Helen Crowley

Helen Crowley currently serves as the Risk Coordinator of GEM's Executive Committee and as the Scientific Coordinator of the GEM Secretariat.

Helen trained as a civil engineer at Imperial College London, with a strong emphasis on structural engineering, and then went on to obtain both Masters and PhD Degrees in Earthquake Engineering at the Centre for Post-Graduate Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology (ROSE School) in Pavia, Italy. Through her research and self-motivated study, Helen has also become very conversant over the recent years with the field of engineering seismology. She has developed a broad and deep knowledge of the state-of-the-art in ground-motion prediction and seismic hazard analysis, and the value of her research has been greatly enhanced by her ability to work at the vitally important interface between Earth science and structural earthquake engineering.  As part of her recent research, Helen has developed an original methodology, based on displacements rather than forces, for the estimation of the direct damage and loss to buildings from earthquakes, due to both strong ground shaking and liquefaction, combining the fields of structural assessment, reliability theory and seismic hazard assessment. The European Geosciences Union recently recognised Helen's "outstanding contributions in the fields of earthquake risk assessment and seismic risk mitigation, and in the neighbouring fields of structural engineering and engineering seismology" by awarding her the 2009 EGU Plinius Medal.

Since 2005, whilst working in the Seismic Risk Section of the European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering (EUCENTRE), Helen has been responsible for the coordination of a number of national and international research projects, mainly in the areas of seismic vulnerability of buildings at varying geographical scales and the evaluation of seismic risk and economic loss. Dr Crowley has also played in recent years a fundamental role in the daily running of the ROSE School, in the management of the 46-partner LESSLOSS Integrated Project (the largest ever European project in the field of earthquake risk mitigation), in the execution of a number of applied projects commissioned by the Italian Department of Civil Protection, and in the co-supervision of over 20 postgraduate students. Helen is currently on the Teaching Board of the ROSE School and has also recently become a Senior Academic of the Willis Research Network, the world's largest partnership between academia and the insurance industry.

She has authored more than 60 publications in the field of earthquake engineering, has an H-Index of 8 and serves as editorial board member or peer-reviewer for a number of international journals.