For Rupesh Uprety, earthquake engineering isn't just an academic discipline—it's personal.

When the 2015 Gorkha earthquake devastated his home country of Nepal, Uprety was a second-year undergraduate student. Witnessing the destruction inspired him to dedicate his career to designing safer, more resilient buildings for communities in earthquake-prone regions. Today, as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, he is turning that mission into reality through cutting-edge research on mass timber structural systems.

Working under the guidance of Professor Chris Pantelides, Uprety is investigating the use of mass timber buckling-restrained braces (MT-BRBs) as lateral force-resisting systems for multi-story mass timber buildings. His research includes designing and conducting full-scale experimental testing of 18-foot-long braces, developing advanced finite element models to simulate their cyclic behavior, and evaluating the seismic performance of multi-story mass timber structures. The work is supported by a USDA Wood Innovations Grant titled Qualification of Timber Buckling Restrained Braces and Design of an 18-story Timber BRB Braced Building.

Uprety recently presented his research at the 13th National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Portland, Oregon, where he shared findings from the paper, "Mass Timber Buckling Restrained Brace as a LFRS for Mass Timber-Braced Frame," co-authored with Chris P. Pantelides, Hans-Erik Blomgren, and Douglas Rammer. His work was also recently published in a peer-reviewed journal, highlighting the growing impact of the team's research on the future of resilient timber construction.

"My research interests focus on earthquake engineering, mass timber structures, and performance-based seismic design," Uprety said. "My long-term goal is to support the practical application of safe, resilient, and sustainable mass timber structures."

Looking ahead, Uprety plans to pursue a postdoctoral position before becoming a research scientist, continuing his work to develop safer, more resilient, and more sustainable structural systems. For him, the goal extends beyond advancing engineering knowledge—it's about helping communities like the one he grew up in better withstand future earthquakes.

by Joe LaFata