Koliou Research Group

June 10, 2020: Mohammad Aghababaei, PhD student in our group, received the  2020 O.H. Ammann Research Fellowship by ASCE's Structural Engineering Institute. ASCE's Press release and Texas A&M article refer to Mohammad's achievement.  Congratulations Mohammad!

May 28, 2020: Ehsan Jalilifar, PhD student in our group, received the  Shibata International Memorial Scholarship (Fall 2019), International Education Fee Scholarship  (Spring & Summer 2020),  and the International TX Public Education Grant  (Summer 2020) through the Texas A&M's University Scholarship Program for his excellent GPA and continuing academic achievement. Congratulations Ehsan!

February 1, 2020: The NIST-funded Center of Excellence for Risk Based Community Resilience Planning headquartered at Colorado State Univesity has been renewed for five more years (2020-2025) through a $20 million cooperative agreement. 

Dr. Koliou serves as co-PI in the Center. The press release by NIST can be found here. 

February 1, 2020: Dr. Koliou was awarded a  $300,000 project on  Safety of Slab Home Elevations in Harvey-Affected Communities: Research, Education, Training and Outreach   by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - Texas Sea Grant . Dr. Yazdani (University of Texas - Arlington ) is the PI and Dr. Koliou serves as co-PI in the project.

February 7-8 , 2019: Dr. Koliou and PhD student M. Aghababaei participated in the 2nd NHERI-NIED/E-Defense Research Collaboration Meeting took place at E-Defense.  Dr. Koliou gave a presentation on the overall collaboration with the Japanese colleagues and progress of the NSF project on  "RAPID/Collaborative Research: Japan-U.S. Collaboration on the Seismic Resilience of Wood-frame Building Systems ".

January - February , 2019: Dr. Koliou led a team as part of the NSF-funded project on "RAPID/Collaborative Research: Japan-U.S. Collaboration on the Seismic Resilience of Wood-frame Building Systems " at E-Defense Japan, where they participated in shake table tests of two 3-story wood residential building under extreme ground shaking. Updates, photos and videos of the team and tests were posted on various tweets below. 

April 13, 2018: Dr. Koliou received an NSF-supported travel grant to attend the 2018 Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Conference and present her research work. 

March 9, 2018: Dr. Koliou was featured by by ASCE's Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) for #WomensHistoryMonth . Click here to see the post. 

January 18, 2018: Dr. Koliou has been awarded the Structural Engineering Institute's (SEI) Young Professional Scholarship from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Click here for the official announcement. 

January 10, 2018: Dr. Koliou was awarded a RAPID grant by the DOC-NOAA / Texas Sea Grant program a project focusing on "Long-term recovery assessment of infrastructure systems and communities following Hurricane Harvey: Case study for the city of Port Aransas ". Dr. Koliou serves as the PI for this project. 

January 8, 2018: Dr. Koliou's paper entitled "State of the research in community resilience: progress and challenges" and co-authored with  J.W. van de Lindt, T. P. McAllister, B.R. Ellingwood, M. Dillard and H. Cutler has been accepted for publication by the Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure Journal. Click here to access the article. 

December 19, 2017: Dr. Koliou was awarded a $10,000 Seed Grant through the PESCA - Texas A&M University's program a project to understand the performance and enhance resilience of coastal housing communities. 

November 14, 2017: Dr. Koliou participated and presented in a webinar organized by  Haselton Baker Risk Group, LLC on the conducted work on SP3 Building-Specific Risk Assessment for Tilt-Up Buildings. Click here to watch the webinar. 

November 6, 2017: Dr. Koliou was interviewed by The Battalion to talk about her research on wind-related resilience assessment studies. Click here for the full article. 

October 31-November 1, 2017: Dr. Koliou attended the 1st Annual NHERI-NIED/E-Defense Earthquake Research Meeting, which took place at the Kobori Research Complex Inc. in Akasaka, Tokyo. US/Japan collaboration opportunities on earthquake engineering research were identified during the meeting.

October 10, 2017: Mr. Andrew Brennan joins Dr. Koliou's group as an MS student. Andrew's research will focus on performance-based assessment of seismic retrofit techniques for high-voltage transformer bushing systems . Welcome Andrew!

September 9-13, 2017: Dr. Koliou attended the ASCE Congress on Technical Advancement (ASCE-CTA), which took place in Duluth, MN. Dr. Koliou co-organized and co-moderated a session on "Risk-Informed Decision Making for Assessing Community Resilience", where she also gave a presentation entitled "Quantifying Post-Disaster Functionality of the Building Infrastructure". 

August 22, 2017: Mr. Mohamad Aghababaei joins Dr. Koliou's group as a PhD student. Mohamad's research will focus on multi-hazard performance-based engineering in the context of system functionality and community resilience. Welcome Mohamad!

August 21, 2017: Dr. Koliou will be co-organizing and moderating a technical session with Prof. G.P. Cimellaro (Politecnico di Torino) at the upcoming ASCE/SEI Structures Congress on "Recent Advancements in Community Resilience Assessment".

August 11-12, 2017: Dr. Koliou attended the 3rd Huixian Forum on Earthquake Engineering for Young Researchers (3HIFEE), which took place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Dr. Koliou gave a presentation entitled "From Performance-Based Engineering to Community Resilience: Buildings under Extreme Ground Shaking". 

August 2017: Dr. Koliou joined the Zachry Dept. of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University as an Assistant Professor!

