Armenian-American engineer awarded prestigious John Fritz Medal

PanARMENIAN.Net - Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, Armenian-American Anne Kiremidjian was recently awarded the 2018 John Fritz Medal, The Armenian Weekly reports.

The award, which is presented by the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES), recognizes one individual each year for scientific or industrial achievements in the pure or applied sciences.

According to a press statement published by the Stanford University, Kiremidjian received the award for her research in the field of probabilistic seismic risk assessment and for her leadership in the classroom, educating the next generation of earthquake engineers.

“Kiremidjian’s research focuses on building resilient, sustainable cities that can withstand short- and long-term environmental stressors, including earthquakes. Through the design and implementation of wireless sensor systems, the development of robust algorithms for structural damage diagnosis and several other evaluation techniques, Kiremidjian continues to expand conversations around creating strategic civil infrastructure systems, emphasizing the importance of social, political and economic data in her findings,” reads a part of the statement released by the university.

Born to an Armenian family that moved to avoid persecution, Kiremidjian was a teenager when she came to the U.S. from Bulgaria in 1965. Her current research focuses on the design and implementation of wireless sensor networks for structural damage and health monitoring and the development of robust algorithms for structural damage diagnosis that can be embedded in wireless sensing units.

She works on structural component and systems reliability methods; structural damage evaluation models; and regional damage, loss and casualty estimation methods utilizing geographic information and database management systems for portfolios of buildings or spatially distributed lifeline systems assessment with ground motion and structure correlations.

The John Fritz Medal, which was established in 1902, is one of the highest honors awarded to engineers. Past recipients include Alexander Graham Bell and David Packard.