Andrew Whittaker is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo and a licensed Structural Engineer in the State of California. He completed his graduate degrees in structural engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1980s. He practiced as a structural engineer in Australia and Asia in the late 1970s and early 1980s and in the United States in the late 1980s. He served as the Associate Director of EERC/PEER in the 1990s and joined the University at Buffalo in 2000. He joined the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE) in 2001, served as Vice President in 2003/2004 and as President since 2005.
Whittaker's research and professional interests include earthquake and blast engineering, performance-based design, seismic protective systems, ultra-high-rise buildings, offshore platforms and power-related infrastructure. He is the author of more than 200 publications, including a reference text, book chapters, journal papers, conference papers and technical reports. Whittaker led NSF-funded earthquake reconnaissance teams to Kobe, Japan, in 1995, and Izmit, Turkey, in 1999, and was a member of the 3-person, NSF-funded structural engineering reconnaissance team at the site of the former World Trade Center in September 2001. He currently serves on technical committees for ACI, ASCE, AISC, BSSC, DHS/FEMA, EERI and USGS.
Whittaker is an active member of the design-professional community in the United States and abroad. He provides consulting and peer-review services to private companies, local, state, and federal government agencies in the United States, Asia, Australia, Europe, Far East, Middle East, South America and the United Kingdom. A focus of his professional work is the application of new technologies and performance-based design to ultra-tall buildings, bridges, and conventional and nuclear-related infrastructure. He is the leader for the Structural Performance Products team that is developing the second generation of tools for performance based earthquake engineering as part of the DHS/FEMA-funded ATC-58 project.