Bartolomeo Appointed Chair of Industry Leaders Council

ANTHONY S. BARTOLOMEO, P.E., M.ASCE, the president and chief executive officer of Philadelphia-based Pennoni Associates, Inc., has been named the chair of ASCE’s Industry Leaders Council (ILC). The ILC brings together leaders from the public and private sectors, and their expertise helps ASCE formulate policies that can promote progress. The group’s input can aid in developing strategies that promote innovation and raise project productivity, quality, and performance. A native of Brooklyn, New York, and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in civil engineering, Bartolomeo has served as the ILC’s vice-chair and has more than 35 years of experience in environmental engineering. He has also helped to lead a number of organizations devoted to conservation and the regeneration of natural resources. In addition to chairing the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, he is a founding board member and finance committee chairman of the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative. He is also the chairman of the American Council of Engineering Companies’ Design Professionals Coalition and of the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia, and his experience includes membership on Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission and on the transition team for transportation and infrastructure assembled by Pennsylvania’s governor, Thomas W. Corbett. Bartolomeo is also involved in the local community, and the mayor of Philadelphia named him a cochairman of the Philadelphia Council for College and Career Success, a body that is working to reduce the high school dropout rate and help students go on to postsecondary education.

Baker Honored by AISC

WILLIAM F. BAKER, P.E., S.E., F.ASCE, a structural engineering partner in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, has been honored by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) with the 2013 T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award. To be presented to Baker in April at the AISC conference planned for St. Louis, the award honors a lecturer and author whose work is seen as making an outstanding contribution to the engineering literature in the area of fabricated structural steel. Baker is being honored for his papers “Stability Design of the Bow String Trusses of the Virginia Beach Convention Center” and “Applications of Structural Optimization in Architectural Design,” which were published in the proceedings of the conference that combined ASCE’s 2012 Structures Congress and 20th Analysis and Computation Specialty Conference. Honored in 2011 for lifetime achievement in design by ASCE in its Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) program, Baker throughout his career has dedicated himself to structural innovation. His best-known contribution has been the development of the “buttressed core” structural system for the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest structure, located in Dubayy (Dubai), United Arab Emirates. Although he is renowned for his work on supertall buildings, he has also made contributions in the area of long-span roof structures, as seen in the Korean Air Lines Operations Center, in Seoul, South Korea, and the Virginia Beach Convention Center, in Virginia. In 2008 the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat honored him with its Fazlur Rahman Khan Medal, and in 2009 he became the first American ever to receive the Fritz-Leonhardt-Preis, which is conferred by the Baden-Württemberg Chamber of Engineers and the German Association of Consulting Engineers. The following year he received the Institution of Structural Engineers’ Gold Medal. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Baker holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree from the University of Illinois.

ASCE Announces Winners of Awards for 2013

 ASCE has determined the winners of a number of its awards for 2013. As of November 1 the following winners had been named.

John S. McCartneyJOHN S. McCARTNEY, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, has been named the winner of the Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award for his contributions in elucidating unsaturated soil and geosynthetic material behavior, developing new laboratory techniques, and preparing the next generation of geotechnical engineers. McCartney, an assistant professor in the civil, environmental, and architectural engineering department at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was honored with ASCE’s 2012 J. James R. Croes Medal and is the secretary of the ASCE Geo-Institute’s Unsaturated Soils Committee. His innovations include developing a centrifuge permeameter for unsaturated soils, refining a resonant column device for controlling suction, and developing a true triaxial device to control thermal conditions as well as fluid pressures and total stresses. His research interests also encompass the mechanical and hydraulic behavior of unsaturated soils and geosynthetics; centrifuge modeling of geotechnical systems involving unsaturated soils; the design and characterization of alternative landfill cover systems; the shear strength of geosynthetic clay liners; and reliability-based design in geotechnical engineering.

