Dr. Eun Jeong Cha was named a recipient of the Probabilistic Methods Committee Student Paper Award at the 2012 Joint Conference of the Engineering Mechanics Institute and the 11th ASCE Joint Specialty Conference on Probabilistic Mechanics and Structural Reliability (EMI/PMC 2012) held in Notre Dame, Indiana on June 17 – 20, 2012.
Eun was recognized for her paper entitled “Attitudes toward acceptance of risk to wood frame residential buildings from hurricanes.” Her paper explores the nature of risk attitude embedded in decisions regarding the safety of civil infrastructure that is subjected to extreme winds, using analytical and statistical approaches. Eun examined the nature of risk tolerance with an example of decisions made by North/South Carolina code councils regarding risk of wood frame residential buildings from wind-borne debris. This examination is part of her thesis research and an expansion of her recent paper “Decision-making for civil infrastructure exposed to low-probability, high-consequence hazards: the role of risk aversion”, for which she received a CERRA Student Recognition Award at the International ICASP11 Conference in Zurich, Switzerland in August, 2011.
Eun earned her Ph.D. in structural engineering, under the advisement of the Raymond Allen Jones Chair and College of Engineering Distinguished Professor Bruce R. Ellingwood in 2012 and currently works with him as a postdoctoral research fellow. Eun feels very fortunate to work with Dr. Ellingwood stating, "My favorite thing at Georgia Tech is my advisor, Dr. Ellingwood. Under his guidance I successfully overcame many difficulties and learned a lot. His positive influence will no doubt propagate beyond the Ph.D. degree and serve me well for many years to come."
After completing her bachelor's degree in architectural engineering at Seoul National University in South Korea, Eun began her doctoral studies at Georgia Tech in 2007. She is from Pusan, the largest port city in South Korea, and has always dreamed of traveling beyond the horizon to see more things, meet more people, and learn from it all.
