Hall of Distinction

W. Andrew Jackson, P.E., Ph.D., BCEE, F. AAAS

Dr. Andrew Jackson is a President’s Excellence in Research Professor and Provost Integrated Scholar in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering at Texas Tech University. Dr. Jackson obtained his BS in Biology from Rhodes College in 1990. He received his M.S. (1992) and PhD (1996) from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at LSU. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering at Texas Tech University, where he has worked for the last 26 years. He currently serves as chair of the department. He has been a licensed professional engineer in the state of Louisiana since 2002, and is a board-certified environmental engineer and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society.

 Andrew’s research has had two main foci: (1) evaluating the fate and transport of a variety of contaminants in natural environments, and (2) development of closed loop water recycling systems in support of space exploration. In 2016, Texas Tech University recognized his research achievements with the Barnie E. Rushing Faculty Distinguished Research Award, the highest university research award. Andrew is considered one of the world’s experts on perchlorate and chlorate, which are key pieces of the Cl biogeochemical cycle and can cause adverse health effects. Andrew’s work has focused on natural production mechanisms, plant uptake, and biotic and abiotic transformation of perchlorate, as well as the ability to differentiate sources based on stable isotope analysis. His research even includes grants and publications focused on its occurrence and fate on Mars, which enabled him to do field work in Antarctica. This work has been funded by EPA, DoD, NASA, and USDA. His work has led to several awards including best paper (2005) by the journal, Environmental Science & Technology and Project of the Year Award by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program. Andrew is also engaged in the development of high resolution passive samplers to study fate and transport of various contaminants (e.g. explosives, chlorinated solvents, heavy metals, and PFAS). This work, funded by DoD, has led to the development of a field deployable device which is actively used at contaminated sites across the country. Andrew’s other research area in sustainable life support has been continuously funded by NASA for the last 20 years. He has work focused on developing sustainable water recycling systems in support of long term extra-terrestrial habitation, particularly novel biological reactors which can operate in micro or partial gravity. This research on both contaminant removal as well as nutrient recycling and recovery, led to Andrew’s chairmanship of the primary NASA life support conference (ICES) in 2013 and the International Conference on Environmental Systems Technical Award in 2018.

Since 2022, he has served as Chair of the Department of Civil Environmental and Construction Engineering. A gifted teacher and mentor, he continues to teach Environmental Engineering Capstone Design, Advanced Biological Wastewater Treatment Design, and Bioremediation courses and has received the Lockheed Martin and President’s Excellence in Teaching Awards. Andrew is a member of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, for which he currently serves on the board of directors and previously served as chair of the Environmental Engineering Program Leaders Committee, for which he received a Distinguished Service Award. He has served as an editorial board member of various journals, and was senior associate editor of the journal, Water,  Air, and Soil Pollution.   

Andrew and his wife, Tali, have two children: Elise and William. The family loves to travel and whenever possible Andrew attempts to golf.

Eric Ireland Kolivoda

A native of Baton Rouge, Eric Kalivoda received a Bachlor of Science in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University, a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Arizona, and a Doctor of Philosophy from North Carolina State University.  He is a registered Professional Engineer in Louisiana, Arizona, and North Carolina.

Kalivoda began his career as an Engineer-In-Training (now Engineer Intern) with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) in 1980.  In 1982, he left DOTD to seek a master’s degree at the University of Arizona in Tucson.  Kalivoda then moved to Raliegh to continue his graduate studies in pursuit of a Ph.D. at North Carolina State University.  

Kalivoda joined the Arizona Department of Transportation where he held various positions directing staff engineers and technicians engaged in traffic engineering studies, highway safety studies, maintenance of the statewide traffic crash database, preparation of signing, marking, and construction traffic control plans, specifications and estimates.  

Kalivoda returned to Louisiana in 1992 rejoining the Department of Transportation and Development where he directed staff engaged in statewide transportation planning, multistate planning efforts, and the development of bridge and pavement management systems.  

Kalivoda held the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary (1999-2005) and then assistant Secretary (2005-2010) for the Office of Planning and Programming where he oversaw the work of four sections engaged in statewide and metropolitan transportation planning, highway project programming, mapping, environmental impact evaluation, highway safety policy and program development, bridge and pavement management system development, highway inventory and traffic monitoring programs, corridor studies, and development of conceptual designs, scopes, and budgets for selected projects.  

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Kalivoda provided leadership through the development of position papers and funding requests to aid in the recovery, and through the education of federal, state, and local officials regarding recovery needs pertaining to transportation infrastructure and services.  He chaired the Transportation and Associated Infrastructure Planning Task Force of the Louisiana Recovery Authority’s Infrastructure and Transportation Recovery Team.

Kalivoda served as the DOTD Deputy Secretary from 2010 to 2023.  As the second highest official of the Department, he provided executive-level strategic direction and administration for over 4200 employees organized into six offices and 58 sections with responsibilities inclusive of Management and Finance, Planning, Engineering, Operations, and Multimodal Commerce.    Kalivoda provided executive-level oversight and guidance in the development and administration of the operating and capital budgets.  He represented the Department on numerous national and state committees, chaired an internal board of executives, termed the Appeals Board, to hear appeals from customers unsatisfied with Department decisions regarding permits, mitigation requirements, etc., and chaired the Curriculum Council charged with developing the Department’s training programs.

In March 2023, Kalivoda was appointed DOTD Secretary and served in that capacity until his retirement in January 2024.  As Secretary, he was a member of the Governor’s cabinet and conferred with him in formulating public policy. He communicated with federal, state, and local elected officials, and other agency heads on a continual basis to pursue opportunities and resolve issues.  Kalivoda worked with the state legislature and industry partners to enact legislation beneficial to transportation and public works infrastructure and services.  He was member of the Unified Command Group providing leadership during natural disasters and other state emergencies and served on numerous boards and commissions.

Kalivoda’s most significant career accomplishments at DOTD include setting direction for state investment through the development and implementation of long-range multimodal transportation plans for Louisiana through a process of extensive technical analyses, and public and industry engagement.  Developing a highway project selection process that engages teams of professional staff throughout the agency.  Educating the public and those they elect concerning the scope and magnitude of the responsibilities that DOTD has and how decisions are made.  But most of all, helping to transform the image of DOTD in the eyes of the public, elected officials, and the media to that of a modern, efficient and effective multimodal transportation and public works state agency engaged in facilitating economic growth and enhancing the quality of life in Louisiana.

Elif Acar-Chiasson

Elif Acar-Chiasson is a registered professional engineer with over 30 years of progressive engineering, management, and leadership experience in complex civil, geotechnical, and geo-environmental projects. As an engineer, Ms. Chiasson designed and lead projects in array of industries spanning from energy & chemicals to power generation, heavy manufacturing, multi-modal transportation, and defense. The depth of her technical and project delivery expertise, coupled with her experience in operations and passion in talent development, gives her the unique ability to respond to multiple stakeholder interests and needs. 

Ms. Chiasson was born in Istanbul, Turkey. In 1988, after completing her undergraduate studies at the Bogazici University in Istanbul, she moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to continue her graduate studies at LSU as a research assistant in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. While she was accepted by several prestigious graduate programs across the US, it was a particular research program involving design with geosynthetics conducted at LSU that influenced her decision to join the Forever LSU Family. 

Currently, Ms. Chiasson serves as CSRS’ Executive Vice President of Talent and Innovation. In this role, Ms. Chiasson oversees the technical practice areas of the firm and mentors many of CSRS’ professionals. With her extensive industry knowledge, she creates the strategy and culture required for employees to experiment with the right resources at the right level to support their career progression. Ms. Chiasson is responsible for forecasting the dynamic changes on the markets, which are the result of the increasing competition and fast technical progress. True to CSRS’ innovative character, she encourages staff at all levels to actively seek and create knowledge, and to use it to enhance effectiveness and competitive advantage. In this role, Ms. Chiasson manages the innovation process by focusing on developing new, or changed processes, solutions in the scope of marketing, as well as organizational methods. For all new company innovations and objectives, she employs and leads talented employees appropriately, including mentoring and professional development. Ms. Chiasson focuses on creating new ways to ensure knowledge is a smooth connection of acquired experience, values, context information, and expert approach to constitute the framework for the assessment and inclusion of new experiences and information.

At CSRS, Ms. Chiasson also served in the roles of Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Project and Program Delivery. In these roles, she provided the leadership, management, and vision necessary to ensure that CSRS had the proper operational controls, administrative and reporting procedures, and people systems in place to effectively grow the organization and to ensure financial strength and operating efficiency. Ms. Chiasson had the overall responsibility of driving execution and creating best practices for the firm’s services. Under her leadership, CSRS developed and implemented a state-of-the-art project controls and technology-enabled business systems facilitating effective communication of critical information in formats that allow managers to optimize financial performance during execution and the firm’s leadership to make effective business-related decisions. Ms. Chiasson has achieved several significant accomplishments including ground-up development of project tools such as project status reports, dynamic dashboards, estimate templates, and rolling forecasts. She also developed a start-to-finish project tracking methodology that greatly enhanced the ability to efficiently monitor the status and financial health of all projects.

In the early days of her post graduate professional career, Ms. Chiasson joined the IT Corporation, a national consulting firm where she had the opportunity to expand and grow her skills in geo-environmental and geotechnical engineering applications, primarily in chemical and petrochemical industries. Subsequently, she joined Electrokinetics, a firm started by her late husband Yalcin B. Acar, PhD, PE in the Louisiana Business and Technology Center, the predecessor of LSU Innovation Park, to commercialize its advanced solutions to hazardous waste contamination using electrochemistry. Following the unexpected death of her husband, she took the leadership of the firm and continued to build a diverse client list that included both industrial and governmental agencies such as DOD, DOE, USACE, US Navy, EPA, and EPRI. Under her leadership, Electrokinetics completed two EPA Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation program projects and in 1996, it was awarded the Small Business Innovative Research Phase II Quality Award from DOD for its technical achievement and contributions to the US Army. 

In 2002, Ms. Chiasson joined Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure, Inc. where served as project manager and eventually as the Engineering Business Line Manager for the Gulf Central District until 2013. In this role, she set the department’s strategy and direction, provided functional leadership for the engineering team, managed resource optimization, and delegated resources to support project requirements, schedules, and department budget. During her eleven-year tenure, Ms. Chiasson led and took part in engineering design and management of notable projects in the State of Louisiana such as the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Hurricane Protection Project, which received ENR's Best of the Best 2011 Best Civil Works/Infrastructure Award, and the state-of-the-art AP-1000TM nuclear power plant module assembly facility in Lake Charles, LA.

Ms. Chiasson hold a BS in Civil Engineering from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey and a M.Sc. in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.

Thiagarajan Ganesh

Dr. Thiagarajan Ganesh is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and is a proud graduate of Louisiana State University with a Ph.D. from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1996. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Civil (1985) and Structural Engineering (1988) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, India. Subsequently, he worked in the industry for several years prior to starting a Ph.D. at LSU. He had the pleasure of teaching at LSU full time till 2002, teaching several sophomore and junior level courses such as Statics, Strength of Materials and Dynamics to all engineering students in the College of Engineering. During his tenure at LSU, he was honored with several teaching awards such as the Chi Epsilon Teaching Award, the Tiger Athletic Foundation teaching award and the ASCE Student Chapter Outstanding Teaching Award.

Dr. Ganesh joined the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC) in 2002 as an Assistant Professor in Structural Engineering after spending a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. At UMKC he was awarded the National Science Foundation’s prestigious CAREER award in 2008 for his work in blast behavior of concrete structures. The work led to the conduction of a worldwide blind prediction contest in this area through the American Concrete Institute (ACI). Two special publications resulted from the competition. A team led by Dr. Ganesh was awarded the First Place in the International E Defense Blind Analysis Contest in predicting the seismic behavior of a multi-story steel structure (3-Dimensional Analysis by Researchers Category) (2008) conducted by National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center, Japan. He has successfully completed projects in collaboration for Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) to develop cost effect bridge approach slabs and an innovative design of prestressed precast approach slabs. Both the designs were adopted by MoDOT for implementation. He is currently working on bridge load rating project for MoDOT. At UMKC he has been recognized for his research as a Faculty Scholar (2006) and the N.T. Veatch Award (2021) and several excellence in teaching award at the school level and the Chancellor’s Excellence in Teaching award (2022).

