Alan Poulos

Mendenhall Fellow, U.S. Geological Survey

I am a Civil Engineer working at the Earthquake Science Center of the US Geological Survey. Most of my research is within the field of earthquake engineering. Some of my specific topics of interest are the characterization and simulation of earthquake ground motion and the assessment of seismic risk of spatially distributed infrastructure.

I hold a PhD in Structural Engineering from Stanford University. I also completed my undergraduate studies in Civil Engineering and an MSc in Structural Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. I previously worked at the Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (Cigiden) in Chile. I also have industry and consulting experience in seismic hazard and risk assessment.

This website presents my publications and keeps track of my research progress. It also summarizes the research topics I have worked on.

News

Jul 1, 2024 I gave two presentations at the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering: (1) Influence of faulting style on the directionality of earthquake response spectra and (2) Accounting for ground motion directionality in regional seismic risk assessment.
May 10, 2024 Our paper: Directionality characteristics of horizontal response spectra from the 2022 Mw 6.9 Chihshang, Taiwan earthquake has been published by Earthquake Spectra.
Sep 26, 2023 I started lecturing the Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering course at Stanford University.
Sep 8, 2023 Our paper: Modification of ground-motion models to estimate orientation-dependent horizontal response spectra in strike-slip earthquakes has been published by Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
May 30, 2023 I successfully defended my PhD dissertation.
May 1, 2023 Our paper: Effect of style of faulting on the orientation of maximum horizontal earthquake response spectra has been published by Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Dec 29, 2022 Our paper: Damping-dependent correlations between response spectral ordinates has been published by Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics.
Jun 28, 2022 I presented at the 12th National Conference on Earthquake Engineering. Read the short paper here.
Apr 25, 2022 Our paper: Probabilistic characterization of the directionality of horizontal earthquake response spectra has been published by Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics.
Oct 26, 2021 Our paper: Evaluation of earthquake response spectra directionality using stochastic simulations has been published by Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Aug 16, 2021 Our paper: Proposal of orientation-independent measure of intensity for earthquake-resistant design has been published by Earthquake Spectra.
Aug 2, 2021 I was awarded the 2021-2022 EERI/FEMA NEHRP Graduate Fellowship.
May 18, 2021 Our paper: Relations between MaxRotD50 and some horizontal components of ground-motion intensity used in practice has been published by Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
May 19, 2020 I was awarded the Nancy Grant Chamberlain Fellowship at Stanford for the 2020-2021 academic year.
Sep 23, 2019 I started my doctoral studies in Structural Engineering at Stanford.

Selected publications [full list]

  1. Modification of ground-motion models to estimate orientation-dependent horizontal response spectra in strike-slip earthquakes
    Poulos, A., and Miranda, E.
    Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
  2. Effect of style of faulting on the orientation of maximum horizontal earthquake response spectra
    Poulos, A., and Miranda, E.
    Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
  3. Damping-dependent correlations between response spectral ordinates
    Poulos, A., and Miranda, E.
    Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics
  4. Probabilistic characterization of the directionality of horizontal earthquake response spectra
    Poulos, A., and Miranda, E.
    Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics
  5. Evaluation of earthquake response spectra directionality using stochastic simulations
    Poulos, A., Miranda, E., and Baker, J. W.
    Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
  6. Proposal of orientation-independent measure of intensity for earthquake-resistant design
    Poulos, A., and Miranda, E.
    Earthquake Spectra
  7. Relations between MaxRotD50 and some horizontal components of ground-motion intensity used in practice
    Poulos, A., and Miranda, E.
    Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America

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