Wednesday, July 15, 2015 | By Lindsay Cashin
UBC Civil Engineering Professor Mahdi Taiebat is one of 11 UBC professors among the 125 selected researchers in Canada who were awarded the 2015 NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement (DAS). This supplements Dr. Taiebat’s successful five-year (2015-2020) NSERC Discovery Grant (DG).
The NSERC-DAS program provides substantial and timely resources to a small group of researchers, whose research proposals suggest and explore high-risk, novel or potentially transformative concepts and lines of inquiry, and are likely to have impact by contributing to groundbreaking advances. The awards are given to top-ranked researchers whose programs are highly rated for originality and innovation by their peers, and who show strong potential to become international leaders within their field.
Dr. Taiebat’s research interests are on theoretical and computational geomechanics, constitutive modeling of engineering materials, geotechnical earthquake engineering, static and dynamic soil-structure interaction. He has collaborated with researchers in the US, UK, Iran, Norway, Greece, France, Germany, Colombia, and Australia. Dr. Taiebat’s repertoire of industry collaborations includes local and international companies such as Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Shell International Exploration and Production, SRK Consulting, Read Jones Christoffersen, Levelton Consultants, Hydro-Quebec, and Golder Associates.
The DAS award recognizes Dr. Taiebat’s research achievements, and supports his proposed research on “Multidimensional constitutive and numerical modeling in geotechnical seismic analysis and design.” The long term objective of the proposed research is to bring the practical modeling to the next level and enhance the capability of researchers and engineers to deal with complex problems of geotechnical [earthquake] engineering with significant multidimensional effects.
Congratulations to Professor Taiebat and his Theoretical & Applied Geomechanics (TAG) research team for bringing this award to our Department!