Dr. Matthew Speicher is a Research Structural Engineer working in the Earthquake Engineering Group at NIST. His research interests include earthquake engineering, performance-based seismic design and assessment, design of steel structures, preservation of historic structures, passive damping, and advancement and application of new materials. His philosophy is to focus on applied research that produces tangible impacts. He has active projects investigating the collapse performance of code-complaint steel buildings and investigating alternative energy-based assessment criteria for use in performance-based seismic design. This work includes incremental dynamic analysis of steel frames designed and modeled with varied assumptions and experimental and analytical studies exploring effects of loading protocols on the development of component backbone curves and associated acceptance criteria.