UW News

February 10, 2020

UW’s Steve Kramer elected to National Academy of Engineering

Steve Kramer, a professor of UW civil and environmental engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Kramer is among 87 members and 18 international members newly elected to the academy, one of the highest professional distinctions in engineering.

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Steve KramerUniversity of Washington

Membership to the academy recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of engineering, from research to practice to education. Kramer was elected for “contributions to geotechnical earthquake engineering, including liquefaction, seismic stability and seismic site response.”

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 “Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering,” 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, 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.

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