December 2025: McGill-TSG congratulates Kalkidan Tesfaye Shewandagn on receiving the 2025 Catherine Lalonde Memorial Scholarship, awarded by the Canadian Wood Council. This prestigious scholarship recognizes outstanding doctoral research in wood engineering and sustainable construction. Kalkidan’s work contributes to advancing evidence-based seismic design and performance assessment of wood-frame and hybrid structural systems in Canada.
December 2025: McGill-TSG conducted a technical visit to Gradient Wind Engineering in Ottawa as part of an ongoing industry–academia collaboration. Led by Professor Matiyas A. Bezabeh, the visit included a tour of Gradient’s wind-tunnel testing facilities and technical discussions on performance-based damping design for tall buildings. The collaboration, supported by NSERC Alliance grants and Mitacs, brings together faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students to advance resilient and efficient wind-engineering solutions.
October 2025: McGill-TSG congratulates Jerry Zi-Jian Liang on the successful presentation of his Master’s seminar at McGill University. His seminar marked an important milestone in his graduate studies and reflected his active engagement in research on performance-based seismic design of mass-timber structural systems.
September 2025: McGill-TSG congratulates Aya Risha on her journal publication being selected as an Editors’ Choice by the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering. The paper was also granted Open Access through the journal’s editor-awarded waiver program, recognizing the significance of the research and its contribution to life-cycle carbon assessment of building systems in Canada.
August 2025: McGill-TSG participated in the 12th INTER Meeting 2025, held in Istanbul, Türkiye, from August 24 to 28, 2025, and hosted by Yıldız Technical University. Professor Matiyas A. Bezabeh delivered a technical presentation addressing the development of prescriptive seismic design guidelines for post-tensioned rocking cross-laminated timber (CLT) wall systems in Canada, contributing to international discussions on resilient and sustainable timber engineering.
August 2025: McGill-TSG participated in the 2025 China–Canada Symposium on Structural and Earthquake Engineering (CCSSEE), held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from August 11 to 15, 2025. Professor Matiyas A. Bezabeh and graduate students Kalkidan Tesfaye Shewandagn, Huanru Zhu, Jerry Zi-Jian Liang, and Meghan Egan delivered technical presentations highlighting recent advances in performance-based seismic design and assessment of mass-timber and hybrid structural systems. During the Student 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, Huanru Zhu received First Place, and Kalkidan Tesfaye Shewandagn received Third Place, recognizing the group’s strong research contributions. McGill-TSG also engaged with the broader engineering community through technical sessions and industry interactions, including a visit hosted by Fast + Epp.
June 2025: McGill-TSG participated in the World Conference on Timber Engineering (WCTE 2025), held in Brisbane, Australia, from June 22 to 26, 2025. Group members contributed multiple technical presentations delivered by Professor Matiyas A. Bezabeh, Huanru Zhu, and Nahom K. Berile, highlighting ongoing research in seismic and wind performance, reliability analysis, and safe design procedures for mass-timber and hybrid structural systems.
June 2025: McGill-TSG congratulates Aya Risha on the successful presentation of her Master’s seminar at McGill University. Her seminar marked an important milestone in her graduate studies and reflected her active engagement in research on sustainable timber–steel hybrid structural systems.
May 2025: McGill-TSG is proud to announce that Huanru Zhu and Aya Risha received top student paper awards at the 2025 Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE) Annual Conference, held in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Huanru Zhu was awarded First Place Best Student Paper in the Structural Specialty, while Aya Risha received Second Place Best Student Paper in the Sustainable Development Specialty. These recognitions highlight the excellence of student research within McGill-TSG and its contributions to advancing structural engineering and sustainable design in Canada.
May 2025: McGill-TSG participated in the 2025 Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE) Annual Conference, held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, from May 28 to 30, 2025. Group members Aya Risha, Abebaw Abie Mekonnen, and Huanru Zhu delivered oral presentations during technical sessions, contributing to discussions on sustainable development, wood structures, and advanced structural engineering applications.
May 2025: McGill-TSG participated in the 2nd NextGen Wood Conference 2025, held in Ottawa, Ontario, on May 26–27, 2025. Group member Kalkidan Tesfaye Shewandagn delivered an oral presentation during the technical sessions, contributing to discussions on the seismic performance and resilience of timber-based structural systems.
May 2025: McGill-TSG participated in the 2025 Americas Conference on Wind Engineering, held in St. Louis, Missouri, from May 19 to 22, 2025. Group member Nahom K. Berile delivered two oral presentations as part of a technical session on performance-based wind engineering, contributing to discussions on advanced analytical, experimental, and reliability-based approaches for wind-resilient structural systems.
May 2025: McGill-TSG hosted a half-day seminar on seismic isolation and energy dissipation on May 2, 2025, at McGill University. The seminar was delivered by Professor André Filiatrault and focused on advanced seismic isolation and energy dissipation strategies for civil engineering structures.
May 2025: McGill-TSG participated in the CEISCE Annual Colloquium 2025, held at Polytechnique Montréal. Student members Jerry Zi-Jian Liang, Kalkidan Tesfaye Shewandagn, Ahmed Maky, Abebaw Abie Mekonnen, and Aya Risha presented posters and engaged in technical discussions on ongoing research related to seismic and wind engineering, hybrid timber systems, and sustainable structural design.
