Nicolás Peralta was selected to receive a scholarship from the Concrete Masonry Association of California and Nevada (CMACN). The $500 award is for students who intend to study concrete masonry in the field of structural engineering.
Peralta is a PhD candidate in SEMM working under the supervision of Professor Khalid Mosalam. Peralta's research focuses on characterization of the behavior of masonry structures.
Peralta has had this interest since studying civil engineering in his home country of the Dominican Republic.
"Since we have no experiments performed on masonry in the DR, the design parameters (elastic modulus, strength, etc.) are adopted from code provisions from other countries," says Peralta.
"As can be expected, recent earthquakes showed our lack of understanding of the behavior of masonry components and systems. All this together motivated my interest in studying the response of masonry structures."