Professor Song Junho and Yi Sang-ri

PhD Students Ji-Eun Byun and Sang-ri Yi (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) were named recipients of the International Civil Engineering Risk and Reliability Association (CERRA) Student Recognition Award at the 13th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP 13) held from May 26 to 30 at SNU.

Hosted every four years by CERRA, ICASP is one of the most prestigious conferences in the field. Since 1971, ICASP has invited engineers, scientists, educators, researchers, and students from around the world to improve the understanding of uncertainty and risk in all aspects of civil engineering. The conference has previously been held in locations such as San Francisco, CA, USA, Paris, France and Zurich, Switzerland.

This year’s conference consisted of more than 30 sessions, with 394 presenters from over 35 countries. Seven students under the guidance of Professor Junho Song (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering), who operates the SNU Structural and System Reliability Group (SSRG), presented papers at the conference.

In 2011, CERRA introduced the "CERRA Student Recognition Award" in order to support the scientific contributions student researchers. 60 applicants each submitted a research paper and a 15-minute presentation video. This year, ten applicants were selected for the award.

Ji-Eun Byun was recognized for her paper entitled “Efficient Optimization for Multi-Objective Decision-Making on Civil Systems using Discrete Influence Diagram.” Her paper assessed the modeling and optimization of probabilistic decision-making problems for civil systems and proposes an efficient framework for multi-objective optimization.

Sang-ri Yi’s paper, titled “Stochastic Fragility Analysis of MDOF Systems using Gaussian Mixture-Based Equivalent Linearization Method” proposed improvements to the recently developed Gaussian mixture based equivalent linearization method (GM-ELM) to promote its applications to seismic fragility analysis.

The other recipients recognized for the award were students of ETH Zürich, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania State University, University College London, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Michigan.

At the award ceremony, Byun and Lee expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to collaborate with scholars and students from the world’s leading universities but above all, to Professor Junho Song for his guidance.

"We hope that the reliability analysis methodologies and technologies currently being developed in our lab will one day contribute to the realization of a safer social infrastructure."

Written by Frances Seowon Jin, SNU English Editor, seowonjin@snu.ac.kr Reviewed by Professor Travis Smith, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, tlsmith@snu.ac.kr