Personal Statement
Dr. Beer joined the School of Engineering as a Professor in the Centre for Engineering Sustainability in July 2011 and served as the founding Director of the Liverpool Institute for Risk & Uncertainty (LIRU) from 2012 to 2015. From 2014 to 2015 he was the Academic Director of the EPSRC and ESRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Quantification and Management of Risk & Uncertainty in Complex Systems & Environments. Since 2015 Dr. Beer holds a part time position with strong involvement in LIRU, complementing his main role as the Head of the Institute for Risk and Reliability in the Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany. He is also a Guest Professor in the International Joint Research Center for Engineering Reliability and Stochastic Mechanics, and in the International Joint Research Center for Resilient Infrastructure, Tongji University, China. Dr. Beer graduated with a Masters degree (Dipl.-Ing., 1995) and with a Doctoral degree (Dr.-Ing., 2001) in Civil Engineering from the Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden), Germany, and received awards for excellence in both qualifications. He pursued research in several projects as a Research and Teaching Associate and as Principal Investigator at the Institute for Statics and Dynamics, TU Dresden until 2007. As a Feodor-Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation Dr. Beer went to Rice University as a Visiting Scholar for research collaboration with Professor Pol D. Spanos in 2003/2004. From 2007 to 2011 he was affiliated as an Assistant Professor to the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore and contributed, in particular, to the research in the Centre for Hazards Research and in the Centre for Offshore Research and Engineering. Dr. Beer has continuously led various research projects with focus on both theoretical developments and applications. He is partner and leader for large-scale research programs with a multi-million grant volume. His research is focused on both stochastic and non-traditional uncertainty models in engineering with emphasis on reliability analysis, risk analysis and robust design. In the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering this is utilised to address engineering challenges arising from environmental changes with a multi-disciplinary view.

Research Overview
Michael's research is focussed on developing new theories, techniques and practical solutions to work towards sustainable, reliable and resilient civil infrastructure. Specifically, his developments combine efficient computational modeling and advanced uncertainty quantification to address the challenge of the growing scale, complexity and interconnection of engineering structures, infrastructure and systems. As a result the gap between required and available information for numerical modeling is growing quickly as well, so that uncertainties and risks are involved in our models and analyses to a greater extent than ever before. Since our engineering structures, infrastructure and systems are, to a significant extent, critical for the functionality of our economic and societal life, they require proper approaches and measures to verify and ensure their reliable performance. This range of issues is addressed with developments in the areas of (i) Reliability and Robustness of Structures and Systems, (ii) Performance, Risk and Resilience of Complex Systems and Networks, and (iii) Risk Reduction in Vague and Changing Environments.