M. Atilla Ansal is a Professor in the Earthquake Engineering Department of Bogaziçi University, Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute.  He received his M.Sc. degree on Civil Engineering from Istanbul Technical University in 1969 and his Ph.D. on Geotechnical Engineering from Northwestern University, USA in 1977.  He was promoted to Associate Professorship in 1982 and to Professorship in 1988 in Istanbul Technical University.  He served as visiting researcher in different institutions in Norway, Portugal, Italy, Japan, USA and UK during his academic career.

Presently, he is the Secretary General of European Association for Earthquake Engineering, Editor of Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, Editor in Chief of the Book Series on “Geotechnical, Geological and Earthquake Engineering” by Springer, President of the Turkish National Committee on Earthquake Engineering, Co-chairman of ISSMGE Technical Committee TC4 on “Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering”, and Core Member of ISSMGE Technical Committee TC 19 on “Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites” and European Technical Committee ETC12 on “ Evaluation of Eurocode 8”.

His main areas of interest are microzonation methodologies, earthquake scenarios, effects of geotechnical factors on earthquake damage, cyclic behaviour of clays and sands, liquefaction, variability of strong ground motion characteristics, endochronic constitutive models for quasi-static and cyclic behaviour of soils.  He published about 200 articles in conference proceedings, journals, books and as technical reports in English and Turkish.