Young Members Sub-Committee (YMSC)

Young members are represented within the SECED by the Young Members' Subcommittee (YMSC). The aim of the YMSC is to provide a platform to showcase the talent of young members to the wider community, promote collaboration amongst students and young professionals, enhance knowledge in the fields of earthquake engineering and civil engineering dynamics and sharing ideas and concerns with the wider membership of the Society. They all share a passion for earthquake and engineering dynamics and have already shown great enthusiasm and ideas in the early meetings. Included as part of this section are brief bias of each YMSC member.

Maria Liapopoulou YMSC Chair

Maria is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on understanding current practice in structural and construction engineering. Before that, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Surrey and Imperial College London, investigating the response of reinforced concrete structures to extreme loading and heritage masonry structures. She holds an MEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an MSc (Dist) and a PhD in Earthquake Engineering from Imperial College London. During her PhD, she developed predictive models for the collapse of structures under realistic earthquake loading. She also has teaching experience as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Imperial and as a supervisor at St John’s and Pembroke College at Cambridge, and she is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Evangelos Yfantidis

YMSC Immediate Past Chair
  Evangelos is a Civil & Structural Engineer at Holtec Britain working in the Nuclear & Power sector of the UK. He is involved in the design, analysis and assessment of nuclear structures under extreme loading conditions, such as aircraft impact and seismic loading. He has also gained experience in the modelling of blast loading conditions while working for the Steel Construction Institute, where he developed new software features for the calculation of blast wave parameters considering blast wave - structure interaction effects. He holds an MEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an MSc (Dist) in Earthquake Engineering from Imperial College London, including an MSc Cluster Scholarship. His MSc dissertation proposed a method to determine the natureof accidental explosions by assessing the response of impacted steel members in the vicinity.
Mohamed El-Zeadani YMSC Vice Chair
Mohamed is a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellow in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on enhancing connection  ductility for the safe design of timber structures under both static and dynamic loading. His technical interests revolve around the response of structures to extreme loads and ways to ensure safety and robustness in structural design. Mohamed holds a PhD from Imperial College London, as well as a MSc (Structural Engineering) and a BEng (Civil Engineering) from Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Daniel Gilmore YMSC Elected Member
Daniel is a chartered Civil and Structural engineer working for Sellafield which presents one of the most significant environmental remediation challenges in Europe.  After graduating from University of Leeds with an MEng in Civil and Structural Engineering, he joined Sellafield Ltd through the graduate programme and had previous roles within the company in structural design, as well as placements in site construction, and geotechnics. He is currently a senior engineer working in the structural analysis team and provides technical expert support to project teams. He is also responsible for the development of new methods for seismic, impact, and SSI analyses.
Ludovica Pieroni YMSC Elected Member
Ludovica is Ph.D. Candidate in Structural and Earthquake Engineering at University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on low-damage high-performance systems to reduce the effects of earthquakes on the built environment. As part of her doctoral studies, she was a Visiting Student Researcher at Stanford University, and she has collaborated with international researchers from the US and EU. She holds a Bachelor's and Master’s in Civil Engineering from Marche Polytechnic University in Italy where she is a Chartered Engineer. She is passionate about Earthquake Engineering and committed to enhance knowledge in the field.
Zeyad Khalil YMSC Elected Member
Zeyad is a PhD Scholar at Imperial College London. His research is focusing on the seismic performance and risk assessment of renewable energy structures with particular emphasis on offshore wind farms. In addition, Zeyad's recent research work involved the numerical investigation of the fatigue-induced fracture in steel components undergoing low-cycle fatigue. Zeyad has also been involved in the collaborative European project FAILNOMORE where he has contributed to the development of a design manual on the design of steel and composite buildings against progressive collapse. Zeyad obtained his MSc degree in Earthquake Engineering with Distinction from Imperial College London in 2020 and his BSc degree in Civil Engineering with First Class Honours from the German University in Cairo in 2018, where he completed his BSc project and thesis at the Institute of Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
Ashraf Nayel YMSC Elected Member
Ashraf is a PhD Candidate at Imperial, working on the response and protection of historical masonry structures under blast loads. He holds a B.Sc. from Benha University and an M.Sc. from Cairo University. With extensive experience in structural design, he has worked on projects ranging from private dwellings and multi-story buildings to bridges and tunnels, primarily across Egypt and the MENA region, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. He has also collaborated on projects with European partners from Italy and France. Additionally, Ashraf has been involved in assessing the condition of existing structures and designed strengthening and repair interventions with on-site support when necessary. Moreover, Ashraf contributed to the Egyptian Codes of Practice (ECP) as a technical secretary and subcommittee member for ECP 201 (Design of Prestressed Concrete) and ECP 208 (Design of PFRP and Composite Structures).
Jessica Christie YMSC Elected Member
Jessica is a Civil Engineer at AtkinsRéalis working within the Nuclear & Power industry of the UK. She is currently seconded to Rolls-Royce SMR and is working within the Civil, Structural, and Architecture team. She holds an MEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering from the University of Bristol where she completed a research project, in which a comprehensive analysis was undertaken on raw vibration data, producing the input for a generated and validated neural network, to generate an algorithm capable of detecting damage preventatively for the application to offshore wind turbines. Her technical interests include galloping and vortex shedding instability, incremental dynamic analysis, and seismic risk management.
Atif Rasheed YMSC Co-Opted Member

Joshua Robinson YMSC Co-Opted Member

Rafik Nizarali YMSC Co-Opted Member
 

 
Rafael Fernández YMSC Co-Opted Member