Dr. Ganesh also has worked for over fifteen years in biomechanical testing in bone mechanotransduction, in studying how bone cells such as osteocytes respond to mechanical loading and their role in bone growth. The work has been funded by the Missouri Life Sciences Research Board, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. Other areas of research include biomechanical testing of knees, elbows, and other tissue from cadaveric specimen to study the biomechanical properties. Work in this area has been funded by the Kansas City Consortium on Musculoskeletal Disease.

Ganesh currently serves as an Associate Editor in the American Society of Civil Engineers Structural Engineering Journal and Materials Journal. He has served in the Missouri chapter of ACI for several years culminating in being the chapter President. In recognition of the work in research and service in the field, he was elected to serve as the Chair of ACI Committees 447 (Finite Element Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Structures) and 370 (Blast and Impact Load Effects) for two terms in each committee. He is also a fellow of ACI.

Robert Slimp

As chairman and CEO of HNTB Corporation, Robert Slimp oversees and directs
the employee-owned infrastructure solutions firm’s strategic direction and leads more than 5,000 multidiscipline professionals in more than 70 offices across the United States.
HNTB Corporation is a $1 billion, 107-year-old leader in U.S. transportation, serving public- and private-sector clients with a specific focus on these markets: departments of transportation, tolls, tunnels, bridges, intelligent transportation systems, aviation and transit and rail. Under Slimp’s leadership, HNTB professionals solve clients’ most complex technical, financial and operational challenges, delivering a full range of mobility infrastructure-related services, including award-winning planning, design, program management, construction management and architectural services.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Since joining HNTB in 2005, Slimp has held executive-level positions of increasing responsibility with HNTB at the local, regional and national levels. He joined HNTB as the firm’s office leader in Austin and San Antonio. He then was promoted to serve as president of the firm’s Northeast and Southeast divisions, where he led multidisciplinary staff in more than 30 offices.
Since becoming CEO in 2013, the firm’s positive growth trajectory accelerated with gross revenue increasing
73 percent in that timeframe. HNTB consistently ranks in the top 20 in the listing of the top 500 design firms by Engineering News-Record, the industry’s leading trade publication.
Before joining HNTB, Slimp worked for another national infrastructure firm designing projects and managing
design teams on projects in Louisiana, Texas and other states across the country.
Slimp knows that a strong transportation infrastructure system creates jobs, promotes economic development and advances America’s competitiveness in the international marketplace. He frequently speaks on these topics and engages in advocacy for equitable transportation with key elected officials across the country and in organizations such as Accelerator for America, United for Infrastructure and other groups.
Slimp also is passionate about developing people and serves as a mentor to many within HNTB. His inclusive leadership style reflects his view that diversity of thought, experiences and personal characteristics leads to
better outcomes.
Slimp also is personally engaged in efforts to attract more students to the engineering profession. In 2018, he
and his wife Shelly established a personal foundation within the LSU College of Engineering to award scholarships
to qualifying women engineering students.
Slimp graduated from LSU with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering. He and his wife have two children,
Wesley and Ava.

Robert Thoms

Robert Lee Thoms was born at home near Nixon, Texas, on May 10, 1933.  He graduated from the local public school in May, 1950, and then attended Texas Lutheran College in Seguin1950-1952.  He next attended The University of Texas (The U of T) from 1952 until January, 1955, where he earned the B.S. in Architectural Engineering (Arch.E).  This entailed taking all courses with Civil Engineering (CE) students except for the substitution of architectural design courses in place of an extensive land surveying program.  During this period he was inducted into the honorary engineering societies of Chi Epsilon and Tau Beta Pi.  Upon graduation he was offered a position as Instructor in the CE department by the chairman, Phil M. Ferguson, and began teaching and graduate studies.

He took coursework and did research at The U of T from 1955-1956.  During this time he also met and courted his future wife, Ann Fraser.  He next taught in the Math department at Del Mar Junor College in Corpus Christi, Texas, from 1956-1957.  He and Ann were married in early 1957.  They moved back to Austin in the summer of 1957 where he completed his work for the M.S. in Arch.E under the direction of Hudson Matlock in the CE department.

From 1957-1959 he taught in the Engineering Mechanics (EM) department and took graduate level courses at The U of T.  He and Ann welcomed the arrival of their first child, Rebecca (Becky) Lynn, In the fall of 1959.  Shortly thereafter he left to take up teaching and pursuit of the Ph.D. in the department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (TAM) at the University of Illinois (UI) in Champaign-Urbana.  Ann and Becky joined him some six weeks later following a long train trip from Texas.

While at the UI from 1959-1962 he was inducted into Sigma Xi and received a Ford Foundation teaching fellowship.  He completed requirements for the Ph.D. in TAM from UI in mid-September, 1962, and he and Ann and now three little Thoms (Becky, Heather, and Eric) headed south to Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.

From 1962 to 1982 He taught undergraduate and graduate courses at LSU in departments that evolved from Engineering Mechanics to Engineering Science and ultimately Civil Engineering.  He and Ann also welcomed a fourth member (Bryan) to their family in 1964.  He attained the rank of Full Professor in 1969 during sabbatical leave with family at the University of Washington in Seattle.  While at LSU he served as the first president of the newly formed faculty senate and on numerous committees including two Chancellor search committees.  He was also elected to Phi Kappa Phi and became a Professional (Civil) Engineer (P.E.) in Louisiana at this time.  His research and advanced teaching activities are noted in his resume and are not repeated here.

Dr. Thoms elected early retirement from LSU in 1982 after 20 years of service and began a consulting career..  He and Richard M. Gehle incorporated “Applied Geomechanics” in Louisiana for consulting in mining and storage in salt formations.  By 1988 he and Ann were “empty nesters” and they moved to College Station, Texas.  Here he and Mr. Gehle formed AGM, Inc., a Texas company also specializing in issues related to usage of salt formations.  Dr. Thoms was also appointed an Adjunct Professor of Geophysics and visiting member of the Graduate Faculty at Texas A&M.  

He decided to try semi-retirement in 2001 after a productive stay in College Station.  He and Ann moved to Waveland on the coast of Mississippi while Richard Gehle remained in Texas as a research assistant in the CE department of Texas A&M.  Their stay in Waveland was generally a happy one with early morning walks on the beach, fishing, and visits by family.  Their sojourn in Mississippi was brought to an abrupt end in August, 2005, by the arrival of hurricane Katrina.

He and Ann returned to Baton Rouge after Katrina and have lived here since.  Sadly, Richard Gehle died in 2006 of Pancreatic Cancer.  Dr. Thoms continued his semi-retired consulting career until almost fully retiring in 2018, i.e., he remains a member of the Environmental Advisory Committee to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). 

Steve Boudreaux

Equipped with a Civil Engineering degree from LSU in 1978, Steve has been fortunate to serve the transportation industry in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Alabama. His career now spans over 43 years and is filled with challenging projects, satisfied clients, and wonderful relationships – all provided by the career opportunities in engineering.
With Pointe Coupee Parish and the New Roads, Louisiana community as his lifelong home, Steve learned early on the value of hard work. Steve says “As a farmer, my Dad instilled in me a love and appreciation for hard work which eventually became the work ethic that I am so happy to have today.” Another quote that was given to him by his Paw-Paw (grandfather) Lejeune, who also gave him his original love for building things, was “A man who knows how to work is never without a job.”
After graduation with a BSCE from LSU in 1978, Steve began his career with HNTB in Baton Rouge as a young bridge engineer. During his seven years with HNTB, he was privileged to work on career-shaping projects such as the Line & Grade Studies for I-49 Shreveport Urban and the Crescent City Connector (Mississippi River Bridge) in New Orleans. He also worked on final bridge design assignments such as Spring St.–Market St. Interchange in Shreveport and I-210 Interchange in Lake Charles.
In 1985, ABMB Engineers (Adkins, Boudreaux, McGaugh & Bruce) was formed. Steve and his young partners were passionate about creating something of their own. ABMB was skilled and devoted to the transportation industry – starting out as a bridge and roadway firm and eventually also specializing in traffic and ITS. In over 27 years of service, Steve and his partners grew ABMB from the initial 4 people to nearly 150 people in Louisiana and Mississippi. With main clients being the LADOTD and MDOT, ABMB was focused on delivering high-quality projects and offering cutting-edge technology and innovation wherever it benefitted the project. As principal-in-charge of structures for ABMB, Steve’s past projects in Louisiana and Mississippi include I-49/I-20 and I-20/Lakeshore Drive Interchanges in Shreveport; I-49/US167 Interchange in Alexandria; I-10 Truck Rail (Ramp II-3) Mississippi River Bridge and I-10 Picardy Interchange in Baton Rouge; I-210 Cove Lane Interchange in Lake Charles; I-20/Tarbutton Interchange in Ruston; US61-Liberty Road Interchange in Natchez (ACEC – 2009 Engineering Excellence Award); and, I-10 Canal Road Interchange in Gulfport.
In 2012, Steve and his partners agreed to be acquired by Stantec Consulting Services, Inc. Steve says “It was bitter-sweet because it closed the door on ABMB but opened the door for our engineers to much larger opportunities throughout the US and Canada as we became part of a 25,000-person professional organization.” Since becoming part of Stantec, Steve has served as Senior Principal and Operations Leader for Stantec’s BC2018 (Business Center) which covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Over these last 8+ years, Steve has continued to serve the LADOTD, MDOT and ALDOT. As the transportation industry has evolved, Steve has served his transportation clients in alternative project delivery of Design-Build (D-B) and Public Private Partnerships (P3) projects. In Louisiana, Steve has been privileged to serve as principal-in-charge on 4 of the 11 Design-Build projects undertaken by the LADOTD; and as part of the quality control team on Stantec’s SH288 Toll Lane P3 project in Houston, Texas.
With engineering as his chosen career, Steve’s passion is built on his love for the Lord and the love and support of a precious wife. Steve has served at First Baptist Church and the New Roads community as a deacon and faithful member of FBCNR congregation for over 30 years. Steve and his wife, Carol, have enjoyed over 46 years marriage and have a son and two grandchildren. Steve says “Without a doubt, I married up. Carol has taught me the value of love, commitment and family which has been a true richness in my life.” While neither directly affected his technical ability, Steve acknowledges the impact that these two relationships have had on his career in equipping him as a servant-leader and providing him with wisdom, integrity and discernment – making him the person and professional engineer he is today.

Sibel Pamukcu

Dr. Sibel Pamukcu is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Dr. Pamukcu served as the CEE Department’s Associate Chair from 2006 to 2011 and as the Interim Chair from 2011 to 2013. She was co-PI of Lehigh’s prestigious NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation award in 2010. The awarding was the first time in the history of NSF’s ADVANCE program that an Institutional Transformation grant was awarded to an institution of Lehigh’s size. This has been a great recognition in honor of the co-PI team’s unrelenting dedication to advancing the careers of women at Lehigh. Dr. Pamukcu served as co-director of Lehigh’s ADVANCE program from 2011 to 2013. In her capacities as a professor, research or program manager, chair or director, Dr. Pamukcu has successfully mentored and advocated for women scientists and engineers for over twenty years.  She has sought and supported female students in long term NSF REU projects, and sponsored numerous women scientists and engineers as research associates and post-doctoral researchers - many of whom have advanced into successful careers in academia. 

