Yousef Bozorgnia, Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at UCLA, is the recipient of the 2019 Bruce Bolt Medal, which is awarded jointly by the Consortium of Strong Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS), the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) and Seismological Society of America (SSA). The award highlights the work of individuals who promote strong-motion instrumentation and data processing, make technical contributions to the fields of seismic engineering or engineering seismology and improve seismic safety through a transfer of knowledge into practice or policy. Bozorgnia receives the award for his extensive contributions to earthquake ground motion models, seismic hazard analysis, and structural earthquake engineering.
Bozorgnia served as executive director (2009-2016) and associate director (2004-2009) of PEER, and he has been principal coordinator of the Next Generation Attenuation research projects, where he organized an interdisciplinary team of researchers that helped develop earthquake ground motion models used worldwide for seismic analysis and infrastructure design. In 2015, the NGA-WEST project was awarded the 2015 Excellence in Structural Engineering award from the Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC).