Virginia Tech is hosting a week-long Seismic Design Training Workshop for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). About 40 engineers from district FERC offices across the nation have been invited to attend the workshop, which is being held Aug. 8-12 in Torgersen Hall on campus.

FERC is charged with regulating the safety of hydroelectric dams, and the workshop will provide comprehensive state-of-the-art engineering training on the earthquake analysis of dams.

“Recent research has shown that regions of the U.S. outside the West Coast, including the central and eastern regions of the nation, have a much higher earthquake threat than previously recognized,” said James Martin, a professor in Virginia Tech’s Via Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and a primary instructor for the workshop.

Other primary workshop instructors include Ross Boulanger, professor, and Ed Idriss, professor emeritus, both of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California-Davis; and Guney Olgun, a research scientist in Virginia Tech’s CEE department.

Martin also is director of the newly established Disaster Risk Management Center at Virginia Tech (DRM-VT), a center of the university’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science. The seismic training workshop is hosted by the DRM-VT in cooperation with Virginia Tech’s Continuing and Professional Education Program.

For more information about the workshop or the DRM-VT, contact James Martin at (540) 231-3934 or e-mail him.

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