The George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) is a Major Research Equipment and Facility Construction Program of the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF). $82 million is now being expended to put in place by the fall of 2004 advanced engineering laboratories, networking and data curation services, and an operating consortium.

Phase 2 Equipment Site Awards to 5 Universities Announced by NSF
NSF has announced the second phase of Equipment Site (engineering laboratory) NEES awards to the following universities: Brigham Young University (Les Youd, Principal Investigator); Cornell University (Harry Stewart, PI); Lehigh University (James Ricles, PI); University of California at San Diego (Frieder Seible, PI); University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Amr Elnashai, PI).

Phase 1 Equipment Site Awards to 10 Universities
The Phase 2 awards complement the first phase Equipment Site projects already underway at the following ten universities: Oregon State University (Solomon Yim, PI); Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Ricardo Dobry, PI); University at Buffalo, SUNY (Michel Bruneau, PI, 2 awards); University of California at Berkeley (Jack Moehle, PI); University of California at Davis (Bruce Kutter, PI); University of California at Los Angeles (John Wallace, PI); University of Colorado at Boulder (Benson Shing, PI); University of Minnesota – Twin Cities (Catherine French, PI); University of Nevada at Reno (Ian Buckle, PI); University of Texas at Austin (Kenneth Stokoe II, PI).

Consortium Development Award to CUREE
Previously, the Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE, Bob Reitherman, PI) received the NSF award to put in place the NEES consortium for the 2004-2014 timespan. A first draft outline of the consortium will be released for public review and comment on November 1, 2002.

System Integration Project Conducted by University of Illinois NCSA
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Dan Reed, PI) is conducting the System Integration project to develop the necessary networking and data management capabilities for the NEES consortium.

For Further Information
More information on all aspects of NEES, including summaries and links to websites for all of the above 17 NEES awardees and NSF, is available at http://www.nees.org. At the home page, you may sign up to receive email notification of NEES news on an ongoing basis.