Hi,
Well I finally feel like I made a progress in my Master degree: I gave my seminar lecture! 
The general idea is how to find the cheapest retrofit alternative to a certain type of building to stand earthquakes loads. Those building are concrete frame building (those made out of columns and beams), with masonry infill.
A concrete frame with masonry infill
The masonry infill is what makes the all thing a mess. Those infill are not considered part of the constructive system. We don’t design them to stand loads. The beam above the infill takes all the loads and the infill is there only so the frame will not be empty. When the building have to stand an earthquake those masonry infill works as a compress diagonal. Sometimes this diagonal makes the frame stronger and stiffner. But in other cases it inserts loads into the frame it wasn’t design to take.
The diagonal the masonry infill create when the frame bends due to horizontal loads, such as earthquakes (from – M. J. . Paulay, T and Priestley, “Seismic Design of Reinforced Concrete and Masonry Buildings,” 1992)
I started with pretty big ambition: I had the idea I can use many methods of upgrade such as FRP, Shortcrete, Dampers, steel diagonals, adding/ removing masonry infill etc. but in the end I only had three options – Dampers, adding masonry infill or removing masonry infill. Those are not enough retrofitting options to make the optimization program I wrote to something I can use at work.
But my research did made a small progress – the optimization program I wrote can be developed and more retrofit options can be added to it =)
The lecture I gave was good, I did practice a lot on it in front of Atzva and Yanai =P. The main issue that I was attacked about and I had a problem to answer was how I modeled the masonry infill in the analysis program. I choose a simple model, and the other professors insist that I had to take a more complex one. The problem was that I agreed with them, I had to choose a more complex model, not like my professor asked me to do =/
The results of my program: for an earthquake with low magnitude we only have to add a masonry infill to make the frame stand.
For an earthquake with high magnitude we only have to remove all the masonry infill in the first floor and to add a damper, to make the frame stand.
Anyhow, this Seminar lecture part is behind me =)
Now I have to sit and write my thesis, and it is pretty hard when you want to play with Yanai =D
Take care
Gad