On October 10th, 2018, the appointment ceremony of Tsinghua Honorary Professor Masayoshi Nakashima was held in Department of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University. Prof. Li ZHENG, Vice President of Tsinghua University, administration members of School of Civil Engineering, invited faculty members, alumni, and students attended the ceremony.

Prof. Dongping FANG, Chair of the School of Civil Engineering, briefly introduced Professor Masayoshi Nakashima’s distinguished achievements and his long partnerships with this School.

Prof. Li ZHENG, Vice President of Tsinghua University delivered the letter of appointment to Prof. Masayoshi Nakashima, and gave the welcome speech. He warmly welcomed Prof. Nakashima joining Tsinghua and expected him to play an important role in advancing the teaching and research of civil engineering in Tsinghua University.

In the acceptance speech, Prof. Masayoshi Nakashima accepted the appointment, and said that he felt much honored to be a member of Tsinghua University. Then he highly spoke of Tsinghua University and shared his story with China, with Tsinghua. “My responsibility is to connect Tsinghua with universities in Japan where I work, and with universities in America where I used to work…” said Prof. Masayoshi Nakashima with sincerity.

In his keynote speech following the ceremony, Prof. Nakashima shared with the audience “Recent Efforts in Japan toward Resilient Society”, and demonstrated a national project named “Enhancement of Resilient Society against Natural Disasters”, which is a five-year program featured with three major measures to take with respect to natural disasters: Prevention, Prediction, and Response.

About Professor Masayoshi Nakashima

Masayoshi Nakashima is Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University, Japan. He earned his bachelor and master degrees from Kyoto University and Ph.D. from Lehigh University, U.S. His research field include seismic analysis and design of steel building structures and large-scale experimental techniques for the simulation of earthquake responses. Prof. Nakashima has published about four hundred academic and technical papers, over two hundred of them appearing in peer-reviewed journals.

He has earned various national and international awards, including the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) Moisseiff Award (2000), the Special Achievement Award of AISC (American Institute for Steel Construction) (2009), the ASCE Ernest E. Howard Award (2013), and the George W. Housner Medal (2014), which is the highest award in Earthquake Engineering.

He is Member of the Engineering Academy of Japan and also inducted to Foreign Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the United States (2015) and Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy of Engineering (2016).

Nakashima served as President of the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) between 2015 and 2017 and currently serves as President of International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE) since 2018. He also serves Editor of International Journal of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics (EESD).  Nakashima retired from Kyoto University in March 2017, and since then, he works as President of Kobori Research Complex (KRC) and Counselor of Kajima Corporation.

Prof. Nakashima has exchange and collabration with Tsinghua for over 20 years. He has supervised several students graduated from Tsinghua. He has made the significant contribution to our department, particularly serving as the Chair Professor of the department from 2012 to 2018.