About Anoosh Shamsabadi

He is a very talented engineer with years of professional experience. He has moret han 25 years of professional and teaching experience in geotechnical earthquake engineering, bridge engineering, and construction engineering. He has performed technical oversight and review of the geotechnical and earthquake engineering activities for the seismic retrofit of all toll bridges and road tunnels in California. He has been responsible for developing the seismic design criteria for Caltrans’ bridge abutments and tunnel structures. He has developed state of the art computer software for seismic analysis and design of earth retaining systems, including implementing the AASHTO LRFD recommendations for retaining structures and bridge abutments. He has developed Section 5 of the Caltrans' Bridge DesignPractice manual “Lateral Earth Pressure and Retaining Structures.”

He has a passion for engineering, and he has worked on so many prestigious projects. He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in civil engineering in Utah and a doctorate from the University of Southern California. He landed a job at theCalifornia Department of Transportation (Caltrans) in 1987, where he provided technical oversight on seismic retrofitting of toll bridges and tunnel structures. He moved up quickly and helped write numerous manuals on trenching and shoring for excavating. He had a hand in Caltrans’ latest Seismic Design Criteria, which came out last November. The manuals are used worldwide for highway and rail construction and retrofitting.

Many countries, including Japan, Turkey, India, Guatemala, and Russia, have paid him to train their engineers about designing earthquake resistant structures. He has been a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine. He regularly appears before the Caltrans' Seismic Advisory Board, an independent panel that scrutinizes policies, rules, and plans for construction in earthquake-prone California.