Jason Ingham

Citation on the award of NZSEE Fellow, April 2020

Jason Ingham is awarded a Fellowship of NZSEE for his services to earthquake engineering in New Zealand.

Jason completed his BE in 1989 and his ME in 1991 at the University of Auckland , before moving to the University of California at San Diego where he completed his PhD in 1995 supervised by Nigel Priestley. On his return to New Zealand in 1995 he took up a position in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Auckland on the Cement & Concrete Association of New Zealand (CCANZ) Fellowship. Jason was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005, Professor in 2013, and in 2017 was appointed Head of Department.

Jason’s research interests are primarily focused on the seismic behaviour of existing masonry and concrete buildings. He is known nationally and internationally for his research associated with the seismic assessment and seismic upgrading of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings. This research has involved a large group of postgraduate students that have moved into practice and academia in NZ and internationally. He was on the leadership team of QuakeCoRE from 2016-2019, informing the wider research strategy in earthquake resilience.

The number of papers Jason has published and awards that he has been the recipient of is evidence of the extent and impact of his research. Over 200 journal papers and over 300 conference papers have been published, including 28 in the Bulletin of the NZSEE. He received the Otto Glogau award in 2015, and has paper awards in four NZSEE/PCEE conferences. The impact of his research on the engineering profession is demonstrated through his Engineering New Zealand Fellow title awarded in 2014 and his Structural Engineering Society New Zealand (SESOC) Life Membership awarded in 2020.

Jason has had strong involvement in the learnings collected following a number of earthquakes in New Zealand and internationally. He was a member of the AusAID team that undertook detailed structural assessments of damage to school and medical building following the 2009 Padang, Indonesia earthquake. He led the collection of data related to the performance of masonry buildings following the Canterbury earthquakes, with evidence subsequently presented at the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission. He was a member of the NZSEE Learning from Earthquakes mission for the South Napa earthquake in California in 2014.

Much of Jason’s research has been translated into practical information for use by the professional structural engineering community. He has been an active contributor to a number of New Zealand technical committees for the preparation of design guidelines and standards. He was a leading contributor to the development of Section C8 of the Eq-Assess methodology for assessing potentially earthquake prone unreinforced masonry buildings, and has provided numerous industry training seminars nationwide from 2000 to the present. Following the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake, he was a leading figure in the development of the guidance for securing parapets and facades on URM buildings.

Jason has been a member of NZSEE since 1996, and was a member of the NZSEE management committee from 2009-2011. He is past- president of the Structural Engineering Society NZ (SESOC) and a past president of the NZ Concrete Society (NZCS). Jason was the Chairman of the 2010 NZSEE Annual conference in Wellington, and was the Co-Convener of the 2011 9th PCEE Conference in Auckland. He has also been a member of the Editorial Board of the NZSEE Bulletin since 2014.

The long list of details summarised here clearly demonstrate the extent of Jason’s contributions to NZSEE and to the wider engineering profession. He is certainly a worthy recipient of a Fellowship of NZSEE.