Raymond E. SandifordRAYMOND E. SANDIFORD, P.E., F.ASCE, wins the Martin S. Kapp Foundation Engineering Award for his leadership in the design and construction of unique geotechnical engineering facilities in the New York City metropolitan area, where he helped to rebuild the foundations of the World Trade Center and restore train service after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The chief geotechnical engineer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey since 1982, Sandiford has been involved in some of the largest geotechnical projects in the metropolitan area. Within ASCE he chairs the Metropolitan Section’s Geo-Institute group, and the special lecture he delivered in 2007 at the City University of New York focused on the geotechnical aspects of redeveloping the World Trade Center site.

 


JONATHAN D. BRAY, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the Ralph B. Peck Award for his insights into liquefaction and its effects on structures and his many contributions to documenting field performance during and after earthquakes. His case histories have been particularly valuable in this regard, along with the paper “Assessment of the Liquefaction Susceptibility of Fine-Grained Soils,” which he wrote with Rodolfo B. Sancio and which appeared in the September 2006 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. Honored by ASCE with its 2010 Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award and selected by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the Seismological Society of America to deliver the 2012 William B. Joyner Memorial Lecture, Bray is a professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and the founder of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association. He is also the editor in chief of the International Journal of Geoengineering Case Histories.

STEPHEN G. WRIGHT, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, has been named the winner of the H. Bolton Seed Medal for significant contributions in teaching, research, and practice that have advanced the stability analysis of earth slopes and the characterization of the shear strength of soils. A research professor in the civil, architectural, and environmental engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin, Wright significantly advanced slope stability analysis by developing a technically rigorous, reliable, and user-friendly software package called UTEXAS, which has been adopted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Through his research, Wright has provided a better understanding of the slope stability of noncircular surfaces and the stability of levees and floodwalls, and the procedures he has developed have become standard practices. A former president of ASCE’s Geo-Institute, he has served on the institute’s Board of Governors and its Embankments, Dams, and Slopes Committee.

ALFRED J. HENDRON, JR., Ph.D., M.ASCE, has been selected to deliver the Karl Terzaghi Lecture in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of geotechnical engineering as a teacher, researcher, and consultant. A retired professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Illinois, Hendron served as a dam safety consultant and was a member of numerous review boards and consulting boards, and he chaired the panel of consultants convened by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to investigate the failure of the Taum Sauk embankment, near Lesterville, Missouri. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Hendron has worked on many nuclear power plants in the United States and was involved in much of the research on protective structures and nuclear effects carried out under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Fellows Elected

The following members were elected fellows of the Society in recent months. ASCE fellows are legally registered professional engineers or land surveyors who have made significant technical or professional contributions and have demonstrated notable achievement in responsible charge of engineering activity for at least 10 years following election to the ASCE grade of member. Fellows occupy the Society’s second-highest membership grade, exceeded only by distinguished members.


Vitor AbrantesVITOR ABRANTES, Ph.D, P.E., F.ASCE, holds a doctorate in civil engineering from the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP), in Portugal, and is currently a professor there. In addition to his teaching and research work, Abrantes serves on various FEUP committees and is developing a master’s degree program in engineering construction that will be recognized by all European Union countries. He also represents the FEUP on committees of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Cadernos d'Obra, Sebentas d’Obra, and Livros d’Obra. Abrantes has helped to organize numerous conferences and has nearly 150 scientific articles to his credit on such topics as building rehabilitation, energy conservation, and construction, and some of his work has appeared in international journals. Since 1989 he has been a partner of a consulting company. In addition to serving as a coordinator and consultant, he has developed hundreds of engineering projects. 

