Yasemin Didem Aktaş

Yasemin D Aktas is a structural engineer (METU, 2003, Bsc), a heritage scientist (METU, 2006, Msc) and a conservation engineer (METU, 2011, PhD). She was the recipient of the Italian Government Scholarship to conduct research on structural diagnostics of built heritage in 2005-6. Since then she worked in many countries including Turkey, Italy, Iraq, Egypt and the UK for earthquake and climatic resilience of monumental and traditional heritage buildings. She is an elect member of the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) under the UK’s Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), where she led and advised on a number of post-disaster reconnaissance missions, including the 2020 Aegean Earthquake & Tsunami and 2021 Haiti Earthquake. Most recently, she co-led the EEFIT response to the 2023 Kahramanmaras Earthquakes with a large team to investigate strong ground motions and seismological characteristics of the event, geotechnical aspects as well as the performance of buildings and infrastructure and the efficacy of the relief, response and recovery operations. She is a member of UNESCO Chair in Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Engineering (DRR & RE) working on holistic risk resilience of school infrastructures. Her research is particularly focussed on traditional/vernacular buildings, post-disaster planning and rehousing, structural rehabilitation of existing buildings and sustainable built environment resilience under coalescing geophysical and climatic hazards. Yasemin is currently working as an associate professor in applied materials and structures at the UCL Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering.