Brian E. Tucker is a seismologist specialising in disaster prevention.
He holds a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, an M.A. in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a B.A. in Physics from Pomona College.
Dr. Tucker has devoted his life to realizing a world of self-reliant communities that can continue their economic, political and cultural development unimpeded by natural disasters. For more than sixteen years, Dr. Tucker has created exhibits, organized workshops and symposia around the world, printed multilingual reports and written/edited three books to raise awareness of geologic threats to communities from Tajikistan to Ecuador. Beyond education, he has drafted earthquake mitigation plans and has supported mason training and the retrofitting of schools, leaving a long-term legacy of natural hazard risk reduction in more than twenty countries.
After observing the tragic consequences of an earthquake in Tajikistan,[1] in 1991 Dr. Tucker founded GeoHazards International (GHI), a Palo Alto, Calif.-based nonprofit organization focused on reducing death and injury caused by earthquakes in the world's most vulnerable communities. Dr. Tucker and his team have developed and applied methods that will save lives in developing countries around the world. They work through a global network of people dedicated to reducing the risks of death and injury caused by earthquakes and natural disasters in needy, at-risk countries, by sharing and promoting civil engineering principles and connecting local experts, engineers, scientists and government officials with their counterparts abroad.
Prior to his work with GHI, Dr. Tucker served as the acting state geologist, principal state geologist and supervising geologist of the California Geological Survey between 1982 and 1991. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Seismological Society of America and the World Seismic Safety Initiative (WSSI) and is a member of the editorial board of The Journal of Earthquake Engineering.
He received the 2001 Gorakha Dakshin Bahu Award for service to the people of Nepal by the King of Nepal and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2002 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.[2] In 2007, Dr. Tucker was named a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.[3] Also that year, he received the George Brown Award for International Scientific Cooperation from the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation.[4] He was recently named one of UC San Diego's 100 Influential Alumni.