Dr. Chaker obtained a degree of “Ingénieur Civil” from “Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées”, Paris, France and a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He joined ASCE in 1999 where he has worked in several units, including the Technical and International Activities Division, the Transportation and Development Institute, the Civil Engineering Research Foundation, the Architectural Engineering Institute, and the Building Security Council. He has been the director of the Engineering Mechanics Institute of ASCE since its creation in 2007.

He has held faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Drexel University. He has served as professor and director of the Institute of Civil Engineering of the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene in Algiers, Algeria (USTHB), where he developed and taught graduate courses, and conducted research in earthquake engineering.

As technical director of the Algerian State Organization for Technical Control of Building Construction (CTC), he co-chaired the Committee for the Algerian Earthquake-Resistant Design Code and participated in its subsequent revisions. He also participated in several major post-earthquake investigations and in a seismic hazard evaluation and urban seismic microzonation study for the region of El Asnam (now Chlef), Algeria. He conducted the structural design review of a number of complex construction projects, and the review and evaluation of existing structures.

He served as a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, and of the Editorial Board of Annales Maghrébines de l’Ingénieur. He was a founding member and president of the Algerian Earthquake Engineering Association. He is a member of ASCE and EERI, is active in several technical committees, including the ASCE Council on Disaster Risk Management, and is the author or co-author of over 60 publications. He is an associate editor of Natural Hazards Review, a reviewer for the Journal of Structural Engineering and the Journal of Architectural Engineering, and a reviewer for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.