Ceremony for the11th and 12th DPRI Awards

  • Award and Appointment

The Ceremony to honor the recipients of the 11th and 12th DPRI Awards was held at the Kihada Hall, Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Uji Campus, Japan on 18 March 2026.

  • Dr. Irasema Alcántara-Ayala, Professor at the Institute of Geography, National Autonomous University of Mexico, was presented with the 11th DPRI Award (FY2024) Research and Education Achievement Award
  • Dr. Charles Scawthorn, Professor Emeritus at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, University of California, Berkeley, USA was presented with the 12th DPRI Award (FY2025) Research Collaboration Contribution Award.

Both recipients were also conferred with the lifetime title of DPRI Fellow.

At the 11th award ceremony, Deputy Director Yuki Sakai introduced Dr Alcantara-Ayala’s contributions to the Institute’s research and educational activities, and Director Tomoharu Hori presented the certificate of commendation and a commemorative gift.

Following this, the awardee, Dr Alcantara-Ayala, delivered a commemorative lecture entitled “From Signals to Meaning: Risk Understanding at the Heart of Early Warning and Preparedness – Why Warnings Only Work When They Are Understood”.

At the 12th award ceremony, Deputy Director Sakai introduced Dr Scowthorn and his contributions to the Institute. Prof. Tomoharu Hori,  Director, DPRI presented him with a certificate of commendation and a commemorative gift.

This was followed by the commemorative lecture by Prof. Charles Scawthorn on “Fifty Years of Earthquake Research: Or How Japan Helped Me Make a Small Contribution to Earthquake Engineering”.