N. Catherine Bazan-AriasN. CATHERINE BAZAN-ARIAS, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, earned a bachelor of science in 1992, a master of science in 1994, and a doctorate in 1999, all in civil engineering and all from the University of Pittsburgh. Bazan-Arias has extensive experience in analyzing soil-structure interactions for the design of dams and retaining structures, the siting of transmission lines, and the management of coal combustion products. Her projects have included the analysis and design of dams and other structures subjected to gravity, seismic, and wind loads. The work has encompassed new, retrofit, and rehabilitation designs for earth, rock, mine tailing, and concrete dams and appurtenances, and she has also been involved in the instrumentation and monitoring of several dams. The information gathered from monitoring pore water pressures and slope movements has led to a number of innovative solutions for her clients. An employee of DiGioia, Gray & Associates, LLC, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh, she has held ASCE positions at the local, regional, and national levels, among them at-large director on the Board of Direction and president of the Pittsburgh Section’s Geo-Institute chapter, and since 2005 she has been an editor of the magazine Geo-Strata. Bazan-Arias has been the recipient of numerous awards. ASCE named her a diversity champion in 2002, and the Pittsburgh Section honored her with its Young Civil Engineer Award. She is also a part-time instructor at Carnegie Mellon University, where she teaches structural analysis. 

Joseph G. BurnsJOSEPH G. BURNS, P.E., S.E., CEng, LEED AP, F.ASCE, holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Notre Dame and master’s degrees in architecture and civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Burns is a is practice leader, a managing principal, and a member of the board of directors at Thornton Tomasetti, Inc. His project credits span the globe and include a wide variety of building types, including commercial, educational, residential, and retail, as well as museums and structures for health care, the performing arts, athletics, and aviation. This expertise in design and construction has been shared through more than 30 professional papers and through lectures and other publications. In the realm of education he has been a member of the civil and environmental engineering department’s advisory committee at Northwestern University and a member of the design council at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the University of Maryland, where he was named a distinguished professor in 2005. In 2003 Engineering News-Record included him on its list of the year’s 25 most newsworthy individuals for his innovative application of models based on software developed by Tekla, of Espoo, Finland, to steel delivery for Chicago’s Soldier Field, and in 2008 the American Institute of Steel Construction honored him with its Special Achievement Award. Burns is also a peer reviewer for the U.S. General Services Administration’s Design and Construction Excellence Program.

Sherif El-TawilSHERIF EL-TAWIL, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, earned a bachelor of science in civil engineering in 1989 and a master of science in structural engineering in 1991, both from Cairo University, in Egypt, and received a doctorate in civil engineering from Cornell University in 1996. El-Tawil is a professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and associate chair of the school’s civil and environmental engineering department, and his research focuses on the computational modeling, analysis, and testing of structural materials and systems. He is especially interested in how buildings and bridges behave under the extreme loading conditions generated by such man-made and natural hazards as seismic excitations, collisions, and blasts, and he is exploring the use of new materials, concepts, and technologies to create innovative structural systems that mitigate the potentially catastrophic effects of extreme loading. Much of his research is directed towards the computational and theoretical aspects of structural engineering, and he has given special attention to computational simulation, constitutive modeling, multiscale techniques, macroplasticity formulations, nonlinear solution strategies, and visualization methods. He has more than 175 technical papers to his credit, 70 of them in refereed journals, and he coauthored Recommendations for Seismic Design of Hybrid Coupled Wall Systems (Reston, Virginia: ASCE Press, 2010). El-Tawil has also conducted research on human decision making, the social interactions during extreme events, and the use of agent-based models for egress simulations. The editor in chief of ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering, he also lends his time and expertise to various committees of the Structural Engineering Institute. He is the holder of two patents, and he has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them a best-paper award from the Korea Concrete Institute and ASCE’s Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, Moisseiff Award (on two occasions), Arthur M. Wellington Prize, State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award, and Norman Medal.

Konstantinos GiannakosKONSTANTINOS GIANNAKOS, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is a leader in railway engineering, and his pioneering research has elucidated the ballast-sleeper-fastening system. After more than 15 years of research involving laboratory tests and theoretical analyses, Giannakos has developed a theoretical approach for calculating the actions on railway track, as well as approaches for determining the track mass participating in the motion of the nonsuspended masses of railway vehicles and for predicting the ballast fouling for certain types of sleepers. He has numerous publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings to his credit, and he has served on a number of European Union committees. From 1998 to 2002 he was the general coordinator of the group within the International Union of Railways concerned with high-speed rail in southeastern Europe, and from 2002 to 2006 he was the chief executive officer and president of the Hellenic Railways Organisation. Since 2006 he has been a visiting professor of railway engineering at Greece’s University of Thessaly, and he has also taught graduate courses in transportation engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. At present he is the project director of SALFO & Associates SA on work for the Saudi Railway Company in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Giannakos also serves on Transportation Research Board committees dealing with the design and maintenance of railways. His outside scholarly interests include the technology used in ancient Greece, and he is a member of the Association of Ancient Greek Technology Studies.