A globally recognized expert in the field of electro-remediation of soils and groundwater, Dr. Pamukcu's pioneering work spans more than two decades of research. Her efforts focus on soil and groundwater decontamination using electrochemical technologies, application of direct current electric field for enhanced recovery of oil and for in-situ destruction of contaminants through enhanced redox in clay-rich soils and rock formations. Dr. Pamukcu also conducts research on the development and application of distributed fiber-optic and wireless sensor systems for monitoring progressive changes in geo-media and underground structures for preemptive mitigation of hazards. She has authored and co-authored more than 200 technical publications, including 75+ in the form of journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Pamukcu is co-holder of several U.S. and international patents granted for the development of a testing procedure used in soil electro-remediation, and for the development and use of polymer coated sand in environmental mitigation and separation. She has served as the principal and co-principal investigator for more than 60 grants and contracts from national and state agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PADOT), and with more than $10M lifetime research funding. Dr. Pamukcu is recipient of the ASCE Civil Engineering Foundation Grant Award (1989); a former chair of the Committee AFP30 Soil and Rock Properties (1994-2000) of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies; and a former chapter president of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society at Lehigh; and she has served on several journals’ editorial boards. Dr. Pamukcu teaches courses in Geotechnical, Geo-environmental and Foundations Engineering at the undergraduate level; and Advanced Soil Mechanics and Soil Dynamics at the graduate level. She holds a BSCE from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA.

Jay Hardman

As chairman and CEO of HNTB Corporation, Robert Slimp oversees and directs
the employee-owned infrastructure solutions firm’s strategic direction and leads more than 5,000 multidiscipline professionals in more than 70 offices across the United States.
HNTB Corporation is a $1 billion, 107-year-old leader in U.S. transportation, serving public- and private-sector clients with a specific focus on these markets: departments of transportation, tolls, tunnels, bridges, intelligent transportation systems, aviation and transit and rail. Under Slimp’s leadership, HNTB professionals solve clients’ most complex technical, financial and operational challenges, delivering a full range of mobility infrastructure-related services, including award-winning planning, design, program management, construction management and architectural services.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Since joining HNTB in 2005, Slimp has held executive-level positions of increasing responsibility with HNTB at the local, regional and national levels. He joined HNTB as the firm’s office leader in Austin and San Antonio. He then was promoted to serve as president of the firm’s Northeast and Southeast divisions, where he led multidisciplinary staff in more than 30 offices.
Since becoming CEO in 2013, the firm’s positive growth trajectory accelerated with gross revenue increasing
73 percent in that timeframe. HNTB consistently ranks in the top 20 in the listing of the top 500 design firms by Engineering News-Record, the industry’s leading trade publication.
Before joining HNTB, Slimp worked for another national infrastructure firm designing projects and managing
design teams on projects in Louisiana, Texas and other states across the country.
Slimp knows that a strong transportation infrastructure system creates jobs, promotes economic development and advances America’s competitiveness in the international marketplace. He frequently speaks on these topics and engages in advocacy for equitable transportation with key elected officials across the country and in organizations such as Accelerator for America, United for Infrastructure and other groups.
Slimp also is passionate about developing people and serves as a mentor to many within HNTB. His inclusive leadership style reflects his view that diversity of thought, experiences and personal characteristics leads to
better outcomes.
Slimp also is personally engaged in efforts to attract more students to the engineering profession. In 2018, he
and his wife Shelly established a personal foundation within the LSU College of Engineering to award scholarships
to qualifying women engineering students.
Slimp graduated from LSU with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering. He and his wife have two children,
Wesley and Ava.

Michael Pittman

Robert Lee Thoms was born at home near Nixon, Texas, on May 10, 1933.  He graduated from the local public school in May, 1950, and then attended Texas Lutheran College in Seguin1950-1952.  He next attended The University of Texas (The U of T) from 1952 until January, 1955, where he earned the B.S. in Architectural Engineering (Arch.E).  This entailed taking all courses with Civil Engineering (CE) students except for the substitution of architectural design courses in place of an extensive land surveying program.  During this period he was inducted into the honorary engineering societies of Chi Epsilon and Tau Beta Pi.  Upon graduation he was offered a position as Instructor in the CE department by the chairman, Phil M. Ferguson, and began teaching and graduate studies.

He took coursework and did research at The U of T from 1955-1956.  During this time he also met and courted his future wife, Ann Fraser.  He next taught in the Math department at Del Mar Junor College in Corpus Christi, Texas, from 1956-1957.  He and Ann were married in early 1957.  They moved back to Austin in the summer of 1957 where he completed his work for the M.S. in Arch.E under the direction of Hudson Matlock in the CE department.

From 1957-1959 he taught in the Engineering Mechanics (EM) department and took graduate level courses at The U of T.  He and Ann welcomed the arrival of their first child, Rebecca (Becky) Lynn, In the fall of 1959.  Shortly thereafter he left to take up teaching and pursuit of the Ph.D. in the department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (TAM) at the University of Illinois (UI) in Champaign-Urbana.  Ann and Becky joined him some six weeks later following a long train trip from Texas.

While at the UI from 1959-1962 he was inducted into Sigma Xi and received a Ford Foundation teaching fellowship.  He completed requirements for the Ph.D. in TAM from UI in mid-September, 1962, and he and Ann and now three little Thoms (Becky, Heather, and Eric) headed south to Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.

From 1962 to 1982 He taught undergraduate and graduate courses at LSU in departments that evolved from Engineering Mechanics to Engineering Science and ultimately Civil Engineering.  He and Ann also welcomed a fourth member (Bryan) to their family in 1964.  He attained the rank of Full Professor in 1969 during sabbatical leave with family at the University of Washington in Seattle.  While at LSU he served as the first president of the newly formed faculty senate and on numerous committees including two Chancellor search committees.  He was also elected to Phi Kappa Phi and became a Professional (Civil) Engineer (P.E.) in Louisiana at this time.  His research and advanced teaching activities are noted in his resume and are not repeated here.

Dr. Thoms elected early retirement from LSU in 1982 after 20 years of service and began a consulting career..  He and Richard M. Gehle incorporated “Applied Geomechanics” in Louisiana for consulting in mining and storage in salt formations.  By 1988 he and Ann were “empty nesters” and they moved to College Station, Texas.  Here he and Mr. Gehle formed AGM, Inc., a Texas company also specializing in issues related to usage of salt formations.  Dr. Thoms was also appointed an Adjunct Professor of Geophysics and visiting member of the Graduate Faculty at Texas A&M.  

He decided to try semi-retirement in 2001 after a productive stay in College Station.  He and Ann moved to Waveland on the coast of Mississippi while Richard Gehle remained in Texas as a research assistant in the CE department of Texas A&M.  Their stay in Waveland was generally a happy one with early morning walks on the beach, fishing, and visits by family.  Their sojourn in Mississippi was brought to an abrupt end in August, 2005, by the arrival of hurricane Katrina.

He and Ann returned to Baton Rouge after Katrina and have lived here since.  Sadly, Richard Gehle died in 2006 of Pancreatic Cancer.  Dr. Thoms continued his semi-retired consulting career until almost fully retiring in 2018, i.e., he remains a member of the Environmental Advisory Committee to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). 

David Sauls

David Sauls has more than 30 years of experience as a geotechnical engineer, and he has served as the Chairman of the Board at GeoEngineers, Inc. since 2011.

Since first earning his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Louisiana State University (LSU) in 1982, David has been fortunate to have spent a career helping two types of clients: those he can guide in advance to avoid soil problems and those that are in distress and need to be rescued.

David works and flies out from the Baton Rouge location of GeoEngineers, and his geotechnical-based engineering knowledge covers design analysis, soil mechanics, laboratory testing, field exploration and project management with a strong focus on performance of soft soil at sites as far ranging as along the Mississippi River, to the Beaufort Sea, Wynyard, Saskatchewan, and the Orinoco River Basin in Venezuela.

GeoEngineers Baton Rouge office was previously Louis J. Capozzoli & Associates, Inc. from 1965 to 2007. David began his engineering career by landing a summer job in 1977 working for Dr. Louis J. Capozzoli, founder of the prominent Baton Rouge geotechnical engineering firm bearing his name. David continued working for Capozzoli as an undergraduate at Louisiana State University. After seeing first-hand the construction challenges of soft Gulf Coast soils, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to earn his master's degree in civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

After working with legendary McClelland Engineers in Houston for 10 years, he would return in 1994 to his Tiger roots in Baton Rouge to rejoin the Capozzoli firm as a principal. The firm

eventually merged with GeoEngineers in 2007. David is a registered professional engineer in 15 states, and he is an active member of numerous organizations, including GBA (formerly ASFE): The

Geoprofessional Business Association. In fact, his involvement with GBA as well as his professional reputation earned him the honor of being the Invited Lecturer for the 42nd Martin S. Kapp Memorial Lecture at the American Society of Civil Engineers, Metropolitan Section, New York, New York in February 2017.

David’s education and long career have led him to be the geotechnical engineer of record for hundreds of construction projects for roads, bridges, railroads, industrial plants, commercial buildings, levees, offshore and near-shore platforms and docks, and trenchless construction of pipelines. He is an accepted geotechnical expert in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas state courts as well as Federal courts.

He has conducted geotechnical analyses for predicting settlements of shallow and deep foundation systems, computed axial and lateral pile capacity of foundation soils, evaluated the stability of earth slopes, computed lateral earth pressures for permanent and temporary retaining structures and waterfront bulkheads, identified constructability issues, developed performance monitoring programs, and interpreted performance results of real-time field monitoring data acquisition.

As Chairman, he has the pleasure of working with a nine-person board of directors to provide strategy, leadership and review on behalf of the firm’s shareholders. The directors are elected by 201 shareholders of 325 employees.

An employee-owned earth science, engineering and technology company, GeoEngineers has 14 offices nationwide. GeoEngineers was ranked and specializes in crafting unique environmental,

ecological, geotechnical and technology solutions for a range of public and private clients. GeoEngineers revenues ranked 188th among national design firms by Engineering News-Record (ENR) magazine in 2016. This is the highest-ranking design firm lead by a Louisiana State University (LSU) civil engineering graduate.

Miles Williams

Miles B. Williams is a 1983 graduate of Louisiana State University with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering.  He has committed substantial time and resources toward promoting the education of young engineers by assisting LSU’s Civil & Environmental Engineering Department.  He has served as an adjunct faculty member; teaching CE4750 – Professional Issues and Introduction to Concept Design, a senior level civil engineering project course, for the past eight years. In addition, he served four years on the Civil Engineering Program Advisory Committee with two years as chairman.  Also, he is a past member of the Scotlandville High School for Engineering Professions Advisory Council.

Miles is a registered professional engineer in Louisiana, Florida and Texas.  He has over 33 years of technical and management experience with an emphasis on a wide range of transportation and infrastructure related projects.  In that time he has performed project management, design and plan preparation oversight, client liaison, project estimating and budgeting and contract negotiations and administration.  

Miles has worked with his partners over the past 27 years to build Sigma Consulting Group, Inc. into a successful regional engineering and land surveying company headquartered in Baton Rouge with a satellite office in Pensacola, FL.  Miles currently is President of Sigma, a position he has held for the past 13 years.  He is responsible for management of the day to day operations of the firm while providing the vision and direction necessary for the continued success of the company.  Sigma has been named one of the “Best Places to Work” in Baton Rouge by the Baton Rouge Business Report for all three years that the event has been organized.  In addition, Sigma has been in the LSU Top 100 fastest growing companies 3 times in the last 5 years. Miles and his wife Martha have endowed the Mike N. Dooley Professorship in Civil Engineering and have generously given to the LSU Civil Engineering Department to help fund laboratory equipment.  In addition, they have funded scholarships through the LSU School of Music and have helped fund capital improvement projects through the Tiger Athletic Foundation.

Miles worked to advance the engineering profession while protecting the public by serving on the Louisiana Professional Engineering and Land Surveying Board (LAPELS) for a six year term from 2008 to 2014; serving as Chairman in his last year. 

In addition, Miles has been active in the Louisiana Engineering Society (LES) serving on the Baton Rouge Chapter’s Board of Directors finishing as President in 2004.  He currently serves as the statewide legislative liaison for the LES State board. Other professional and technical organizations that he is involved with include the National Society of Professional Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

Miles currently sits on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Manship YMCA where he serves as the Capital Campaign chairman.  He also has served as Vice President of the St. Jude the Apostle School Board and was a long time Cub Scout leader.  Miles resides in Baton Rouge with his wife Martha and they have three children the youngest of which is a junior at LSU.

