Meet Nurullah Bektaş, engineering PhD candidate and research chair with the NHERI Graduate Student Council. He talks with Dan Zehner about the virtual GSC Mini Conference, slated for May 31, 2024. Bektaş, who is earning his PhD from Széchenyi István University in Hungary, encourages grad students in natural hazards get involved in sharing research and conducting post-event reconnaissance. He relates his own field experience helping householders in Turkey after the devastating 2023 earthquake series in Turkey and Syria.

Find out about the GSC Mini Conference: https://bit.ly/2024NHERIGSCMiniConference

Get details about the NHERI Graduate Student Council: https://www.designsafe-ci.org/learning-center/nheri-graduate-student-council/

Bektaş is involved with StEER, the NSF-funded Structural Extreme Event Reconnaissance team:

https://www.steer.network/

Bektaş worked with the UK-based group EEFIT, Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team, when conducting field work in Turkey:

https://www.istructe.org/get-involved/supported-organisations/eefit/

For post-event debris management, Bektaş mentioned another NSF-funded extreme event group, SUstainable Material Management Extreme Events Reconnaissance, SUMMEER:

http://summeer.org/