Armen Der Kiureghian

Armen Der Kiureghian received his B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran, and his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975. After three years at the University of Southern California, he joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has served as Assistant Professor (1978-81), Associate Professor (1981-85), Professor (1985- ), Vice Chair (1990-93) and Chair (1997-2001) of the Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Materials Program and as Vice Chair for Instruction (2007-2009) in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.

After the devastating Spitak earthquake of 1988 in Armenia, he was instrumental in establishing the American University of Armenia in Yerevan as an affiliate of the University of California. He has served as the founding Dean of Engineering (1991-2007), the Director of Engineering Research Center (1991-2004) and as Interim Provost (2011-2012) of AUA concurrently with his position at Berkeley and as the President of AUA (2014-2019) after his retirement from Berkeley. He continues to serve as a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Armenia Corporation.

Der Kiureghian's teaching and research interests are in the areas of structural reliability, risk analysis, random vibrations and earthquake engineering. He has pioneered methods for safety and reliability assessment of complex structures, for risk analysis and decision making, and for stochastic seismic analysis of buildings, bridges and critical equipment. He has more than 300 publications, including 130 in archival journals.