Akram Alshawabkeh

Dr. Alshawabkeh is the Principal Investigator (PI) and Director of the “Puerto Rico Test site for Exploring Contamination Threats (PROTECT)” Superfund Research Program (SRP) Center, funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the PI and Director of Center for Research on Early Childhood Exposure and Development in Puerto Rico (CRECE) funded by NIEHS and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  As the Director of PROTECT and CRECE, Dr. Alshawabkeh leads a team that includes epidemiologists, engineers, sociologists, biostatisticians, pediatricians, and toxicologists to study environmental and water contamination in Puerto Rico and its effects on preterm birth and adverse pregnancy outcomes to develop prevention and remediation strategies.

In addition to work funded by NIEHS and EPA, Dr. Alshawabkeh has also led or collaborated on research projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Department of Energy, and industry with over $35M lifetime research funding. His work is presented in close to 200 publications, including 100+ peer-reviewed journal papers. He

is a Fulbright Scholar and a recipient of the 2014 ASCE Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award. He has a strong service record, led and participated in many research workshops and organized several technical conference sessions and activities. Dr. Alshawabkeh is a former chair of Committee AFP40 “Physiochemical and Biological Processes in Soil” of the Transportation Research Board of the

National Academies and is a member of several national and international committees. Dr. Alshawabkeh has a track record of collaboration with government laboratories and industry. 

Dr. Akram N. Alshawabkeh is the George A. Snell Professor of Engineering and Associate Dean for Research at the College of Engineering at Northeastern University. He is also a Geo-environmental Engineering Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE). Dr. Alshawabkeh is an Internationally-recognized expert in coupling soil behavior with geochemistry and geomechanics, contaminant fate and transport in soil and groundwater, soil remediation, electrokinetic/electrolytic processes and modeling. He holds a B.E. in Civil Engineering from Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan, M.Sc. in Civil Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), Irbid, Jordan, and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA.

Janice Poplin Williams

Williams earned her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Louisiana State University in May 1985 and was a member of the Chi Epsilon honors society. She began her career as an engineer in training for DOTD’s Road Design Section in June 1985. She was given responsibility early in her career when assigned as the Interstate 4R program manager in 1987. For the next 19 years, she served as a project and program manager for projects of all shapes and sizes, including interstates, capacity improvements, large and small bridge replacements, urban systems, enhancements, and a new Mississippi River crossing. She was responsible for over 1200 projects totaling over $2.3 billion in construction costs.  While serving as the Pavement Preservation Program Manager, her

programs were often called upon to fill in the gaps where needed to prevent funding from lapsing. 

In June 2010, she was selected for her previous position as Chief of the Project Development Division. As the Chief of the Project Development Division, Williams drove the implementation of a

reorganization of major portion of the Office of Engineering to provide for better continuity and succession planning for a downsized agency. Under her leadership, DOTD overcame significant challenges in project delivery after a business software conversion which affected every aspect of the way DOTD conducted business.      

Prior to this appointment, Williams served as the Chief of the Systems Engineering Division for four years. Her leadership of the Systems Preservation Section allowed for them to be successful at fulfilling the project delivery demands for three budget surplus programs as well as the projects funded by the American Recovery and Re-investment Act of 2009. During her service in the Systems Engineering Division, Williams was responsible for the development of a new bridge preservation program. DOTD’s Bridge Preservation Program gained national recognition by being one of the first to receive approval for the use of federal funds for this activity.       

In addition, Williams served on the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Pavement Preservation Expert Task Groups from 1999 to 2010. Based on her expertise in preservation, Williams was asked to serve as a member of the FHWA Bridge Preservation Expert Task group upon its formation in 2010. These national teams were created to promote pavement and bridge preservation, acceptance and implementation through the development of technical guidelines with the identification of related training and research needs. An active member of AASHTO, she served as a member of the Subcommittee on Maintenance from 2007-2013, including service as one of the Vice Chairs of the Bridge Technical Working Group from 2009-2013. Since her appointment as Chief Engineer in 2014, Williams has served as a member of the Standing Committee on Highways (SCOH).

Williams is a licensed professional engineer in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Louisiana Engineering Society, and Louisiana Society of Professional Engineers in Civil Service and Women in Transportation Seminar.

In 2011, Williams received the Charles E. Dunbar, Jr. Career Service Award. This award is the highest honor classified state employees can receive for their service to the citizens of Louisiana and is awarded for commitment to classified service, contributions toward workplace improvement, personal initiative, and volunteer community service.

Williams has been an active community volunteer, having spent 14 years as a volunteer and leader with the Girl Scouts of Louisiana East Regional Service Center. She spent 6 years as a Riding Director in the Camp Marydale Wrangler program in St. Francisville where girls learn horsemanship, teamwork, and leadership while providing a riding program for Girl Scout campers. Since retiring from the Girl Scouts in 2012, Williams has joined Cat Haven as a volunteer and serves regularly at the LSU Vet School spay day events held monthly. 

Williams has been married to Montford E.  Williams, III since 1985 and they have four children and one grandchild. Two of their children are involved in engineering, with one pursuing a Master’s degree in education while working as an assistant editor reviewing engineering research reports and the other is a December 2015 LSU graduate with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. 

Williams is the daughter of the late Dr. and Mrs. Jack K. Poplin.  Dr. Poplin was a faculty member of the LSU Civil Engineering Department from 1968-1994. 

Janice Poplin Williams was appointed as the Chief Engineer of the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) in March 2014 by Secretary Sherri H. LeBas.  During her tenure as Chief Engineer, Williams has focused on Safety, Quality, Accountability and Program Delivery.  As the engineering leader of DOTD, Williams provides guidance to a staff of more than 500 engineers, engineering technicians, and support staff, while promoting innovation, continuous improvement, and efficient use of resources.  She is responsible for establishing engineering standards, policies, and procedures that guide project delivery, construction, and preservation of all transportation-related projects and systems. In addition, Williams is accountable for the on-time and on-budget delivery of the DOTD Highway Priority Program.

Ronnie Hebert

Ronald R.E. Hebert (“Ronnie”), President and CEO of Environmental Technical Sales, Inc. (ETEC),  received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1969. In 1996, Ronnie founded ETEC, a company specializing in the water, wastewater, sludge, and drainage industries.  ETEC’s main headquarters is located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with other locations in Jackson, Mississippi, Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee. With over 46 years of experience in this field and in all aspects of engineering, from conception and design, project management, financing, construction, and operations & maintenance, Ronnie has been involved in thousands or projects valued in the billions of dollars. As President and CEO, Ronnie is responsible for all aspects of ETEC’S representation of over 100 national manufacturers.

Ronnie grew up in an “engineering” environment. His father, the late Roy A. Hebert (PE, PLS) was a LSU alumnus as well and co-founder of Hebert Brothers Engineers, General Contractors (their Louisiana contractor’s License was No.4!). In 1964, Ronnie graduated from St. John High School in Plaquemine, Louisiana. He served in the United States Army as Captain and as Company Commander of Company A, Louisiana Army National Guard 769^th Engineer Battalion located in Plaquemine, Louisiana. After graduating from LSU in 1969, he completed the United States Army Engineer School in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

Ronnie is a registered Professional Engineer in both Civil and Environmental Engineering.  Associations include membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers (Life Member), the Louisiana Engineering Society, The National Society of Professional Engineers, Chi Epsilon and other local organization. He has personally been a generous supporter of many charities within our community, including the Louisiana Engineering Foundation Math Counts, Louisiana Sheriff’s Association, St. Vincent de Pail’s

Uniforms for Kids, Boys Town and the World War II Museum in New Orleans. In addition to his personal philanthropy, ETEC recently made a donation towards the refurbishing of the LSU Hydraulics Laboratory, which upon completion will be named Environmental Technical Sales (ETEC) Hydraulics Laboratory.  ETEC has also established scholarship funds for engineering students.

Ronnie is married to Debbie Dupont Hebert, who is also an LSU alumnus. They are the proud parents of three children: Daniel Roy Hebert, David Gerald Hebert (deceased) and Cinclare Hebert Sessums. They are also grandparents of five wonderful grandchildren: Joseph Roy Hebert (a freshman at LSU in Engineering), John Daniel Roy Hebert, Anna Kern Hebert, Elizabeth Cinclare Sessums and John Brady Sessums Jr.  

Michael P. Songy

Michael Songy, a founding Principal and CEO at CSRS, Inc., earned his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1979. He has more than three decades of industry leadership and client service experience on large-scale infrastructure and capital improvement programs throughout Louisiana. Mr. Songy has a well-deserved reputation in the industry as a skilled, strategic leader who understands the needs of public-sector owners and private-sector contractors. Under Mr. Songy’s leadership as CEO, CSRS is committed to continue helping its clients deliver programs successfully within today’s challenging economic and legislative climates and was recently recognized by the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report as  the 2014 ”Company of the Year” with 100 or more employees.

Since founding CSRS, Mr. Songy has been responsible for the overall direction of professional services provided to clients, including commitment to budget, schedule, quality, innovation and client satisfaction. Mr. Songy's consulting assignments has varied widely and includes transportation planning and management of capital improvement programs – such as the East Baton Rouge City-Parish Green Light Plan and the Department of Transportation and Development ARRA Program, feasibility analyses for land development strategies, engineering and storm water management, and impact assessments for local governing authorities.

Mr. Songy also served as Board Chairman for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber from 2014-2015 and has served as a Board Member of the Chamber since 2011. Mr. Songy is also extensively involved with the Baton Rouge Growth Coalition, serving as a Board Member since 2012. His is an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Louisiana Engineering Society, and former Chairman of the Louisiana Society of Professional Land Surveyors. He has been leading studies on the emerging issues and opportunities facing Louisiana, as we begin to experience rapid growth associated with industrial expansion. He was invited as a distinguished panel speaker for the Connect Policy Forum (May 2014) and the Louisiana Smart Growth Summit (November 2014), as well as featured in the Business and Industry Connection (BIC) Alliance Magazine in February 2015.

Pradeep Karup

Dr.  Pradeep Kurup is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UMass Lowell). He was recently recognized as Distinguished University Professor, the highest accolade bestowed on a UMass Lowell faculty member, for his exemplary teaching, for nationally and internationally acclaimed research and for outstanding service to the university community and his profession. He was also awarded the CEE Department’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2002.

Dr. Pradeep Kurup graduated in 1985, with a B. Tech. in Civil Engineering from the University of Kerala, India. He received his M. Tech. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (1987). He holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (1993) from Louisiana State University (LSU). Subsequent to his doctoral research he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Civil Engineering at LSU. In 1994 he joined Louisiana Transportation Research Center (LTRC/LSU) as a Research Associate IV. He was soon promoted to Research Associate V, and nominated to the Graduate Faculty in the Department of Civil Engineering at LSU (1996). In 1997, Dr. Kurup joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass Lowell as an Assistant Professor. He was tenured and promoted to an Associate Professor in 2001, and subsequently promoted to a Full Professor in 2005.

An expert in geotechnical engineering, Dr. Kurup’s research has earned him respect around the world. He is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award (1999), and was also awarded the Civil Engineering Research Foundation (CERF) Career Development Award by the ASCE. He has been successful in obtaining research funds from Federal agencies totaling more than $3.5 Million. His scholarly work has covered a range of areas including, minimally invasive determination of engineering soil properties, evaluation of earthquake liquefaction potential, in-situ interpretation of contaminated sediments, and development of novel sensing systems for direct push technologies. He has developed novel testing devices, equipment, and interpretation methods that provide real-world solutions to industry and various agencies in the United States, including the Federal Highway Administration, Department of Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Among his research projects funded by the NSF is the development of a novel electronic “nose” that can detect subsurface volatile organic compounds, and a novel electronic “tongue” that can detect and identify traces of toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, lead, and cadmium in soil and groundwater. These technologies have attracted the attention of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He has two pending patents with the USPTO and PCT.

Dr. Kurup has authored/co-authored over sixty papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings that are recognized for their rigorous publication standards. His publications are regarded highly worldwide have been cited in top refereed journals (such as the American Society for Testing and Materials, ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, Sensors and Actuators, International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, Computers and Geotechnics, etc.), and in several conference proceedings.  He has delivered more than thirty five presentations (including keynote lectures, and a centenary seminar) at universities, symposiums, national meetings, and international conferences (in Japan, France, United Kingdom, Turkey, Malaysia, Canada, and India).  

