Reginald DesRoches is the President of Rice University and an adjunct professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His primary research interests include the design of buildings and critical infrastructure to withstand earthquake loads and seismic risk assessment, with particular emphasis on mitigating the impacts of earthquakes in the Caribbean and Western Africa. He has published over 250 articles in the general area of earthquake engineering and seismic risk assessment and has presented his work in over 30 countries. DesRoches played a key technical leadership role in the response to the Haiti earthquake, leading a team that conducted critical building safety assessments for the United Nations. He has served as chair of the ASCE Seismic Effects Committee and has been involved with the National Academy of Sciences Roundtable on Risk, Resilience, and Extreme Events. DesRoches has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2002 and the ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 2007. He earned his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, Master’s in Civil Engineering, and PhD in Structural Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.