Ruslan HassanRUSLAN HASSAN, Ph.D., P.Eng., F.ASCE, earned a master of science in sanitary engineering from Syracuse University in 1984 and holds a doctorate in soil and water engineering. A former research fellow at Birmingham University, in the United Kingdom, Hassan was the founding director of the Environmental Research Center at Malaysia’s Universiti Teknologi MARA, where he also taught civil engineering courses in the architecture department. A professor of civil and environmental engineering and a senior research fellow at the Malaysia Institute of Transport, Hassan has presented six keynote addresses at conferences and has more than 100 papers to his credit. He was the project director and later a project specialist for the Jelutong Sewage Treatment Plant, on the Malaysian island of Penang, and he was the environmental specialist for a rail track electrification project and for a river restoration project in the Penang Cybercity district. He has also pioneered the application of “green” reverse logistics strategies for supply chains in Malaysia and has carried out research on sustainable construction through the use of industrialized building systems. Hassan is the president of Malaysia’s Confederation of Scientific and Technological Associations and has also been a member of the Board of Engineers Malaysia. The recipient of numerous awards, he is a member of the board of trustees of the Construction Research Institute of Malaysia, and in recognition of his outstanding contributions in sustainable soil and water engineering, he has been inducted into the Academy of Sciences Malaysia. Hassan is registered as a professional engineer in Malaysia.

Hanadi S. RifaiHANADI S. RIFAI, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the American University of Beirut, in Lebanon, in 1982, and a master of science and a doctorate in environmental engineering from Rice University in respectively 1985 and 1989. Rifai joined the civil and environmental engineering faculty at the University of Houston in 1997 as an assistant professor and in 2007 was named a full professor. In January 2010 she was appointed the director of the university’s environmental engineering graduate program, and she is also one of the directors of the Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters Center there. Before joining the University of Houston she was the executive director of Rice University’s Energy and Environmental Systems Institute, and prior to that she held faculty fellow and research associate positions in Rice’s environmental science and engineering department. Rifai has pioneered change in the groundwater remediation industry and made transformative contributions in the field of bioremediation and natural attenuation of hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents in groundwater. Her work has led to significant changes in the subsurface remediation industry. On the basis of her research, remediation professionals have adopted risk-based cleanup targets that incorporate the natural attenuation capacities of groundwater systems. As a member of ASTM International committees, Rifai has helped to develop risk-based national standards and natural attenuation standards for use by the remediation industry, for example, Standard Guide for Risk-Based Corrective Action Applied at Petroleum Release Sites (ASTM E1739) and Standard Guide for Remediation of Ground Water by Natural Attenuation at Petroleum Release Sites (ASTM E1943). She is also one of the authors of the text Natural Attenuation of Fuels and Chlorinated Solvents in the Subsurface (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 1999).

Clifford Ian 'Tom' RobertsCLIFFORD IAN "TOM" ROBERTS, P.E., F.ASCE, was born in 1928 in Bowral, Australia. He attended school in Darwin, in the extreme north of the country, and in Burrinjuck, in the south, and in 1950 received a bachelor of engineering degree from the University of Sydney. In a career that spanned 40 years, Roberts, now retired, applied his engineering expertise in Australia’s civil and mining industries, and his adherence to engineering and ethical standards guided his efforts in the areas of economic feasibility studies, financing, marketing, and project construction and commissioning. The mining projects in which he was involved included coal as well as ores of titanium, zirconium, lead, zinc, nickel, tin, phosphate, gold, and diamonds. To ensure that the methods employed and the equipment used were state of the art, Roberts visited Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and South Africa for purposes of study. Between 1953 and 1958 he led the design, construction, and commissioning of a titanium and zirconium plant, and in the 1960s he formed a civil construction company that grew from 10 employees to 100. In the 1980s he led the engineering and construction work on two lead and zinc mine complexes on the Australian island of Tasmania.

