Raul Rincon

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University, where I work with Dr. Jamie Ellen Padgett on smart and equitable techniques for measuring and modeling dynamic resilience on infrastructure systems. My research focuses on multiscale systems operating under progressive and shock-based hazards, particularly on methods and mechanisms to facilitate adaptive, resilient, and equitable performance.

My work has ranged from analyzing real-world structural failures and mechanistic performance of structural members to probabilistic analysis of systems composed of multiple levels of components. This has given me the lens to observe infrastructure systems’ complex, multiscale, and adaptive nature. Also, it has motivated me to work on the methodological approaches for modeling such systems. My research goal is to enhance the resilience of existing infrastructure systems while ensuring that the approaches employed are unbiased and that the decisions made are sustainable for future generations.

I completed both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering and structural engineering, respectively, at Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes), Colombia. Before joining the Padgett Research Group at Rice University, I worked as a research assistant for the Material and Civil Works Research Center and as an instructor of undergraduate courses for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Uniandes.

I have been awarded the Fulbright Scholarship (Fulbright-Minciencias), the 1st Place EMI Objective Resilience Student Paper/Presentation Competition at the Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference and Probabilistic Mechanics & Reliability Conference (EMI/PMC2024), the Mario Galan Gomez Scholarship (granted by ECOPETROL, Colombia, to the two best students per department, a total 70 countrywide), and the Outstanding Journal Paper Award for 2018 from the ASCE Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities. I have also received the Innovative Teacher Recognition (2019) from Universidad de los Andes, and the 2021 H. W. Reeves Endowed Scholarship, the 2023 Robert P. and Eleanor Warden Shubinski scholarships, and have been recently selected as a 2024-2025 Future Faculty Fellow at the Brown School of Engineering and Computing in Rice University.

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