His service activities are very broad. He currently serves in the Geoenvironmental Engineering Committee of the Geo-Institute, American Society of Civil Engineering. He has served as Associate Editor for the International Journal of Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering (IJGEE). He is a member in several professional societies, and has organized and chaired sessions at meetings and conferences. He has served on several technical committees of the American Society for Testing and Materials - Soil and Rock (D18.02, D18.05, and D18.11). He has served on two National Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committees (AFS50: Applications of Nontraditional Computing Tools Including Neural Nets, and AFP30: Soil and Rock Properties). He is a member in several professional societies, and has organized and chaired sessions at meetings and conferences. He has served on several NSF review panels, and has reviewed research proposals for the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation, and papers for numerous professional journals. Along with Presidential award recipients (PECASE), NSF-CAREER award recipients, Nobel Laureates, Medal of Science & Medal of Technology recipients; Dr. Kurup was invited by NSF and its 50th Anniversary partners to participate in the “Scientists and Engineers in the Schools Program” to visit local middle schools and serve as a role model.

William E. Rushing, Jr.

After receiving a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University, William Rushing joined Morphy, Makofsky and Masson in New Orleans in January of 1981. Shortly after, he joined Waldemar S. Nelson & Co., Inc. and now holds the position of Vice President. His career includes over 33 years in various projects across the United States and internationally, including projects in Italy, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Australia. 

As a Project Manager and Structural Engineer at NELSON, Mr. Rushing has been involved in a wide variety of projects including offshore oil and gas jackets, topside facilities, copper and gold mining structures,  liquefied natural gas facilities, levees, flood walls, pipelines, wharves, commercial buildings, high rise structures, industrial facilities, refineries, gas compressor stations, coffee silos, container terminals, drainage pumping stations, and extensive work in the repair and rehabilitation of steel, concrete and timber structures.  As a Project Manager for NELSON, he has been involved in many multi-disciplined projects requiring coordination of all disciplines of engineering.  Mr. Rushing has served as an expert and forensic witness in cases involving structural behavior of various structures, identifying damage causes.

 Mr. Rushing is currently The President of the American Concrete Institute (ACI).  His 2014-15 president term started after being elected during ACI’s Spring Convention in Reno, Nevada. He has been a fellow of the ACI for many years and chaired the ACI Strategic Plan Drafting Task Group, the Task Group on Managing Translations of ACI Products and Services, and the ETC Product Development Committee. He is a Past Chair of the ACI Financial Advisory Committee and a member of the Task Group on Communication Platforms for Delivery of Services & Products, and ACI Committees 314, Simplified Design of Concrete Buildings; 351, Foundations for Equipment and Machinery; 376, Concrete Structures for Refrigerated Liquefied Gas Containment; E702, Designing Concrete Structures; and S801, Student Activities. He also serves on the ACI Foundation and is a Director for Creative Association Management (CAM). In addition, he serves on Subcommittees 314-B, Preliminary Design and Economic Impact; 314-D, Design Aids; 314 Task Group to Update IPS-1; 351-D, Design Provisions for Heavy Industrial Concrete Structures Including Turbine Pedestals; and 376-B, Materials.

Mr. Rushing previously served on the ACI Board of Direction and is a past Chair of the Convention Committee and a past member of the Educational Activities Committee. He received the Henry L. Kennedy Award in 2011 “in recognition of his outstanding service to the Institute and his leadership of many educational and administrative committees.”

A member of the ACI Louisiana Chapter, Mr. Rushing previously served on the Chapter’s Board of Direction and was its President in 1998. He chaired the Chapter Awards Committee for several years. Mr. Rushing served as Vice Chair of the ACI Fall 1996 Convention and Co-Chair of the ACI Fall 2009 Convention in New Orleans. He received the ACI Louisiana Chapter Activity Award in 2004 and the Chapter Distinguished Member Award in 2010.  

He received his BS in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1981. He is a licensed professional engineer in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Arizona. Mr. Rushing is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and a member of the Executive Committee of the New Orleans Branch of the Structural Engineers Institute (SEI).

He is married to Sheila Noote Rushing and they have one daughter, Shelby and one son, Christopher (family pictured above).  They currently live in New Orleans, LA.

Paul Fossier, Jr.

He has been employed with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LA DOTD) for 30 years in the Bridge and Structural Design Section as an engineer intern, senior engineer, engineer supervisor, Assistant Bridge Design Administrator and currently as the State Bridge Design Engineer.   He was also employed as a consulting engineer with Forte and Tablada, Inc. and Rayner and Mckenzie, Inc. in Baton Rouge.

He has been the design engineer-of-record and/or project manager for numerous fixed and movable bridge replacement, rehabilitation and repair projects throughout Louisiana.    He served as the DOTD project manager for the new John James Audubon Mississippi River cable stay bridge near St. Francisville - New Roads, the first Design-Build Project ever completed by DOTD and the longest cable stay main span in North America when completed in 2011.  Paul also served as the DOTD project manager for the replacement of the cable stays for the Hale Boggs Mississippi River Bridge in Luling, La. which was the first project of its kind in the United States.   He was the lead design engineer for the emergency repairs for the I-10 Lake Pontchartrain Twin span bridges following Hurricane Katrina to reestablish the important transportation link to New Orleans following the hurricane.   Paul was a member and a leader for the Louisiana Transportation Research Committee research panel for the implementation of High Performance Concrete (HPC) in Louisiana and was the engineer-of-record for the Charenton Canal Bridge, the first HPC Bridge constructed in Louisiana which established standards for long term durability and high strength bridge components in Louisiana that now have been adopted by LA DOTD.   A significant part of his DOTD career was also devoted to developing the roadside safety hardware standards for roadway barriers that have directly influenced highway safety in Louisiana.

Paul has served as a leader and a primary voting member of the AASHTO Subcommittee on Bridges and Structures (SCOBS) that is responsible for the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications.  He is currently serving as chairman of the AASHTO SCOBS T-8 movable bridge technical committee that is responsible for the AASHTO LRFD Movable Bridge Design Specifications and is a member of the AASHTO SCOBS T-7 technical committee for guardrail and bridge barriers.  He also serves as a member of the AASHTO Technical Committee for Roadside Safety which is responsible for the AASHTO Roadside Design Guide.  He is the lead technical representative for LA DOTD for the national highway safety pooled fund committee that develops research projects to update guardrail and roadway barrier safety hardware standards.  Paul has served on several NCHRP TRB research panels investigating both bridge design and highway safety initiatives.

Paul has been an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) beginning as a student member at LSU, served as the ASCE Baton Rouge Branch President in 1989 and the ASCE Louisiana Section President in 1994.   Paul served as the first editor for the ASCE Louisiana Section Magazine in 1994. He is a member of Chi Epsilon National Civil Engineering Honor Society and the Louisiana Professional Engineers in Civil Service.     He was awarded the 2009 Outstanding Government Engineer of the Year by the ASCE Baton Rouge Branch and the Louisiana Section of ASCE.   He received the Charles E. Dunbar, Jr. Career Service Award in 2012 from the Louisiana Civil Service League which is the highest honor given to classified state employees serving the citizens of Louisiana.

Paul has enjoyed serving the LSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as a volunteer instructor and an adjunct instructor in teaching the senior conceptual design course and the bridge design course for several years.  He served as a guest volunteer instructor for the LANAMME structural research center for the University of Costa Rica to assists its country efforts in advancing Bridge Engineering.  He has been a volunteer mentor and speaker concerning Civil Engineering for numerous high school and university students and has led the LA DOTD efforts to recruit and employ many LSU Civil Engineering graduates with the Department for many years.

Mr. Fossier is active with St. George Catholic Church in Baton Rouge for over 30 years were he serves as a Eucharistic Minister and a past Boy Scout leader.   Paul and his wife Anne have a daughter Katherine and son Brad, all are LSU graduates. 

Paul B. Fossier, Jr. is currently serving as the State Bridge Design Engineer for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LA DOTD).  A native and lifelong resident of Baton Rouge, Paul received a B.S. in Civil Engineering in 1979 from Louisiana State University, a Masters in Civil Engineering in 2006 from Tulane University and is licensed Professional Engineer in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Anand Pappala

Dr. Anand Puppala (PI) is a distinguished teaching professor in Civil Engineering and Coordinator of Geotechnical Engineering program at the University of Texas (UTA) at Arlington, Texas, USA. Dr. Puppala joined UTA as an assistant professor in 1996 and was promoted to associate professor in 2001 and to professor in 2005. Dr. Puppala received his BE, MTech and PhD from GITAM, IIT Chennai and Louisiana State University, respectively.

Dr. Puppala received UT system’s regents teaching award in 2010 and was the first engineering professor from UT Arlington to receive this highest teaching honor in Texas. Dr. Puppala was also inducted to the UT Arlington’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers, an highest teaching honor for a professor at UT Arlington. Dr. Puppala has received several awards including the College of Engineering’s “Research Excellence” Award in 2004-2005, the College of Engineering’s “Outstanding Young Faculty” Award in 2000-2001, the 2008 University Award for Outstanding Advisor and 2013 UTA Distinguished Researcher award.

Dr. Puppala also served as President of United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER) from 2007-2009. He was also a past Chair of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)’s Geotechnical Institute’s “Engineering Geology and Site Characterization” committee from 2003-2006. Dr. Puppala is extensively involved with the National Academy of Science’s Transportation Research Board (TRB) since 1992. He recently served as the chairman of TRB committee on “Soil and Rock Instrumentation (AFS 20) (2006-2012).”

He has been conducting research on stabilization of expansive soils, sustainable utilization of recycled materials, dams and embankments, in situ intrusive methods for site characterization, and pavement material characterization studies. Dr. Puppala’s research is also highly regarded by the professional community, as evidenced by his scholarly record of 6 Book Chapters, 125 journal and Geotechnical Special Publications, 30 Refereed Conference Papers, 48 Non-refereed Conference Papers and 30 Technical Reports. He has so far supervised 14 Doctoral and 40 Masters students. He was an invited keynote speaker at several major conferences all over the World.

Dr. Puppala is a current editorial member for several journals including American Society of Testing Materials’ Geotechnical Testing Journal, American Society of Civil Engineers’ Journals of Materials and ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering and a chief editor of Thomas Telford’s Ground Improvement Journal (UK). He also edited several books including ASCE’s Geotechnical Special Publication on Site Characterization. 

Lloyd Guillory

Lloyd Joseph Guillory, Jr., joined ExxonMobil in 1985 after receiving a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from LSU and a Master of Science in Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. His career includes over 27 years in upstream oil and gas development projects and production operations, both domestically and internationally. His experience includes leading broad, highly technical, multi-billion dollar projects ranging from offshore deep-water developments to onshore oil & gas processing and liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. These global projects have been planned and executed in highly diverse government, cultural, socio-economic and environmental conditions including the North Sea, West Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Gulf of Mexico. The total value of projects managed exceeds $15 billion.

From 1985 to 1995, Guillory held various management positions in New Orleans associated with ExxonMobil’s development and production operations in the Gulf of Mexico. During this time, he evaluated and successfully identified novel, lower cost structural concepts which helped to enhance ExxonMobil’s ability to develop smaller resources more economically in the Gulf of Mexico. In 1996, Guillory moved to Norway and led the $1.3 billion technical development of ExxonMobil’s first successful Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility in the North Sea. The technical, contracting and project management approaches utilized on this North Sea project formed the foundation for approaches used on other successful ExxonMobil FPSO projects in Nigeria and Angola.

After returning from Norway in 2000, Guillory served as lead executive on multiple projects including a $3 billion subsea and pipeline development in Angola, a $5 billion LNG facility in Papua New Guinea and a $4B subsea development in 4500 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico. Guillory is considered an expert within ExxonMobil in the areas of execution planning, construction management, fixed offshore structures and offshore installation, and from 2006 to 2008, he also held various management positions within ExxonMobil Development Company to build organizational capacity in these areas.