Kenneth E. SecorKENNETH E. SECOR, D.Eng., P.E., F.ASCE, is a native of Sacramento, California, and holds three degrees in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, receiving a doctorate there in 1961. Early in what became a lengthy career with the California State University system, Secor conducted groundbreaking research in concert with Carl L. Monismith, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, into the viscoelastic properties of asphaltic mixtures. He was also a significant contributor as a young faculty member to the creation of the computer science and engineering programs at California State University at Chico and to the accreditation of the latter. Later he managed the original master planning at California State University at Bakersfield and oversaw the budgeting, design, construction, and operation of the new institution’s growing physical facilities until his retirement, in 1995, as vice president emeritus. In 1971 Secor helped found the Southern San Joaquin Branch of ASCE’s Los Angeles Section and later served as its third president. After retiring he continued working as a private consultant and was then recruited by the chancellor of California State University to serve on the central project management team for a decade-long, systemwide technology infrastructure upgrade valued at nearly $300 million that was deemed critical to meeting the needs of 21st-century students attending the university’s 23 campuses. Now fully retired, Secor resides in Bakersfield with his wife of 58 years, Mary Lou.

Scott T. SmithSCOTT T. SMITH, Ph.D., CPEng, F.ASCE, earned bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of New South Wales, in Australia, in respectively 1994 and 1999. Smith is an associate professor in the civil engineering department at the University of Hong Kong and is also a member of ASCE’s Hong Kong Section. His research is concerned with the strengthening of concrete, metallic, and timber structures with fiber-reinforced polymer composites. In addition to winning funds in Hong Kong, China, and Australia to support his research activities, he has more than 125 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers to his credit. His research findings have been incorporated into U.S., Hong Kong, and Australian design guidelines, and he has won several research and teaching awards over the years. He has served on the editorial board of ASCE’s Journal of Composites for Construction since 2008, and he has reviewed numerous papers for five other ASCE journals. As president of the Hong Kong chapter of Engineers Australia, he is working to forge links with ASCE’s Hong Kong Section in order to give engineers in Hong Kong and Australia a better understanding of ASCE’s activities.

Jun YangJUN YANG, Ph.D., F.ASCE, earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1992 and a doctorate in geotechnical engineering in 1996, both from Zhejiang University, in China. In recognition of his work in elucidating site effects on ground motion in the earthquake that ravaged Kobe, Japan, in 1995, that country’s Kyoto University honored him with a second doctorate in 2001. A member of the faculty at the University of Hong Kong since 2003, Yang has more than 120 peer-reviewed papers in journals and conference proceedings to his credit. His work on earthquake ground responses, soil liquefaction, dynamic soil properties, and pile foundations is widely recognized by academics and practitioners. Yang sits on two technical committees of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering and has served on committees for a number of international conferences. His numerous accolades include a 1997 research fellowship from Kyoto University’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute, a best-paper award at the 2000 conference of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, a fellowship in 2001 from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the 2007 Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the University of Hong Kong. Yang has been instrumental in the growth and development of ASCE’s Hong Kong Section and served as its 2010–11 president.


Fellow applications may be obtained from ASCE’s world headquarters, in Reston, Virginia, by calling (800) 548-2723, extension 6289. From outside the country, the number is (703) 295-6289. The email address is memapp@ASCE.org. The PDF application may be downloaded at www.ASCE.org/fellows. Completed applications may be submitted online to memapp@ASCE.org. Questions concerning fellow guidelines (including guideline waiver inquiries) or the application process may be directed to the applications coordinator at (703) 295-6389 or memapp@asce.org. Completed applications are reviewed monthly by the Membership Application Review Committee (MARC).