October 30, 2026
Duke University’s Dr. Henri P. Gavin presented his Distinguished Lecture for the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences on Friday, October 31, 2025, at 11:15 a.m. in the auditorium of the Watt Family Innovation Center. His lecture title was “Reconstruction of Seismic Base Shear from Sparse Acceleration Measurements”.
Henri P Gavin, Ph.D., PE, is the W.H. Gardner Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke. Professor Gavin joined Duke in 1995 following his doctorate degree from the University of Michigan. His research interests span the broad area of dynamic systems analysis, modeling, measurement, and control with particular emphasis on the mitigation of losses induced by extreme environmental loads.
Over the years, this research has addressed the mechanics and applications of fluids with controllable rheology, optimal control of systems with nonlinear inequality constraints, high-order stochastic response surface modeling, experimental stress analysis, shake table testing, full-scale vibration monitoring, and earthquake early warning. Current research is focused on the nonholonomic dynamics of rolling isolation systems; analytical, numerical, and experimental models for visco-elastic rolling resistance; the statistical modeling of non-stationary wind fields for wind energy applications; and the reconstruction of nonlinear structural behavior from sparse transient response measurements.
This work has been funded primarily through the National Science Foundation, including a Career award in 1996, a large-scale testing program in collaboration with BRI and NIED in Japan, a project on developing automated web-based interfaces for physical and numerical simulations, the analysis and design of rolling isolation systems, and work related to the seismic response of the base-isolated Christchurch Women’s Hospital (New Zealand). Dr. Gavin is the recipient of research, service, and teaching awards from the ASCE, ASEE, NZSEE, Tribhuvan University (Nepal), and Duke University.
