Welcome to the web site for Professor Jack Baker's research group at Stanford University. Our research focuses on the use of probabilistic and statistical tools for modeling the reliability of infrastructure systems and other elements of the built environment. We have investigated probabilistic modeling of highway traffic flows, seismic loads on spatially distributed infrastructure systems, characterization of earthquake ground motions, and reliability of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste repositories.
Dr. Baker joined the Stanford University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), where he was a visiting researcher in the Department of Structural Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University, where he also earned M.S. degrees in Statistics and Structural Engineering. During his PhD, he also spent time as a visiting researcher at Nagoya University in Japan. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics/physics from Whitman College. He has industry experience in seismic hazard assessment, ground motion selection, probabilistic risk assessment, and modeling of catastrophe losses for insurance companies. His awards include the Shah Family Innovation Prize from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.
1/27/2012: Congratulations to Ting Lin for receiving an award for her research showcase at the Stanford Opportunity Job Fair reception.
12/1/2011: Jack Baker gave a talk entitled "Current Practice and Future Directions in Ground Motion Selection for Structural Analysis" for the University at Buffalo's Earthquake Engineering Research Institute chapter. A webcast of the talk is archived here.
9/30/2011: Jack Baker, Ting Lin, Mahalia Miller and Shrey Shahi gave talks and poster presentations at the 2011 PEER Annual Meeting in Berkeley, California.
8/26/2011: Jack Baker gave a plenary talk at the 4th International IASPEI/IAEE Symposium on the Effects of Surface Geology on Seismic Motion (ESG4) in Santa Barbara, entitled "Effects of earthquake source geometry and site conditions on spatial correlation of earthquake ground motion hazard" and coauthored with Mahalia Miller.
8/24/2011: Congratulations to Victor Victorsson for completing his PhD dissertation, "The Reliability of Capacity-Designed Components in Seismic Resistant Systems." He was advised by Prof. Greg Deierlein and co-advised by Jack Baker and Helmut Krawinkler. He is now working at Swiss Re, a leading global reinsurer.
8/2/2011: Congratulations to Mahalia Miller for being an inaugural recipient of the CERRA Student Recognition Award at the 11th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP11).
8/2/2011: Jack Baker, Nirmal Jayaram, Mahalia Miller, Shrey Shahi and Yoshi Yamamoto all gave talks at the 11th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP11) in Zurich, Switzerland.
6/25/2011: Jack Baker gave a talk entitled "Ground motion selection for performance-based earthquake engineering: Effect of target spectrum and conditioning period," coauthored by Ting Lin and Curt Haselton, at the Bled4 Workshop on Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering in Bled, Slovenia.
6/16/2011: Jack Baker participated in the qualifying exam of Camilo Gomez at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Columbia.
6/6/2011: Jack Baker has joined the Southern California Earthquake Center's Planning Committee, as the chair of the Implementation Interface focus group.
6/3/2011: Ting Lin gave a talk entitled "Effects of Conditioning Period and Record Selection Strategy on Structural Reliability Calculations," and Andy Seifried gave a talk entitled "Evaluation of Several Spectrum Compatibilization and Scaling Approaches on Structural Response," at the PEER Ground Motion Selection and Modification working group quarterly meeting.
