ASCE has honored Michel Bruneau, Ph.D., P.E., P.Eng, F.SEI, Dist.M.ASCE, with the 2025 Ernest E. Howard Award for his contributions to advancing seismic design and improving the safety and resilience of steel and steel-concrete composite structures through research codification activities, as well as authoring articles, books, and presentations benefitting the engineering community around the world.
Bruneau’s contributions to research are legendary. Over the past three decades he has been the bastion of fundamental and applied research advancing seismic design of innovative structures around the world. He is the leading researcher for development of seismic provisions for steel plate shear walls (SPSWs), a widely recognized and used lateral force-resisting system used in practice today. He has also been one of the main contributors to the development of the composite plate shear walls / concrete filled (C-PSW/CF) system, which has gained popularity as the SpeedCore system for high-rise building application.
He has done extensive research on concrete-filled composite columns subjected to seismic, blast, and fire loading. He has also developed an innovative ductile diaphragm concept for the seismic design of steel bridges to achieve resilience (i.e., fully functional immediately after an earthquake).
Bruneau has more than 25 years of service on various code and specifications committees for buildings and bridges. Nearly all clauses for seismic design of seismic plate shear walls in the AISC seismic provisions, and worldwide for that matter, stem from the comprehensive research conducted by Bruneau and his team of graduate Ph.D. students from 2000 to 2014. Bruneau’s design recommendations for shear and flexural strength of concrete-filled composite members have been incorporated in AASHTO Bridge Design Specifications.
The Ernest E. Howard Award is given to a member of the Society who has made a definite contribution to the advancement of structural engineering through research, planning, design, or construction.
