As our communities emerge from the year of shutdowns from the Pandemic, I am cautiously optimistic that the SEAOSC community will be able to enjoy each other’s company once again sooner rather than later. Many of us miss those in-person moments that are a key benefit of being part of the SEAOSC community. This year has been very difficult in so many ways for so many of us. Yet, the resilience of our communities, our members, and this Association is simply amazing.

Download: 2021 SEAOSC EiSE Awards Program Entry Instructions

Click Here for the EiSE Awards Program Entry Information

Treasurer: Craig Chamberlain, IMEG

All the board nominees bios and photos will be posted to our website at http://seaosc.org/Nominees. Officers for 2021-2022, according to the succession procedure, will be President Kelsey Parolini, S.E., President-Elect Patricia Harburg-Petrich, S.E., Treasurer Craig, S.E., and Matt Barnard, S.E. will continue to serve on the Board of Directors as the Immediate Past President. Also, continuing on the Board of Directors will be Bernard Cruz, Brett Beekman, S.E., Jesse Karns, S.E., and Susan Dowty, S.E.

Additional nominations for the office of President-Elect, Treasurer or Director may be submitted by the membership to the Nominations Committee Chair, Mehran Pourzanjani, S.E., mehran@saifulbouquet.com, in accordance with procedures outlined in the SEAOSC Bylaws Article VI, Section 2. To allow sufficient time, the deadline for submitting additional nominees is extended to March 29, 2021. The committee's nominees and any nominees additional will be presented to the membership in April 2021. The electronic ballot will be emailed to the membership in early May. Election results will be announced at the June 2, 2021 SEAOSC end of the fiscal year President’s Dinner. The newly elected directors will take office July 1, 2021 for a two-year term. Thank you to the following members of the Nominations Committee who selected nominees in accordance with the procedures outlined in the Bylaws, Article VI, Section 1.

To maximize your membership, we encourage you take advantage of the many of the member benefits intended for you and these are shown in our Make an Impact membership flyer. One of the benefits available to SEAOSC SE and PE members for a fee is the ability to participate in the online SEAOSC Member Search service. This service is intended to help the public find Structural Engineers and Professional Engineers specializing in a particular area of structural engineering.

Charles Ashley, Ashley & Vance Engineering, Inc.

Andrew Gomez, Englekirk Structural Engineers

Cristian Tulbure, California Pacific Homes

David Lee, engineer and physicist extraordinaire, passed away at his home in Santa Monica on March 11, 2021. As many SEAOSC members will know, David was the West Coast representative for Taylor Devices, Inc., since the 1970s through to his “retirement” a few years ago. I had the good fortune of meeting Dave in the late 1980s, as our design team, fresh off the successful completion of Keck-USC Hospital, the world’s first seismic (base) isolated (SI) hospital building, was considering the use of passive energy dissipation devices to control lateral displacements for a very large hospital project located near the San Andreas/San Jacinto fault zone in the Inland Empire. David came over and made a compelling presentation for the use of viscous-fluid dampers (VFD). Our senior leadership was highly skeptical, yet I felt a connection to Dave and his pitch at the time which I could not explain until a few days later when I learned that Dave was a fellow “Techer”. A graduate of California Institute of Technology (Caltech), though much senior to me. No wonder, I thought, he’s just following the Caltech thought process that is constantly drummed into their students’ brains: question the conventions and revert to fundamental principles to solve apparently intractable problems. So of course, it made sense to both of us that introducing velocity proportional dampers into a displacement proportional seismic isolator system would seem to be a perfect combination. The rest is history. There are now scores of completed projects located throughout California and other states, both SI and conventionally framed, including numerous essential/critical services facilities where VFDs are used to modify the seismic load response very effectively and thereby obtain a level of seismic safety, protection and resilience that would not be possible via conventional means. Much of the credit for that game changing advancement in Seismic Engineering practice goes to David Lee, the eccentric genius with the golden heart. And it was that latter attribute which bonded us as lifelong friends. Dave’s positive, can-do attitude and approach to life coupled with his natural tendency to connect with every kind of person and make them feel good about themselves was a rare trait combination in my experience. Dave and I worked together on many projects over the years and co-authored several technical papers. Beyond that professional/technical collaboration we used to meet several times a year over lunch or a cup of coffee and we would talk about virtually every topic under the sun, and I always came away inspired and happier, somehow. These meetings continued even after he became mostly immobile and homebound. I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend Dave’s funeral services by his wife Margo last Friday (3/19/21), which, otherwise, was attended only by close family members, and to my surprise a mounted honor guard of the LAPD. May Dave’s contributions to our profession, industry and society be remembered and appreciated for a long time to come and may he rest in peace.

Should you have any questions or would like to join our committee, please reach out to me at zhe@mhpse.com

Abstracts can be submitted here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1jxvW95WnpPaY1trK0e2ort7cQxQpU8DocwezPxELfJQ/edit

If you have any questions, please email SEAOC2021@gmail.com We look forward to receiving your abstracts and hope to see you in Carlsbad in September.

The NCSEA Foundation established the NCSEA Diversity in Structural Engineering Scholarship in 2020 to award funding to students who have been traditionally underrepresented in structural engineering (including but not limited to Black/African Americans, Native/Indigenous Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and other people of color). Multiple scholarships up to $5,000 each will be presented annually to junior college students, undergraduate students and/or graduate students pursuing degrees in structural engineering.

Communications Committee

Chair: Maria Mohammed communications@seaosc.org

Diversity & Inclusion Committee

Chair: Lorena Arce

Education Committee

Chair: Siddharth Awasthi

Membership Committee

Chairs: Kerry Regan / Christian Cody

Younger Members Committee

Chair/s: Jessica Chen / Sikandar Porter-Gill

Women in SE Committee

Chairs: Michelle Kam-Biron

Codes & Standards Committee

Chairs: Colin Kumabe / Michael Ciortea

Concrete Committee

Chair: Dragos Ursu / Nils Fox

CMU Committee

Forming - Contact President if Interested

New Buildings Committee

Forming - Contact President if Interested president@seaosc.org

Specialty Materials Committee

Forming - Contact President if Interested

Steel Committee

Chair: Ashwani Dhalwala

Wood Committee

Chair: Zizhao (Zee) He

Disaster Emergency Services Committee

Chairs: Laura Basualdo / Doug Litchfield

Legislative and Professional Practices Committee

Chair: Daniel Wang

Safer Cities Initiative Committee

Organized through Codes & Standards

Sustainability / Resilience Committee

Chair: Timothy Saenz