Most recently, Guillory led an unprecedented Gulf of Mexico industry initiative to develop a new, rapid response well containment system for improving the oil and gas industry’s ability to respond to a subsea well control event. In this role, he led efforts to establish the Marine Well Containment Company, a not for profit, independent company that will own and maintain this new system for rapid response, and worked to attract membership from Gulf of Mexico oil and gas operators. He was responsible for ensuring key state and federal policy makers were kept informed of plans, progress and details of the system, including briefings with US Senators, US Congressmen and the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. This initiative played an important role in restoring confidence with regulators and government that led to the 2011 resumption of drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico and which continues to have high government visibility and broad industry impact. Overviews of this initiative were presented by Guillory at The Energy Summit 2010 held at the LSU Center for Energy Studies, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CISC) in Washington DC, and at The Clean Gulf Deepwater Offshore Prevention and Response Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Guillory is currently a member of the LSU Civil and Environmental Engineering External Advisory Board, was a member of the Forever LSU fund raising campaign for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has personally funded an endowed professorship in the Department, is a Registered Engineer in the State of Louisiana and has published research in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics. Guillory previously managed ExxonMobil’s engineering recruiting program at LSU and currently acts as the program’s Executive Liaison. Under Guillory’s leadership, ExxonMobil’s LSU recruiting efforts have been responsible for ExxonMobil hiring over 150 LSU engineering graduates for full time employment.

Guillory is married to Marissa Elias Guillory and they have two daughters, Anna and Olivia, and one son, Elliot. They currently live in Houston, Texas.

Taehyo Park

From 2000 to 2012, he has conducted over 40 research projects sponsored by the industry and Korea Research Foundation(KRF). Furthermore, he was selected as a principal investigator and project leader of a prestigious World Class University (WCU) project sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in 2009. This project grant amounts to over $3 million for 5 years, and it is one of big projects in Korean research foundation. Through this project, he promoted the dual degree program between Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Hanyang University and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of LSU.

Taehyo Park’s  research includes material mechanics and computational mechanics. For a long time, he has studied multiscale methods of composite materials and conducted related researches. His current research interests include computational multiscale simulations using multiphysics and parallel algorithms. He administrated the international mini symposium related to computational multiscale which was held in Hanyang University in 2012. He has published over 70 international journal papers, and he owns 3 Korean patents to his credit. He has also received the best paper awards from Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea (COSEIK), Korea Concrete Institute (KCI), Korean Society of Civil Engineers (KSCE).

Taehyo Park is currently the vice-president of the Korean Society of Civil Engineers and the vice-president of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea. He has been serving on the editorial boards of Korea Concrete Institute (2003-2004), Korean Society of Steel Construction (2004-2006), and Korean Society of Civil Engineers (2005-2006), a trustee at Korean Society of Civil Engineers (2006-2007). He has produced 27 graduate students (6 PhD. and 21 M.S.) under his direction and has supervised 6 postdoctoral research fellows.

Taehyo Park and his wife Hyesook Jung reside in Seoul, Korea. They have one daughter Noel.

Taehyo Park was born on June 22 1957, in a small town, South Korea. He graduated with BS in Civil Engineering from Hanyang University in 1985. He came to U.S. graduate studies in 1987, and received MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa in 1989. In 1994, he obtained PhD from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. After obtaining PhD he remained at Louisiana State University to further his research until 1997. Later that year he returned to Korea to assume an assistant professorship at Korea Maritime University, Busan, Korea. He then moved to Seoul to become an associate professor at Hanyang University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in September 2000. He was a visiting professor at the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of LSU from 2007 to 2011. He was promoted to full professor in September, 2008. In 2012, he became the chairman of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Hanyang University.

Rodolfo J. Aguilar

Dr. Rodolfo J. Aguilar is the Chairman and CEO of Pyburn & Odom MCA, LLC, one of the oldest and most reputable civil, mechanical and electrical engineering consulting firms in the state of Louisiana. His formal education includes an impressive five degrees. Aguilar's professional career spans over 50 years as a professor, engineer, architect, developer, banker, entrepreneur, investor and business owner. He has taught at six different universities in nine different fields, including Louisiana State University.

Aguilar’s educational background is extensive and quite diverse, including five degrees. Aguilar earned a B.S. in Architectural Engineering, a Bachelor of Architecture, and an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University; a Master of Business Administration from Tulane University; and the Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Structures) from North Carolina State University, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow. Aguilar was a National Science Foundation Fellow at the Illinois Institute of Technology (1962) and at the University of Michigan (1965). Aguilar joined LSU as an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering in 1964. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1966 and to Full Professor in 1969. Until 1985 he taught courses in civil engineering, construction, architecture and finance. During his tenure at LSU he served as director of the Center for Latin American Affairs, 1982-1985. His contribution to academia also includes service as Professor of Practice of Real Estate Finance, and Entrepreneurial Management in the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University from 1989 to present.

Aguilar is Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Professor Emeritus of Finance at LSU. He is a registered Architect, a Professional Engineer (Civil Engineering), a Professional Land Surveyor, a Certified General Real Estate Appraiser, holding the MAI designation, and a Licensed Real Estate Broker in Louisiana.

Aguilar has published two textbooks and over sixty technical articles and monographs. He has engaged in a wide range of professional activities, and has received many professional and civic awards, including the Halliburton Award for Excellence in Teaching (1967), and the Louisiana Engineering Society's Award of Merit as Louisiana's Most Promising Engineer (1972). He has held several directorships and board positions in banking and business, and has contributed to the community in many endeavors. Aguilar has been the architect and structural engineer of record and the developer of a variety of real estate projects, ranging from multi-family housing to condominiums, hotels (Baton Rouge Hilton Hotel), shopping centers, and office and medical buildings, with an aggregate value much in excess of $100 million. He has served as Chairman of the Board of Community Bank of LaFourche (1974-1977); Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of American Bank of Houma (1974-1977); Chairman of the Architect Selection Board for the State of Louisiana (1975-1976); member of the Louisiana Board of Commerce and Industry (1970-1980); Chairman of the State Job Training Coordinating Council (1984-1988); member of the Board of the Mental Health Association of Greater Baton Rouge (1976-1982); member of the Board of Trustees of Parkland Hospital (1986-1987); President of the Tulane Alumni Association, Baton Rouge Chapter (1996-1998); Chairman of the Chapter Cities Committee of the Tulane Alumni Association (1998).

Aguilar’s experiences as Chief Executive Officer of several engineering, architectural, and entrepreneurial companies; his participation in the banking industry, and on other boards; and his continued interest as a business professor have brought to Pyburn & Odom MCA the leadership to amplify and surpass Pyburn & Odom MCA’s half century of engineering excellence.

Aguilar's family, six sons, two daughters and, soon to be, thirteen grandchildren, have become integral members of the Baton Rouge and New Orleans communities. His extensive family includes attorneys, and business men and women. His wife, Marilyn, and four children are LSU graduates.

Rodolfo Aguilar 

Song-kai Yan

Dr. Song-kai Yan* received his Ph.D. degree from Louisiana State University in Civil Engineering in 1989. His professional engineering work started in China in 1964 when he graduated with his Bachelor’s of Science degree from the Hydraulic Structure Design & Construction Department of Beijing College of Hydraulic Engineering. Following his graduation were several years of professional practice as an Engineer with the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power. Then, in 1981, he was sent to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado to pursue a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering at Colorado State University. The degree was awarded in 1983. He then returned to China to increased responsibilities with the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power from 1984 to 1986. Thus, Dr. Yan was a mid-career Engineer with 22 years of experience when he returned to the US to enroll in the Ph.D. program at LSU in Civil Engineering in 1986. Dr. Donald Dean Adrian, Rubicon and Effie C. & Donald M. Hardy Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at LSU, joined the department that same year and became Dr. Yan’s advisor.

Part of Dr. Yan’s master’s degree work at Colorado State University involved estimating long term stream flows on two rivers – the White and the Yampa in Northwest Colorado. He gathered data and generated 1,000 year synthetic hydrographs of the rivers. These were used to estimate potential drought and short water supplies for current and future water demands on both rivers. This work demonstrated Dr. Yan’s ability to handle complex assignments and to develop computer programs to handle complex problems, earning him recognition and respect from his advisors and the faculty.

Dr. Yan’s Ph.D. work at LSU was partially sponsored by the USGS, the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute, and contracts through the Civil Engineering Department from Woodward-Clyde Consultants in Baton Rouge. His dissertation title was “Spatial and Temporal Variations of Salt Water Intrusion in the Gonzales-New Orleans Aquifer, New Orleans Area, Louisiana”, a topic of immense interest and lasting significance to the state. A noteworthy aspect of his final oral exam for the Ph.D. was that the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power sent its former Chief Engineer to sit in on the final oral exam.

While still in the Ph.D. program at LSU, Dr. Yan began working part-time for Woodward-Clyde Consultants as a Project Engineer where he remained until 1991. During this time, he also held part time positions with other engineering firms. In 1991 he joined IT Corporation as a Senior Project Engineer. In 2002 IT Corporation became part of Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure, Inc. where he now works. He is a Senior Staff consultant and Director of Hydrology/hydraulics. He is widely recognized for his work in these areas.

Among his numerous professional accomplishments and appointments, Dr. Yan became a licensed Professional Engineer in Civil Engineering in Louisiana in 1992. He became a Professional Hydrologist/Hydrogeologist (P.H.) in 2006. He is a Diplomate of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineering. He is a Past President of the Louisiana Section of the American Water Resources Association and a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He has served as an Associate Editor of the journal Ground Water. Dr. Yan has published 27 refereed technical papers and more than 50 engineering reports. He has translated five books and numerous technical papers (English to Chinese and Chinese to English).

Since his arrival to LSU in 1986, Dr. Yan has remained devoted to the University and to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He has served as a CEE adjunct faculty member for many years, teaching courses such as Water Distribution and Wastewater Collection and Hydrology. Dr. Yan also has a long standing and active appointment on the CEE External Advisory Board.

* Deceased

Sherri Hammond LeBas

Sherri H. LeBas was appointed as Secretary of DOTD in June 2010 by Governor Bobby Jindal. LeBas is responsible for a more than $1.6 billion budget and works closely with federal, regional and local officials to ensure the citizens and businesses of Louisiana have the best infrastructure possible. Under her leadership, DOTD moved up seven places in road rankings by the Reason Foundation and has successfully obligated $430 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act federal funds.

LeBas is a professional civil engineer with more than 25 years in state service in Louisiana; working at the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) as well as the Division of Administration.

In February of 2010, Gov. Jindal named LeBas as DOTD's Interim Secretary, the first female to hold this position. Since the summer of 2008, LeBas served as Deputy Secretary overseeing the $600 - $800 million annual regular capital program, $430 million ARRA (federal recovery program), $1.4 billion state surplus program, legislative issues as well as managing day-to-day business at DOTD. In 2006 and 2007 LeBas served as the Assistant to the Secretary for Policy where she managed the state surplus program. Additionally, she educated public officials and stakeholders on transportation funding and worked to secure funds for priority projects.

In 2005, LeBas served as a facilitator for the DOTD Change Management Program, working with DOTD personnel and private industry to change or enhance the way DOTD conducts business. She assisted the TIMED program manager with the management of the $5 billion TIMED program. The TIMED (Transportation Infrastructure Model for Economic Development) program is the single largest transportation program in state history. The $5 billion improvement program includes widening 536 miles of state highways to four lanes on 11 project corridors, widening and/or new construction on three major bridges and improvements to both the Port of New Orleans and Louis Armstrong International Airport. The program is designed to enhance economic development in Louisiana through an investment in transportation projects.

While at the Division of Administration she managed the non-state entity program, which is funded through state capital outlay dollars. LeBas not only administered the program, but revamped it to ensure it ran as efficiently and effectively as possible and created standard guidelines to further guarantee the program's future success.

Throughout the years, LeBas has served as project manager on numerous projects at DOTD inclusive of I-49 in Shreveport, US 190 in Mandeville, US 90 interchanges in St. Mary Parish, US 165 and Ambassador Caffery extension in Lafayette. She worked closely with all levels involved in project development from designers and contractors, to executive leadership and legislative officials, to ensure a project is successfully constructed.

