About Me
Gregory MacRae received his bachelors degree in civil engineering at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch in 1984. He worked for a consulting engineering firm in Wellington in 1985 before returning to the University of Canterbury to undertake his doctoral studies. These focused on the seismic response of steel frames, and this work was completed in 1989. He worked at the Public Works Research Institute (PWRI) in Tsukuba, Japan, for 2 years before working mainly on the behaviour of steel bridge columns. From there he worked at the University of California, San Diego where he was involved with the early PRESSS projects, the development of displacement based design, as well as bridge retrofit. In 1994 he joined the University of Washington, Seattle, first as an assistant professor, and later as a tenured associate professor. During his time there he was involved with a wide range of topics related to the seismic performance of structures, and to the behaviour of steel structures. In 2005, he returned to his alma mater, the University of Canterbury where he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate classes. His research efforts concentrate on better tools, better construction and better decisions. In particular, his current work is in low-damage construction, decision support tools regarding hazards (including loss assessment), steel structures, and structural dynamics. During 2012 he spent time on sabbatical at Stanford University, and at National Taiwan University, and at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. During 2019 he spent a year at Tongji University, Shanghai.
Greg is the author of a number of journal papers, other papers, contributions to books and project reports. He has also given numerous invited/keynote talks in various countries. He, or students/collaborators involved with his work, have received a number of awards/prizes. He has successful research grant applications. Results from his studies have been incorporated in design guidelines around the world and have specifically influenced the construction of millions of dollars worth of buildings in New Zealand, Japan and the USA. Amongst other activities, he has been an associate editor for the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Journal of Structural Engineering, been an active member of the NZ structural steel design code committee and the NZ loadings code committee, chaired the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Seismic Effects Committee, established the Earthquake Clearinghouse after the Canterbury Earthquake. He has written for the Royal Commission on the Canterbury Earthquakes. He was the Director of the Postgraduate Earthquake Engineering programme. He has been a director of the board of the World Seismic Safety Initiative (WSSI) and senior advisor to the board. From 2011-2019 he was the NZ representative to the International Association of Earthquake Engineering, and is a Fellow of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering. He was a member of the Structural Engineering Society Management Committee, and a member of the UC Quake Centre Board. He is on the Management Committee of the NZ Society for Earthquake engineering, and he is the Head of the Structures group at the University of Canterbury. He is the lead of the NZ-China ROBUST Test programme associated with the International Laboratories for Earthquake Engineering (ILEE) and Tongji University and sponsored by 10 different organizations in these countries.