April 2025: McGill-TSG hosted a special seminar on April 30, 2025, featuring Professor Ghasan Doudak from the University of Ottawa. The seminar focused on the performance of timber buildings under extreme loading conditions, including wind, seismic, and blast events, and was held at the Macdonald Engineering Building, McGill University.
April 2025: McGill-TSG received multiple awards in the latest funding competition from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT). Professor Matiyas A. Bezabeh was awarded the FRQNT Research Support for New Academics grant, a highly competitive program with only two recipients selected in his category this year. In addition, doctoral students Huanru Zhu and Mohammed Shaker Ibrahim received FRQNT B2X Doctoral Research Scholarships. These awards highlight the strength of McGill-TSG’s research program and its contributions to advancing mass-timber structural engineering in Québec.
November 2024: Congratulations to Nahom K. Berile, Ph.D. candidate, for winning First Place - Best Student Presenter award at the CEISCE Annual Colloquium, held at the Université de Sherbrooke for his presentation on performance-based wind design of tall mass timber buildings with nonlinear inelastic response.
November 2024: McGill Timber Structures Group (McGill-TSG) had the opportunity to visit Nordic Structures! Thank you to David Hanna for the warm welcome, an insightful office tour, and valuable presentations on Nordic’s practices, innovations, and projects.
August 2024: McGill Timber Structures Group (McGill-TSG) attended the summer workshop at the Department of Forest Science at Laval University (LU) (Département des sciences du bois et de la forêt - Université Laval). The theme of the workshop was “𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀, 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗪𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻”.
July 2024: Congratulations to Nahom K. Berile on winning the Arn Womble Best Student Presentation Award for his presentation titled "Performance-based Wind Design of Tall Mass Timber Buildings with Coupled Post-Tensioned Rocking Cross-Laminated Timber Shear Walls" at the 7th American Association for Wind Engineering Workshop at the University of Michigan.
July 2024: McGill Timber Structures Group (McGill-TSG) participated in the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering WCEE2024, held in Milan, Italy!Prof. Matiyas A Bezabeh, representing Huanru Zhu, Prof. Asif Iqbal, Dr. Marjan Popovski, and Dr. Zhiyong Chen, presented a paper on the seismic performance of mass timber buildings with post-tensioned CLT shear walls.
July 2024: It is with immense pride that we congratulate Huanru Zhu on presenting his Thesis seminar at McGill University, in the TSG lab, under the supervision of Professor Matiyas A Bezabeh.
June 2024: Congratulations to Nahom K. Berile on winning the third place best student paper award at the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers CSCE 2024 conference for his paper titled "Nonparametric Sector Dependence Modelling for the Directional Synthesis of Local Wind Climate and Building Aerodynamic Response".
June 2024: We are pleased to share that Prof. Matiyas A Bezabeh, Nahom K. Berile, and Huanru Zhu, presented four papers last week at the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers CSCE2024 conference!
June 2024: Congrats to TSG members Nahom K. Berile, Huanru Zhu, and Aya Risha for securing the top three awards at the CEGSS conference! Your hard work paid off!
November 2023: McGill TSG is thrilled to share the news that, with researchers from the University of Laval, we acquired $685,000 in funding from the Ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts, Quebec. Professors Bezabeh and Rogers from McGill University, Professor Salenikovich from the University of Laval, Dr. Dagenais from FPInnovations, and around ten collaborators from the industry make up our team. From 2023 to 2029, we will develop next-generation hybrid timber-steel building systems that withstand strong winds and earthquakes.
November 2023: Huanru has been awarded McGill's Graduate Excellence Fellowship. Excellent, and congratulations, Huanu!
September 2023: Prof. Bezabeh received the prestigious NSERC Discovery Grant. Bezabeh also received the Discovery Launch Supplement.
August 2023: McGill TSG joined the NSERC Alliance Next-generation Wood Construction collaborative project. Under this project, McGill TSG secured funding to investigate the seismic performance of wood-frame buildings on concrete podiums.
August 2023: Prof. Bezabeh attended the International Conference on Wind Engineering (ICWE 2023) in Florence, Italy.
May 2023: Prof. Bezabeh attended the SEI-NIST Workshop on Computational Wind Engineering at ASCE HQ, Reston, VA.
May 2023: Prof. Bezabeh attended the shaking table test of a 10-story tall mass timber building at the NHERI Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table (LHPOST6) at the University of California, San Diego.
May 2023: Prof. Bezabeh attended the 2023 Structures Congress conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.
March 2023: Prof. Bezabeh gave an invited talk at Concordia University on the wind performance of tall mass-timber buildings.
March 2023: McGill TSG, in partnership with Fast + Epp, has been awarded a new grant through Mitacs to investigate the 3D response of wind-excited tall mass-timber buildings and develop the next generation risk-based wind design frameworks for mass timber buildings.
April 2023: Aya Risha will join the McGill-TSG as an MSc student in September 2023. Welcome to the McGill-TSG Aya!
April 2023: Abebaw Mekonnen will join the McGill-TSG in September 2023 as a PhD student. Welcome to the McGill-TSG Abebaw!