, a professor of UW civil and environmental engineering, has been elected to the聽.聽Kramer is among 87 members and 18 international members to the academy, one of the highest professional distinctions in engineering.
Membership to the academy recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of engineering, from research to practice to education. Kramer was elected for 鈥渃ontributions to geotechnical earthquake engineering, including liquefaction, seismic stability and seismic site response.鈥�
Kramer earned his undergraduate, master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.
During his 36-year tenure at UW, Kramer has made notable research advancements in the areas of liquefaction, seismic slope stability and dynamic soil behavior, both nationally and internationally. Locally, he led a study about 25 years ago with professor Marc Eberhard that documented the seismic vulnerability of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seattle seawall. Kramer also pioneered an innovative method for producing more complete, rational and consistent estimates of the hazards of liquefaction, which causes soil to behave like a liquid, in different earthquake-prone environments.
Kramer is the author of聽鈥淕eotechnical Earthquake Engineering,鈥� the first book written on the subject, which is widely recognized as raising the practice of earthquake engineering around the world. Over the years, Kramer has assumed leadership roles with the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, a consortium of West Coast universities. He recently helped form and lead the Next-Generation Liquefaction project,聽an international effort supported by the center that is building an openly accessible database of liquefaction case histories that will be used to develop new predictive models for the triggering and consequences of liquefaction.
Newly elected members will be formally inducted Oct. 4 during the National Academy of Engineering’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.