. He won a government scholarship for doctoral study, and two colleagues at the university who had earned Ph.D.s in structural engineering at UB recommended the department. He liked what he saw on the Web about research work in earthquake engineering. In Buffalo for three years now, he is doing modeling work on a technology called a structural fuse that can absorb earthquake damage while protecting a structure and can be replaced after it has been damaged, sparing the rest of the structure from expensive repair.
Ramiro's home country of Panama is seismically active, and its building codes—which began incorporating seismic parameters in 1980—will be revised soon to accommodate new technologies. Ramiro hopes to contribute to the process.
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Ramiro Vargas