EERI
Cornell’s Seismic Design Team Judged Best in Worldwide Competition
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Cornell University outperformed Stanford University and California State Polytechnic University while unseating three-time winner Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania during the 2017 EERI Seismic Design Competition in Portland, Oregon this Friday. The annual Seismic Design Competition is a week-long event organized by the Student Leadership Council, which is a part of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. The aim of the competition is to provide undergraduate students with “practical experience in the earthquake engineering field,” according to the website. During the competition, each team had to ensure its building survived three-different categories of ground motions, which the team’s captain Scott Kaufman ’18 called “a nervous yet exciting time.” The teams whose buildings did not survive the shake test were automatically knocked down to a lower category. This is what happened to the Cornellians who came in 21st in 2015, and Kaufman and his team members were not ready to relive that experience.