Michel Bruneau is Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. Chia-Ming Uang is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences at the University of California at San Diego. Andrew S. Whittaker is Associate Director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. All three engineers have extensive backgrounds in earthquake engineering, and all three are members of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the American Society of Civil Engineers.