Brendon A. Bradley

Welcome to the web site of our research group at the University of Canterbury (UC). We strive to develop innovative methods and utilise advanced computational and experimental technologies to revolutionise societal resilience to earthquake hazards. In particular, our research focuses on various fundamental and applied aspects of earthquake engineering, from seismic hazard analysis and ground motion prediction to fragility analysis of structures, as well as over-arching subjects such as performance-based frameworks, structure-specific seismic loss assessment, and their role in decision making.

Brendon has been on the faculty at UC since 2010. He obtained his BE(Hons) and PhD from UC in 2007 and 2009, respectively. During 2009-2011, he held positions at GNS Science in Wellington and a post-doctoral fellow at Chuo University in Tokyo, and in 2016-2017 was a UPS Visiting Professor at Stanford University. Further information about the current research group members can be found here.

Brendon has consulting experience in seismic hazard analysis, ground motion selection, structural and geotechnical seismic response analysis, and seismic risk/loss assessment. His awards include: 2025 Royal Society of New Zealand Scott Medal, 2023 University of Canterbury Research Medal, 2021 ISSMGE Bright Spark Lecture Award, 2018 NZGS Geomechanics Award, 2016 Prime Minister's MacDairmid Emerging Scientist Prize, 2016 ASCE Norman Medal, 2015 Shah Innovation Prize, 2014 TC203 Young Researcher Award, 2015 UC Teaching Award, 2014 New Zealand Young Engineer of the Year Award; 2014 Shamsher Prakash Foundation Research Award; 2013 Rutherford Discovery Fellowship; 2012 Ivan Skinner EQC award; 2008 NZSEE research prize. He is a Fellow of Engineering New Zealand (2021), Fellow of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (2022), and Fellow of the Royal Society | Te Apārangi of New Zealand (2022). He was a co-founder of QuakeCoRE: NZ Centre for Earthquake Resilience, serving initially as its Deputy Director (2016-2018), and then Director (2019-2024). He is currently Editor of the journal Earthquake Spectra.

Jack Baker, Brendon Bradley and Peter Stafford have written a textbook on seismic hazard and risk analysis published by Cambridge University Press. See pshabook.com for the text and open-source supplementary material.

Recent news:

16/06/2026: Postdoc Felipe Kuncar's first-authored paper "Methods to account for shallow site effects in hybrid broadband ground-motion simulations" (https://doi.org/10.1177/87552930241301059) recieved the Earthquake Spectra Outstanding Paper Award for 2025 - reflecting its judgement the most impactful paper out of 156 published by the journal in the calendar year!

29/05/2026: Brendon Bradley's team obtained 20.8 million core hours on the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (MareNostrum 5 machine). We will use this to undertaken physics-based ground motion simulations with the 2022 NZ NSHM source model - a key step to enabling simulation-based predictions in the next NZ NSHM update.

18/05/2026: Brendon delivered the opening keynote lecture at the 1st (Re)Insurance-Academia Global Earthquake Workshop in London. You can find the slides here.

16/04/2026: The wider research group swept several awards at the NZSEE conference this year: Aaron Rampersad won the NZSEE Research Scholarship; Robin Lee won the NZSEE/NHC Ivan Skinner Award, and Brendon Bradley won the Otto Glogau Award and NZSEE Bulletin Service Award. Misko Cubrinovski was also awarded life membership.

15/04/2026: Brendon Bradley delivered a plenary presentation at the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Annual Conference. You can find the slides here.

02/02/2026: Brendon Bradley convened the "International Symposium on Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering: In Honour of Prof. Misko Cubrinovski" in Christchurch, NZ. Over 125 attendees, including 21 internationals, participated in two days of technical sessions and networking activities. You can find more details on the Symposium website: https://sites.google.com/view/gcgeeatuc

28/10/2025: Brendon Bradley was awarded the 2025 RJ Scott Medal from the Royal Society of New Zealand for outstanding contributions towards the advancement of engineering sciences and technologies, and their applications.

18/10/2025: Congratulations to Chris de la Torre, whose first-authored paper received the "best research paper" at the 2025 NZGS Symposium in Auckland! You can see the paper here.

03/10/2025: The Opinion Paper "Lessons from a decade of interdisciplinary earthquak resilience research through the national center, QuakeCoRE" was accepted for publication in Earthquake Spectra. You can see an advance copy here .

08/09/2025: Brendon Bradley and Felipe Kuncar presented two posters at the Statewide California Annual Meeting in Palm Springs. You can see the presented posters here.

01/09/2025: Congratulations to Mike Dupuis for submitting his PhD thesis "Hybrid Broadband Simulation of Mw3.5-7.8 Subduction Earthquakes in New Zealand". Two of Mike's thesis chapters are already published as papers (see here), with two to following in the coming months.

31/08/2025: The group will present 11 posters at the QuakeCoRE Annual Meeting in Dunedin. You can see the presented posters here.

26/08/2025: Congratulations to Felipe Kuncar for graduating with his PhD. Felipe is continuing in the group as a Postdoctoral Fellow.

28/06/2025: Brendon Bradley delivered a talk "Lessons from the 2022 New Zealand National Seismic Hazard Model" to the DE|RISC Lab at University College London. You can view the PDF presentation here.

19/05/2025: Brendon Bradley attended the European Facilities for Earthquake Hazard and Risk (EFEHR) Stakeholder Workshop in London.

12/05/2025: Brendon Bradley will be a visiting professor at University College London for ~2 months, collaborating with Carmine Galasso and the DE|RISC Lab.

17/04/2025: Brendon Bradley participated in the ISSMGE International Interactive Technical Talk series associated with TC203: Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering and Associated Problems. The YouTube video of the session is here.

10/04/2025: Several members of the group attended the 2025 NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering Annual Conference - you can find details of the five presented papers/posters here.

25/02/2025: We currently have openings for two PhD positions. Please see the Research opportunities page for further details. Applications close 15 April 2025.

12/02/2025:A new advice article was published for New Zealand-based researchers who are interested to apply to the RSNZ Marsden Fund.

15/01/2025: Brendon Bradley commenced the role of Editor for the journal Earthquake Spectra. He joins Jack Baker (Editor-in-chief) and Helen Crowley (Editor) in the journals academic leadership.

08/01/2025: PhD student, Felipe Kuncar, had his first lead-authored journal paper published in Earthquake Spectra! The title is: Methods to account for shallow site effects in hybrid broadband ground-motion simulations. You can find it online here, or download a PDF copy directly from the Publications page of this website.

01/01/2025: Brendon Bradley ceased his tenure as QuakeCoRE Director (2019-2024; Deputy Director 2016-2018). He will remain on the wider ~21 person leadership team as co-leader of DT1: Integrated Seismic Geohazards. All the best to the new Director, Santiago Pujol!

Older (pre-2025) News