LeBas holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Louisiana State University (1985) and is a licensed professional engineer in both civil and environmental engineering. She is a member of Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), Chi Epsilon, American Society of Civil Engineers, and Louisiana Society of Professional Engineers in Civil Service. Additionally, she is the past secretary-treasurer of the Louisiana Engineering Society.

She has twice received the DOTD Secretary's Award of Excellence, DOTD's highest employee award. Additionally, she was a major participant on two teams that received national recognition for their success: Bronze 2006 National Partnership for Highway Quality (NPHQ) Making a Difference Award and the AASHTO ATA Award.

LeBas is very involved in the local community through her multiple volunteer positions. She is a sustaining member of the Junior League of Baton Rouge and in that role has worked on various project including FestForAll, Story Time, Junior Master Gardeners as well as serving as area advisor for two years. She is a member of the Catholic High Mother's Club and as such volunteers time at Catholic High and St. Aloysius. She is a past board member with the Woodstone Homeowners Association. LeBas is married to Michael LeBas and they have three sons; Andrew, Patrick and Michael.

Shahram Sankari

Shahram Sarkani, Ph.D., P.E., is Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at The George Washington University, and Faculty Adviser and Academic Director of Off-Campus Programs for the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science. He joined the George Washington University faculty in 1986. Professor Sarkani has engaged in engineering research, technology development, and engineering education since he completed his bachelor’s degree at Louisiana State University in 1980.

As Faculty Adviser and Academic Director of EMSE Off-Campus Programs (since 2001), Professor Sarkani is responsible for designing, negotiating, and administering off-campus graduate certificate, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy degree programs. He has created a dynamic series of such programs for offer on-site at government and industry locations across the United States and in Taiwan, Republic of China, including Engineering Management field programs for ARINC, the Naval Surface Warfare Center, and the Republic of China Air Force; and Systems Engineering field programs for Lockheed Martin, the National Geospatial/Intelligence Agency, Northrop Grumman, Orbital Sciences, and Science Applications International Corporation. Other programs he has developed for GW include Engineering and Technology Management for the China Industrial & Commercial Research Institute, Information Security for SAIC, and Homeland Security Emergency Preparedness and Response for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Most recently, he is developing distance education programs of study.

Beyond the on-site government/industry programs, Professor Sarkani administers EMSE programs at five sites close to GW’s main campus—Alexandria, Arlington, Ashburn, and Newport News, Virginia; and California, Maryland—for students from the D.C. environs who cannot commute to the campus.

To better administer these programs, Professor Sarkani established, and oversees, additional GW office locations in Southern Virginia, Southern California, and Taiwan. Over nine years, Professor Sarkani has strengthened EMSE’s presence from 6 graduate education programs in the D.C. area only, to 32 at local, domestic, and international sites. He has led EMSE to increase the number of off-campus graduate students from 300 to over 1,000, and has boosted annual revenue for EMSE off-campus programs from under $3 million to around $12 million.

As Interim Associate Dean for Research and Development for the GW School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) from 1997 to 2001, Professor Sarkani’s major accomplishments were to coordinate formation of SEAS Interdisciplinary Research Clusters to establish new directions in areas of the faculty’s greatest strengths, and to establish and coordinate the SEAS Research Advisory Committee to recommend and implement SEAS’s first school-wide teaching load policy and a new research incentive policy. He guided SEAS to increase research funding from outside agencies by more than 40%, from about $7.5 million to about $11 million.

Between 1994 and 1997, when Professor Sarkani served as the (peer-elected) chair of the GW Department of Civil, Mechanical, and Environmental Engineering, he established a curriculum in environmental engineering, reorganized graduate and undergraduate curricula from two fields of study to four, and led the department through a complete six-year re-accreditation by ABET.

Professor Sarkani’s scholarly research has been sponsored by NASA, NIST, the NSF, U.S. AID, and the U.S. Departments of Interior, Navy, and Transportation. He is the author of more than 150 technical publications and presentations. Two of his noteworthy research contributions are the 2001 patent with two colleagues, “Wrapping System for Strengthening Structural Columns or Walls,” and, under the auspices of the Laboratory for Infrastructure Safety and Reliability that he founded in 1993 and directed until 2007, the conception, funding from NSF, and oversight of the installation and operation of the GW University 6 degrees of freedom, 3 meter by 3 meter shake table, one of only a few in the U.S. at that time. He won a number of research awards from the U.S. Navy to establish and operate a structural fatigue testing laboratory at GW. In 1999 he was awarded the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Professor Sarkani holds the Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Rice University, and B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from LSU. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Virginia. He resides in California with his wife Sepideh and daughter Caroline.

John A. Graves

Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, moved to Opelousas, Louisiana, at age six where he attended elementary and high school. Graduated from what is now Opelousas Catholic in a pre-college curriculum. Extracurricular activities included football, basketball, track and student government. Mr. Graves lost his father as a junior in high school which necessitated his having to provide 100% of his college expenses. Having been inspired by President Kennedy’s challenge to put men on the moon, John was drawn to Aeronautical Engineering at LSU and enrolled as a freshman in the fall of 1959. Aeronautical Engineering was replaced by Civil Engineering as John believed he would not like the work environment for AE and might prefer more outdoors as offered by civil. Larry McKee gave John his first job in the engineering business as a rodman in a field survey crew. Maintaining a full time job while attending school he graduated from LSU in the spring of 1965 with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. With his sights set on being in the consulting engineering business John spent the next year or so taking selective, mostly graduate level course work in Business Administration.

Mr. Graves’ first regular full time job was with Edward E. Evans & Associates in 1968. Mr. Evans, a former LSU professor of structural engineering, founded the firm in 1953. John credits Mr. Evans as an excellent “teacher” from whom he learned a great deal beginning with structural work on the LSU Maravich Assembly Center. In the early 70’s believing that he had serious health problems, which he didn’t, Mr. Evans effectively turned over the day to day operation of the firm to John.

In 1986 Mr. Graves acquired full ownership of the firm at which time the name was changed to the current Evans-Graves Engineers, Inc. Mr. Graves has over 40 years’ experience in private consulting as a Civil Engineer, Surveyor and Administrator. Over 35 years of that period has been spent as a Principal of Evans-Graves Engineers, Inc., responsible for plan production and management of all phases of projects undertaken by the firm; from preliminary planning and feasibility studies, through final engineering design and construction. His work experience includes property and engineering assessments for site selection, project management, transportation planning and analysis, boundary and topographic site surveys, and civil site engineering. Mr. Graves has worked on a multitude of engineering projects for clients representing the petrochemical industry, national retail companies, industrial parks, recreational facilities, hospital and institutional complexes, residential development, utility companies, as well as local, state and federal government. Mr. Graves frequently serves as a court expert providing research and testimony in his field of expertise.

Memhet T. Tümay

Dr. Mehmet T. Tümay, Fellow and a Life Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, is the Georgia Gulf Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Louisiana State University. He has been an active LSU Faculty 1976-2005, and has served the LSU College of Engineering as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, and as Director of the Donald W. Clayton Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Engineering Science, 1997 –2004. Dr. Tümay received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Robert College School of Engineering, University of Virginia, and Istanbul Technical University, respectively. His academic, research and consulting affiliations include universities, research institutions, and industry in the U.S., The Netherlands, France, Turkey, Korea, Norway, Taiwan, Poland, Brazil and People’s Republic of China.

Dr. Tümay is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology (KAIST) in Deajon, S. Korea, and an Adjunct Professor at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Dr. Tümay’s major field of interest is geotechnical engineering. He has done extensive research for the past 40 years in the areas of in-situ evaluation of engineering properties of soils, soil physico-chemical behavior, and novel methods of soil improvement. He has earned national and international recognition from the consulting and academic communities for his pioneering research accomplishments, mainly in electronic cone penetration and computer-aided data collection/reduction systems for evaluation of the engineering behavior of geomedia. He was recently recognized “for outstanding contributions to the profession, research and education in geotechnical engineering,” at the GeoShanghai 2006 International Conference in Shanghai, China, June 2006.

Dr. Tümay has served as Project Director / Principal Investigator of numerous grants from prestigious national and international agencies, a major international consulting company from the Netherlands, established the Fugro Post-Doctoral Fellowship at LSU dedicated to the advancement of in-situ testing under Dr. Tümay’s supervision.

During 1990-1994 Dr. Tümay served as the Director of the Geomechanical, Geotechnical & Geo-Environmental Systems (G3S) program at the National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C

In 1994, Dr. Tümay was appointed as the Director of Research at Louisiana Transportation Research. During his tenure as Director of Research, LTRC was awarded research grants and contracts from National Science Foundation, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Federal Highway Administration, Priority Technologies Program, U.S.C.E. Waterways Experiment Station, and private industry.

Dr. Tümay has done extensive design and consulting for state, private, national and international agencies. And he has conducted special workshops and seminars worldwide. He has served as Maitre de Conference en Mechanique des Sols, Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, Paris, France, and as an Advisory Professor to Tongji University, Shanghai, P.R. China, and Federal University of Vicosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is active in various professional organizations. He has served and continues to serve as chairperson or as a member of a number of national and international technical committees as well as member of editorial boards of professional journals.

Dr. Tümay served as a charter member of the Academic Research Council of the Civil Engineering Research Foundation 1995-2002, and represented LTRC on the National Council for Civil Engineering Research. He was a member of The Engineer and Surveyor Selection Board, City of Baton Rouge Parish, 2004 –2006. He was selected as Louisiana State University’s recipient of the Louisiana Engineering Foundation Faculty Professionalism Award for 2001. His scholarly activities include more than 150 published scientific articles, and contributions to numerous conferences and symposia. He has presented invited papers worldwide on technical topics and general research, education and policy issues in geotechnical engineering, and general civil infrastructure.

Robert A. "Bob" Deason

Robert A. “Bob” Deason, President and Chief Executive Officer of J. Ray McDermott, is a native of Natchitoches, Louisiana. He graduated from Natchitoches High School in 1963 and he attended Northwestern State College his freshman year. He then transferred to Louisiana State University as a chemistry major. In 1966 he left LSU and joined the U.S. Marine Corp. After serving a tour in Vietnam he returned to LSU and received a B.S. Degree in Civil Engineering in 1970. He also received an Executive MBA from the University of Michigan.

After graduation Deason joined Texas Eastern Transmission Company involved in development of natural gas and petroleum pipelines throughout the U.S. Between 1975 and 1985 he worked for several companies involved in engineering and project management for the upstream oil and gas industry. During this period he also served as the Deputy Project Manager responsible for Operating and Maintenance for the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves.

In 1985 he joined Fluor, a major EPC contractor, helping develop their pipeline services business. During his 18 years at Fluor Bob had increasing responsibility in Fluor’s Upstream Oil and Gas business, their Chemical, Plastic and Fibers business, and their Refining and Petrochemical business.

He was responsible for numerous major EPC projects throughout the world. Since leaving LSU Bob has had responsibility for petroleum-related projects in many places around the globe. In addition to the US these include Nigeria, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia and Azerbaijan, just to name a few.

Bob joined J. Ray McDermott in 2003 returning to his offshore roots. J. Ray McDermott is a pioneer in offshore oil and gas development with strong roots in Louisiana. JRay was suffering through a period of poor project performance and disastrous financial results. The ability of this 60 year-old company to survive was in doubt.

After joining JRay Bob implemented strict controls and project management discipline. The organization was upgraded. During Bob’s tenure the company returned to its previous leadership position in the offshore industry with significant growth, with current revenue in excess of $3 Billion. Today JRay has significant operations in the U.S., Middle East, Asia Pacific and the Caspian and operates numerous offshore construction vessels around the world.

Deason is active in several industry related organizations and serves on the Boards of National Ocean Industries Association and International Pipeline and Offshore Contractors Association. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Louisiana.

Mr. Deason is married to the former Dagmar Sauce also of Natchitoches and they have three children and five grandchildren. Bob and Dagmar reside in Houston, Texas.

