Rate My Professor Brendon Bradley

Professor Brendon Bradley is Professor of Earthquake Engineering in the Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering at the University of Canterbury. He obtained his BE(Hons) in 2007 and PhD in 2009, both from the University of Canterbury. He joined the faculty at the University of Canterbury in 2010, following positions at GNS Science and a post-doctoral fellowship at Chuo University in Tokyo. He also served as UPS Visiting Professor at Stanford University in 2016-2017.

His research focuses on earthquake engineering, including seismic hazard analysis, ground motion prediction, fragility analysis of structures, performance-based earthquake engineering frameworks, and structure-specific seismic loss assessment. Bradley co-founded QuakeCoRE: the New Zealand Centre for Earthquake Resilience and served as its Deputy Director from 2016 to 2018 and Director from 2019 to 2024. He is currently Editor of the journal Earthquake Spectra. He is co-author, with Jack Baker and Peter Stafford, of a textbook on seismic hazard and risk analysis published by Cambridge University Press. Bradley has received numerous awards, including the 2025 Royal Society of New Zealand Scott Medal, the 2023 University of Canterbury Research Medal, the 2016 Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize, the 2016 ASCE Norman Medal, and the 2015 Shah Innovation Prize. He is a Fellow of Engineering New Zealand, the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering, and the Royal Society Te Apārangi.