Farzad Naeim, most recently EERI Past President, has been an energetic contributor to EERI since he joined in 1983. With doctorate degrees in both Engineering and Law, he is Vice President and General Counsel at John A. Martin and Associates, a consulting structural engineering firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California. He is a registered civil and structural engineer in California; a member of the California bar, and a patent attorney. One of EERI’s first FEMA Professional Fellows in 1993, Farzad was also instrumental in bringing EERI into cyberspace in 1995 when he wrote the Institute’s first Electronic Information Management Plan. He served a five-year term as Earthquake Spectra Editor and is currently on its Editorial Board. After helping to create the World Housing Encyclopedia, his group at JAMA has developed and maintained the World Housing Encyclopedia database and web site. He endowed the Farzad Naeim prize, which underwrites the publication of an annual WHE insert featuring the Best Recent Report and updates on other WHE activities.

He was also, at various times, chair of the Special Projects and Initiatives Committee and Nominations Committee. In addition to his EERI activities, Farzad is a member of industry advisory boards to UCLA, USC, and CSUN civil engineering departments, a director of COSMOS, and serves on the Advisory Council of the Southern California Earthquake Center.

Farzad has served as technical director for the analysis and design of numerous award-winning structures, including the replication of the Eiffel Tower, at half-scale, for the Paris Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, the seismic retrofitting of UCLA’s Royce Hall, the Los Angeles Convention Center expansion, the California State University, Long Beach, University Events Center, the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

Naeim has developed more than 45 software systems for earthquake engineering applications, and is a nationally recognized authority on the evaluation of design ground motion issues as they relate to the design of structural systems. He conducted investigations of the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 1999 Taiwan earthquake, and edited the first and second editions of The Seismic Design Handbook, used in all major U.S. universities.