Pierre is professor of timber design at the University of Auckland and Chief Technical Officer at Tectonus. He served as the Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2011 to 2017. 

Structural engineer specializing in timber structures, Pierre’s expertise is with timber connections. 

His work on timber connections under earthquake loads led his research group to develop a resilient damper that re-centres buildings, reducing the need to demolish buildings following an earthquake event.  

He co-founded Tectonus in 2016 to commercialise the resilient damper and conducted R&D to demonstrate the damper advantages in steel, concrete and timber buildings (for new builds and retrofits). 

The resilient damper is in use in buildings in New Zealand, in Canada and under consideration for building projects in the USA and Japan.