Prof. Keh-Chyuan Tsai awarded the 2018 Academic Award from the Ministry of Education

Prof. Keh-Chyuan Tsai received his B.S. in civil engineering from the National Taiwan University (NTU) in 1977, and received his M.S. degree in structural engineering from Stanford University in 1980. After he received his M.S. degree, he worked as a structural engineer in the San Francisco office of Skidmore Owings Merrill from 1980 to 1984. During this time, he developed a strong interest in the seismic design and analysis of steel buildings. In 1988, he obtained his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of the late Prof. Egor P. Popov. He is a registered civil and structural engineer in the Republic of China and State of California in the USA.

In 1989, he joined the faculty in the Department of Civil Engineering at NTU. He was the Division Head (1995 to 2003) and Director (2003 to 2010) of the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE). In these positions, he facilitated the development and growth of the center’s capacity for state-of-the-art research, and led the center’s earthquake hazard mitigation research and outreach.

Notable achievements include receiving an invitation by the SAC Joint Venture to write the state-of-the-art paper on the welded moment connections following the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, and leading the development of the PISA3D program, which is a general purpose nonlinear structural analysis program widely used in research, education, and practice of structural engineering in Taiwan. He has also developed many metallic energy dissipating elements, including the tri-angular plate added damping and stiffness (TADAS) devices, the double-cored buckling restrained braces (BRBs) and the welded-end slot BRBs. These devices and braces are currently used in more than one hundred fifty buildings in Taiwan and New Zealand.

Prof. Tsai has co-authored more than 300 technical journal and conference articles on tests, design and analyses of seismic building structures. He has received numerous recognitions and awards for his foundational research, including two Sci-tech Awards (1995, 2017) from the Executive Yuan, Distinguished Research Awards (1997, 1999, 2012) from the Ministry of Science and Technology, TECO Award (2015) from the TECO Technology Foundation, Chair Professor (2015) from the TSUNG Cho-Chang Education Foundation, Ho King-Dwai Award (2007) from the HKD Foundation of Tung Ho Steel Cooperation, Science and Technology Award (2005) from the CTCI Foundation, Technical Excellence Awards (2007, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2015) from the National Applied Research Laboratories, Distinguished Engineering Professor Award (2014) from the Chinese Institute of Engineers, and numerous journal paper awards including the ASCE Moisseiff Award (2017). He has also actively engaged in international collaborations and received the AISC Special Achievement Award in 2018. He is currently a distinguished professor at NTU, a consultant for NCREE, a mentor to countless NTU graduate students, and a collaborator with NCREE colleagues and other international researchers.