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I am really excited about the opportunities for civil engineers, and especially civil engineering students and faculty at CU, to make the world safer and more resilient through research in disasters and disaster-resistant design.

Abbie B. Liel
Associate Professor • Professional Engineer (PE)
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING & STRUCTURAL MECHANICS • CIVIL SYSTEMS • MORTENSON CENTER IN GLOBAL ENGINEERING
   abbie.liel@colorado.edu
   

I grew up in Portland, Oregon and love the outdoors. I really like hiking, snow shoeing and skiing in Colorado. I also love cooking, and don't always follow the recipe. My husband and I are enjoying watching our 20 month old daughter learn new words and develop a personality.  
I am active in  in ASCE, especially the Structural Engineering Institute. In particular, I am on the main committee for the 2022 ASCE 7 standard. I am also a member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. I do some consulting work for the Applied Technology Council, especially focusing on risks related to nonductile concrete buildings in seismic areas.. I am also involved with the Structural Engineers Association of Colorado and involved in the development of new ground snow load maps for design in the state.
Our students are amazing and do exciting things at CU and once they graduate. I love to hear about their activities with Engineers without Borders, designing bridges in development communities and other work.
I love that every day is different. I also love the energy of working on a college campus and the feeling that we're all getting through the semester together.

What classes do you teach?

 I teach earthquake engineering and structural analysis at the graduate level, reinforced concrete design and probability and statistics at the undergraduate level, and sometimes a freshman seminar on design and the built environment.  

What problems will civil and structural engineers need to solve in the future and how should students be prepared to take them on?

I believe that better engineering can make communities safer, more resilient and more prosperous. All of my work is oriented toward applying engineering to improve lives.  

Please describe your teaching philosophy? How does your research affect the way you teach?

I like teaching because I enjoy helping students learn new topics, and seeing them reach that "aha" moment.  I try to incorporate active learning and problem solving in my classroom, because I believe doing is more powerful than showing. I bring lots of lessons learned from codes and standard committees and research to the classroom, especially related to my work on seismic design of concrete structures.

- Earthquakes cause liquefaction which can damage structures. However, mitigating liquefaction can also increase accelerations in earthquakes. We are using machine learning, experiments in centrifuge and  numerical simulation to try to develop design strategies for mitigation that do not have these tradeoffs.

- Earthquakes caused by human (oil and gas development) activities have significantly increased the seismic hazard and risk in parts of the central us. We are also researching  the potential for these earthquakes to cause damage to the built environment using nonlinear simulation of buildings.

- After a disaster, organizations often help households rebuild and the goal is often to "build back better". Focusing on the Philippines, we are evaluating whether or not rebuilt homes are really built back better and investigating how we can help communities build capacity to build more earthquake and hurricane resistant construction.

- My graduate students are kind-hearted, hard working, persistent and committed to engineering that does good in the world.

Learn more about the "Integrative Reengineering of Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s Communities"​ GAANN Fellowships:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGvGljDQav4&app=desktop]

December 27th, 2018