Steve Pryor is a structural engineer from earthquake-prone California in the western region of the United States.  He has been with Simpson Strong-Tie for 27 years and currently serves as their Advanced Research Manager.  Prior to joining Simpson, Steve was a practicing structural engineer in California designing residential, commercial, and industrial facilities.  Steve has participated on a number of building code committees and has authored numerous papers.  With a career dedicated to understanding the seismic performance of structures, Steve has led Simpson’s partnerships with many universities in ground-breaking research into performance-based seismic design, soft-story retrofits, post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls, and has developed new structural steel lateral force resisting systems.  Along with many others at Simpson Strong-Tie, Steve has a passion for trying to find practical solutions to difficult structural problems.