Frieder Seible

Dean of the Jacobs School
Professor, Structural Engineering

Design and retrofit of buildings and bridges for earthquake safety, new technologies to renew the nation's aging infrastructure, and bomb blast-resistant design of critical infrastructure.

Frieder Seible is considered a world-leader in bridge design and strategies to mitigate earthquake damage to buildings and bridges. His research achievements include the development of large-scale structural testing techniques, seismic assessment and retrofit of bridges, and the application of Polymer Matrix Composites (PMC) in civil engineering structures. He was the founding director of the Charles Lee Powell Structural Research Laboratories, which serve as a worldwide resource for full-scale testing and analysis of structures. Dr. Seible is the chair of the California Department of Transportation Seismic Advisory Board and has contributed to the Caltrans Bridge Seismic Safety Program through his large scale testing and retrofit research. Among his many recent research projects, Dr. Seible tested components for the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge East Bay Span, which was destroyed in an earthquake in 1989. More recently, his research focuses on blast resistant design of critical infrastructures, and he is the co-principal investigator on a bomb blast mitigation program sponsored by the Technical Support Working Group for counter-terrorism research.

Capsule Bio:
Frieder Seible is the Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and oversees strategic planning and operations, School-wide research and educations initiatives, academic affairs, and UCSD-wide cooperative programs. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is the Walter J. Zable Professor of Engineering and the Eric and Johanna Reissner Chair in Applied Mechanics and Structural Engineering. Seible is the chair of the California Department of Transportation Seismic Advisory Board, and has served on or led national and international committees on bridge design and retrofit for earthquake safety. He serves as a structural engineering consultant on many of the world's long-span bridges. Seible has published more than 500 papers and technical reports, mainly related to seismic design of bridges and buildings as well as blast resistent design of critical structures. He received a Dpl. Ing. from the University of Stuttgart, a M.Sc. from the University of Calgary, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, all in civil engineering. Seible joined UCSD in 1983, and served as founding chair of the Department of Structural Engineerng from 1995 until 2001. He was appointed Dean of the Jacobs School in 2003.

Institute Affiliation:
Charles Lee Powell Structural Research Laboratories »