Dr. Rajesh Dhakal is a Professor of Structural Earthquake Engineering at University of Canterbury in NZ. He completed BE (Civil) from Tribhuvan University, Nepal, in 1993 with a Gold Medal, ME (Structures) from AIT, Thailand, in 1997 with another Gold Medal, and PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2000. His current research interests are: (i) Seismic performance of non-structural elements, (ii) Modelling, analysis, testing and design of RC structures, and (iii) Seismic loss minimisation in buildings.

In his career so far, Prof Dhakal has supervised more than 50 postgraduate research in different facets of structural and earthquake engineering, authored more than 450 peer-reviewed technical papers, and has an H-index of 44 with around 7000 citations. In 2021, Prof Dhakal was elected the President of the International Association of SPONSE (Seismic Performance of Non-Structural Elements). Prof Dhakal has received more than a dozen awards for research excellence, served as an editorial board member of five international journals, delivered invited/keynote lectures in more than a dozen conferences, and served as an expert advisor for national panels in four different countries. Prof Dhakal has been serving as the Chief Editor of the journal Bulletin of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering since 2014. In recognition of his contribution and leadership in earthquake engineering, Prof Dhakal was made a Fellow of Engineering NZ (since 2015) and the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering (since 2017).

Prof Dhakal spent nine months in Nepal following the 2015 Gorkha earthquake and played a leading role in the post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction, for which he was honoured by the prime Minister of Nepal. Prof Dhakal also served as an Advisor to Nepal’s National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) and was appointed as the International Expert for revising the Nepal Building Code NBC105, which was completed in 2020.

Prof. Dr. Rajesh Dhakal