Civil engineering alumnus recognized with second prize this year

By Peter Murphy

Published November 3, 2020

Satish Nagarajaiah, PhD (’90) and Kalil Erazo, another engineer at Rice University, earned the Takuji Kobori Prize from the International Association of Structural Control and Monitoring.

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Nagarajaiah and Erazo won the award for 2019 based on their paper Bayesian structural identification of a hysteretic negative stiffness earthquake protection system using unscented Kalman filtering.

Nagarajaiah is a former student of Professor Emeritus and 2011 Nathan M. Newmark medal winner, Andrei Reinhorn. Nagarajaiah also worked with both Reinhorn and 2015 Newmark medal winner and SUNY Distinguished Professor Michael Constantinou on US Patent 8,857,110,B2, Negative Stiffness Device and Method.

According to Rice University, “the Kobori Prize is awarded in a formal ceremony customarily held every two years, during the international workshop or the World Conference on Structural Control and Monitoring organized by IASCM.”

Satish Nagarajaiah.

The prize is named for Takuji Kobori of Kyoto University, a renowned researcher in structural control and earthquake engineering.

Nagarajaiah is a professor of civil engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University. He is credited on four different patents, and each have had a significant impact on structural engineering.

Earlier this year, Nagarajaiah earned the Nathan M. Newmark Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

To learn more about Nagarajaiah’s award, read the story from Rice University.