About: Joyner Memorial Lectures

William B. Joyner Memorial Lectures

The William B. Joyner Memorial Lectures were established by the Seismological Society of America (SSA) in cooperation with the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) to honor Bill Joyner's distinguished career at the U.S. Geological Survey and his abiding commitment to the exchange of information at the interface of earthquake science and earthquake engineering, so to keep society safer from earthquakes. Joyner Lecturers are chosen on the basis of their work at this interface, whether they are contributions from earthquake science to earthquake engineering or from earthquake engineering to earthquake science. The first Joyner Lecturer, for the calendar year 2004, was Lloyd Cluff (see the article of the same title in Seismological Research Letters 75:2, p.153-154, 2004).

The second Joyner Lecturer was C. Allin Cornell. Allin is best known for original and continuing work on probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA), now recognized for its great power in synthesizing earth-sciences data, models, and uncertainties in probabilistic portrayals. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is past President of the SSA (1989-1990) and received the Medal of the Seismological Society, now the Harry Fielding Reid Medal, in 2003. Allin has also been the EERI Distinguished lecturer (1999) and received the Housner Medal from EERI in 2003. Allin presented his Joyner Lecture, entitled "Quantifying the Seismology-Engineering Interface" at the EERI meeting in February, 2005, and at the SSA meeting in April, 2005.

Norm Abrahamson is the Joyner Lecturer for 2006, the Centennial Year of the San Francisco earthquake and the founding of the SSA. Norm brings a very pragmatic approach to ground-motion estimation, with a keen sense of what the engineering community needs to know and a remarkable ability, through his rapport with the seismological community, to obtain this information, whatever the issue may be. In recent years, Norm has contributed to the 1998 PSHA for Yucca Mountain and the Geological Survey's 2003 earthquake probabilities report for the San Francisco Bay area. His ongoing work includes extreme ground motions at Yucca Mountain and the new generation of attenuation models.

Joyner Lectures are normally presented at the annual meetings of SSA and EERI, but this year the Joyner Committee has decided that the "official" debut of Norm's Joyner Lecture, "The Seismology-Engineering Interface: The Need for Two-Way Flow of Information," will be November 20, 2006, the 100th anniversary of the first meeting of the Seismological Society of America, at Pacific Gas & Electric Company in San Francisco. Further information on the time and location will develop over the next several months.

The Joyner Committee

The Joyner Lectures are underwritten by the SSA William B. Joyner Memorial Fund, which is administered by the Joyner Committee. The Joyner Committee presently consists of Lloyd Cluff (chairman), David Boore, Thomas Hanks, Paul Somerville, and the Presidents of SSA and EERI, Michael Fehler and Craig Comartin, respectively.

Nominations for the Lectureship

Nominations for theÊ Joyner Lecturer should be sent to the Joyner Committee, Seismological Society of America, 201 Plaza Professional Building, El Cerrito, CA 94530 by 1 July of each year. Nominations can be made by any current member of EERI or SSA. A nomination must clearly document what the nominee has done to foster and enhance communication at the earthquake-science/earthquake-engineering interface and why it makes a difference. TheÊ Joyner Lecturer will be selected by the Joyner Committee by 1 October each year. Each Joyner Lecturer will provide a written version of the lecture suitable for publication in Earthquake Spectra and Seismological Research Letters. EERI and SSA will waive meeting registration fees for the Joyner Lecturer and provide travel funds to attend the annual meeting of each organization.

 

Last Update: 16 August 2007