April 20, 2017: Dr. Koliou's paper co-authored with A. Filiatrault  on the "Development of Wood and Steel Diaphragm Hysteretic Connector Database for Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering" has been accepted for publication by the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering. 

April 11, 2017: Dr. Koliou will be co-organizing and moderating a technical session with Prof. J. van de Lindt (CSU) at the upcoming ASCE Congress on Technical Advancement on "Risk-Informed Decision Making for Assessing Community Resilience".

February 21, 2017: Dr. Koliou was elected to serve as a co-chair for the EERI's Younger Member Committee for a two year term.

February 1, 2017: Dr. Koliou's paper entitled "Performance Assessment of Tilt-up Big-Box Buildings subjected to Extreme Hazards: Tornadoes and Earthquakes" and co-authored with H. Masoomi and J.W. van de Lindt has been accepted for publication by the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities.

Jan. 9-13, 2017: Dr. Koliou attended the 16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (16WCEE) in Santiago, Chile and gave two presentations. The first presentation included work conducted at the NIST-funded Center of Excellence and was entitled "Fragility Assessment of Buildings with Rigid Walls/Flexible Roof Diaphragms subjected to Earthquake and Tornado". Dr. Koliou also presented work of her Ph.D. dissertation  on the "Roof Diaphragm Distributed Yielding Concept for Improved Seismic Collapse Performance of Buildings with Rigid Walls/Flexible Roof Diaphragms". 

Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2016: Dr. Koliou was a member of an inter-disciplinary field study consisted by a team of engineers, economists and sociologists assessing the community recovery of the city of Lumberton, NC following the hurricane Matthew. Check out here the article on the field trip!

October 24-25, 2016: Prof.  Quanwang Li from  Tsinghua University visited the NIST- COE at Colorado State University.

October 21, 2016: Dr. Koliou gave an invited presentation at Colorado School of Mines entitled "From Performance-Based Engineering to Community Resilience: Building Infrastructure under Extreme Hazards".

September 19-22, 2016: Dr. Koliou attended the 1st International Workshop on Resilience in Turin, Italy and gave a presentation on the "Functionality fragility assessment in the context of community resilience".

August 31, 2016: Dr. Koliou's paper entitled "Evaluation of Out-of-Plane Wall Anchorage Force Provisions in Buildings with Rigid Walls and Flexible Roof Diaphragms" has been accepted for publication by the Earthquake Spectra Journal.

August 23, 2016: Dr. Koliou's paper entitled "Evaluation of an Alternative Seismic Design Approach for Rigid Wall Flexible Wood Roof Diaphragm Buildings through Probabilistic Loss Estimation and Disaggregation " has been accepted for publication by the Engineering Structures Journal.

April 14, 2016: Dr. Koliou's paper entitled "Assessing Modeling Complexities on the Seismic Performance of a Short Period Instrumented Hospital" has been accepted by the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities. 

February 14-17, 2016: Dr. Koliou attended the 2016 Geotechnical and Structural Congress in Phoenix, AZ. Dr. Koliou presented about the NIST Community Resilience Center of Excellence at the SEI Technical committee on the "Disaster Resilience of Structures, Infrastructures and Communities".  Dr. Koliou also presented her work on the "Distributed Yielding Concept for Improved Seismic Collapse Performance of Buildings with Rigid Walls and Flexible Roof Diaphragms". 

December 10-12, 2015: Dr. Koliou attended the 2nd ATC-SEI Conference on Improve the Seismic Performance of Existing Buildings and Other Structures and presented a poster entitled "Improved Seismic Response of Buildings with Rigid Walls and Flexible Wood Roof Diaphragms through a New Seismic Design Approach Based on Distributed Diaphragm Yielding".

October 15-16, 2015: Dr. Koliou was selected and participated in MIT's inaugural CEE Rising Stars workshop.

August 25, 2015: Dr. Koliou's papers entitled "Buildings with Rigid Walls and Flexible Roof Diaphragms I: Evaluation of Current United States Seismic Provisions" and "Buildings with Rigid Walls and Flexible Roof Diaphragms II: Evaluation of a New Seismic Design Approach Based on Distributed Diaphragm Yielding" have been accepted by the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering. 

August 17, 2015: Dr. Koliou started her new appointment as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning based at Colorado State University.

July 2, 2015: Dr. Koliou's paper entitled "Distributed Yielding Concept for Improved Seismic Collapse Performance of Rigid Wall-Flexible Diaphragm Buildings" has been accepted by the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering. Check out the paper here.  

June 2015: Dr. Koliou's work on the Seismic Design of Rigid Wall-Flexible Diaphragm Buildings has been included in the 2015 NEHRP Provisions - Part 3, which has been published as a FEMA P1050-2 document entitled: "NEHRP Recommended Seismic Provisions for New Buildings and Other Structures". Check out the FEMA document here. 

April 25, 2015: Dr. Koliou's poster at the the 2015 Structures Congress in Portland was voted as the Best of the Best Poster. The poster was entitled "Evaluation of Wall Anchorage Force Provisions in Rigid Wall - Flexible Diaphragm Buildings".

March 2015: The FEMA P1026 document entitled "Seismic Design of Rigid Wall-Flexible Diaphragm Buildings: An Alternate Procedure" is available online. Dr. Koliou is a contributing author for this document, which describes her work on the Seismic Design of Rigid Wall-Flexible Diaphragm Buildings. Check out the FEMA document here.