Frank J. Germano

Frank J. Germano* was born and raised in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil engineering and the Ph.D. of civil engineering degree in 1934. Upon graduating, he worked as an assistant design engineer for the Metropolitan District of Hartford, Connecticut.

He joined Louisiana State University in 1936 as an instructor in the Engineering Mechanics Department, realizing his ambition to teach. "Students are my life," was a favorite quote of Dr. Germano. In 1937 he was promoted to assistant professor and became an associate professor in 1943. He attained the rank of professor of engineering mechanics in 1948 and the following year was selected to head of the Department of Engineering Mechanics and remained in that position until 1953. He became only the third person in the history of the Civil Engineering Department since 1894 when he assumed the position of head in 1953. He remained in this position until his retirement in 1976, at which time he received the title Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering.

During his academic career, Dr. Germano achieved notoriety as author and co-author of several fundamental textbooks in the fields of fluid mechanics and strength of materials. He also served as a consultant to a number of private engineering firms, including the Ford Foundation, and worked in the Caribbean area with the late Dr. Richard Russel of LSU, a world renowned geographer and authority on beach morphology.

Dr. Germano was Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a member of the American Society for Engineering Education as well as the Louisiana Engineering Society. He was inducted into Tau Beta Pi and Chi Epsilon societies as well as Sigma Xi and Phi Kappa Phi.

Dr. Germano continued to carry a half-time teaching load during his years as department head. The professor's interest in his students extended beyond the classroom, and he took an active interest in many student organizations within the LSU College of Engineering. Moreover, he constantly served as counselor, advisor, and close personal friend to countless students. Dr. Germano received three major awards for his teaching performance. These include the LSU Foundation's Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, the Halliburton Award fro Teaching Excellence, and a Certificate of Meritorious Service from the Louisiana section of the American Society of Civil Engineers for his contributions to engineering education. He was often overheard saying, "(There is) never a day that don't look forward to going into the classroom." After his retirement in 1976, Dr. Germano returned to the classroom, becoming the first retired faculty member on the LSU campus to resume regular teaching without pay. Fluent in Italian and Spanish, he was an exchange Fulbright Professor and lectured for one year at the Politechnico de Milano in Milan, Italy. He was also visiting professor at the University of Nicaragua.

Dr. Germano passed away on October 27, 1983, and is survived by his wife, Mrs. Alma Germano, of Baton Rouge, who received her bachelor's degree in home economics from LSU, and his children, Charles Germano with IBM in New Orleans, Andria Hathorn with IBM in San Francisco, and Carolyn Schneider with Concord Risk Services in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Dr. Germano was a premier teacher, motivator, and a builder of character. He loved teaching both the fundamentals and the practical aspects of engineering. He molded and motivated hundreds of students across all engineering disciplines with his teaching, his wit, and his enthusiasm, as well as his genuine warmth. He was committed to students and to their preparation as engineering professionals. All those whose lives he touched through classroom, social or professional associations speak of him with the highest regard.

The College of Engineering has established the Frank J. Germano Design and Computation Center to pay tribute to this great man. Appropriately, former students made the first gifts that led to the computer-design laboratory created mainly for undergraduate students in civil engineering. The Center located at 2412 Patrick F. Taylor Hall, was formally dedicated on November 16, 1989.

* Deceased

J. Tinsley Oden

J. Tinsley Oden is Associate Vice President for Research and Director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin. He was the founding Director of that Institute, created in January of 2003 as an expansion of the Texas Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics, also directed by Oden for over a decade. He holds the Cockrell Family Regents’ Chair in Engineering and the Peter O’Donnell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Computer Systems at The University of Texas at Austin.

In 1959, Dr. Oden earned a B.S. degree in civil engineering from LSU. He then earned a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics from Oklahoma State University in 1962.

Dr. Oden began his research in computational mechanics and applied mechanics in the 1960’s. His treatise, Finite Elements of Nonlinear Continua is cited as having not only demonstrated the great potential of computational methods for producing quantitative realizations of the most complex theories of physical behavior of materials and mechanical systems, but also established a new discipline built upon concepts in mathematics, computer sciences, physics, and mechanics. Computational Mechanics has since become a fundamentally important discipline throughout the world, taught in every major university, and the subject of continued research and intellectual activity. Dr. Oden has published extensively in this field and in related areas over the last three decades.

Dr. Oden is the author or editor of 500+ scientific books, book chapters, essays, articles, and conference papers, including 50 books and monographs. He is also an editor of the series, Finite Elements in Flow Problems and of Computational Methods in Nonlinear Mechanics. Among the 49 books and book chapters he has authored or edited are Contact Problems in Elasticity, a six-volume series: Finite Elements, An Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Finite Elements, and several textbooks, including Applied Functional Analysis and Mechanics of Elastic Structures, and, more recently, A Posteriori Error Estimation in Finite Element Analysis, with M. Ainsworth.

Dr. Oden’s current research focuses on the development of computational methods for multi-scale modeling, with applications to semi-conductor manufacturing and on computer models for the adaptive control of laser therapies for cancer.

Dr. Oden is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and National Academics of Engineering in Mexico and Brazil. He serves as Co-Chairman of the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) Panel for Sandia National Laboratories. He is a member of the IUTAM Working Party 5 on Computational Mechanics and serves on numerous organizational, scientific and advisory committees for international conferences and symposiums. He is an Editor of the international journal Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering and serves on the editorial board of 27 scientific journals.

Dr. Oden has received numerous awards for his accomplishments. He is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and is a Fellow of IACM, AAM, ASME, ASCE, SES, and BMA. He is a Fellow, founding member, and first President of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanic and the International Association for Computational Mechanics. He is a Fellow and past President of both the American Academy of Mechanics and the Society of Engineering Science. Among the numerous awards he has received for his work, Dr. Oden was awarded the Computational Mechanics Award from the Japanese Society of Mechanics Engineers, A.C. Eringen Medal, The Worcester Reed Warner Medal, the Melvin R. Lohmann Medal, the Theodore von Karman Medal, the John von Neumann medal, the Newton-Gauss Congress Medal, and the Stephan P. Timoshenko Medal. He was also knighted as “Chevalier des Palmes Academiques” by the French government and holds four honorary doctorates, Honoris Causa, from The Technical University of Lisbon in Portugal, the Faculte Polytechnique in Belgium, Cracow University of Technology in Poland, and the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan in France. Dr. Oden has been awarded a Presidential Citation for his outstanding contributions to the University of Texas at Austin, the equivalent of an honorary doctorate. He is listed by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited researchers in the world from 1981-1999 in refereed, peer-reviewed journals.

Recep Yilmaz

Recep Yilmaz is a world-renowned expert in Cone Pentrometer Testing (CPT) and geotechnical drilling and is a Senior Vice President for Fugro Consultants, Inc., a 500+ employee geotechnics company and part of the Fugro Group of Companies. As Senior VP, Mr. Yilmaz leads the company’s Louisiana, Houston Exploration, and Los Angeles operations.

Receiving his Masters of Science from Louisiana State University in 1981, Mr. Yilmaz’s geotechnics passion and experience began during his studies here. He has performed extensive research for the development and applications of quasistatic and piezometric cone penetration in Louisiana. He also investigated the application of Cavity Expansion and the SHANSEP theory for cone penetration results. Mr. Yilmaz was responsible for the supervision of in-situ testing, correlation of field and laboratory results and the computer software development for North Louisiana Salt Dome investigations. His work also included research for the Division of Engineering Research, United States Department of Energy, and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

In 1981, Mr. Yilmaz began his career at Fugro Gulf, Inc. as a staff engineer and quickly progressed to Supervisory Engineer. His responsibilities included coordination of CPT field activities and interpretation of results. He worked on the design of embankments, slope stability analysis and supervised construction of evaporation ponds; geotechnical investigation for proposed Onne Fertilizer Plant in Nigeria; growth faults and geotechnical investigation for major industrial complexes in Houston; developed computer programs and plot routines to minimize labor requirements. Mr. Yilmaz also worked on the design of various foundation types related to onshore and offshore structures.

In 1984 Mr. Yilmaz joined Fugro Geosciences, Inc. a leading CPT testing and geotechnical and environmental exploration company within the Fugro organization and became President. Under his leadership, Fugro Geosciences became one of the premier U.S. companies in CPT and geotechnical exploration.

In 2006, Fugro Geosciences, Inc. merged with Fugro Consultants, Inc. at which time Mr. Yilmaz was named as a Senior Vice President to lead the company’s Louisiana, Houston Exploration, and Los Angeles operations. He provides oversight for all Louisiana operations including engineering consulting, laboratory testing and field services. Exploration services include In-Situ Cone Penetrometer Testing and Geotechnical Drilling Services. Under his direction, Fugro’s field exploration capabilities have expanded to include cone penetrometer testing, Geoprobe, and a full range of geotechnical drilling services.

Mr. Yilmaz has lead the development and growth of Fugro’s drilling and subsurface exploration capabilities, sampling methods, and qualifications which now include soil drilling and sampling, rock coring, angle drilling, low-clearance drilling, groundwater sampling, piezometer installations, inclinometer installations, environmental soil sampling, environmental gas sampling, monitor well installations, development and sampling and recovery well installations.

Mr. Yilmaz has developed, executed, and supervised numerous field exploration programs for a wide variety of projects using hollow stem auger and rotary wash drilling methods, wireline sampling and coring techniques utilizing truck, ATV, buggy and skid-mounted CME (55, 75 and 750), Failing 250 and 1500s and Mayhew 200 drill rigs. Fugro’s equipment is capable of drilling to depths in excess of 500 feet and the Fugro exploration fleet is extensive and is usually adequate to accommodate any exploration program or completion schedule.

Accolades credited to Mr. Yilmaz include his recent integral role in securing a $100 million dollar indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract with the Corps of Engineers to assess and rebuild the levees in the New Orleans area. By providing field exploration, laboratory testing and engineering design to support the Corps of Engineers efforts, Mr. Yilmaz’s supervision has allowed for an unprecedented coordination of over 20 drill rigs and 5 cone penetrometer testing rigs operating simultaneously.

Another significant recent accomplishment to Mr. Yilmaz’s credit is his role in securing a $2.5 million dollar contract with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development for the Interstate Highway 10 – Twin Span Bridge Replacement project for the damage sustained during Hurricane Katrina. His leadership and extensive knowledge were provided during field exploration, laboratory testing and engineering design where two near shore CPT operations performed simultaneously to provide crucial data under an accelerated schedule to facilitate design and construction of the bridge replacement.

Mr. Yilmaz and wife Barbara now reside in Houston, Texas. Barbara Yilmaz is an LSU graduate from the Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, and currently the Senior Vice President of Exploration at Hess. Their son Timur Yilmaz is a Petroleum Engineer. 

Jack Donahue

John “Jack” Donahue, Jr. is a local product who earned his Civil Engineering degree from LSU in 1967, and then pursued graduate work in advanced foundation design at Tulane University. In 1970, Jack and his father teamed to form Spartan Building Corporation (SBC) where Jack rose to the post of president. After nearly ten years with SBC, Jack left to start his own company, Jack Donahue Contractors, Inc., in 1979. He opened the doors with three employees and a $500 acoustical ceiling job. In 1986, he partnered with long time friend Robert F. Favret to found what was to become DonahueFavret Contractors, Inc. (DFC). Today DFC has 60 employees, is one of the largest in the state and the North Shore’s number one construction company, with annual sales of over $70 million.

Over the years, clients have consistently selected DFC because of its reputation for quality work, timely completions, honesty and dependability. DFC has earned the opportunity and honor to build for such national corporations and government entities as State Farm, Hospital Corporation of America, Albertson’s, Copeland’s, Pep Boys, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, Lowe’s, Office Depot, Embassy Suites, Holiday Inn, Best Western, Sav-A-Center, Rite Aid, U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Coast Guard, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. DFC has been recognized twelve times with the prestigious national awards for excellence in construction, the premier competition acknowledging outstanding construction projects. The company has received awards from the Vieux Carre Commission for ever-mindful restoration of some of New Orleans’ most historically significant structures. DFC has consistently earned the Platinum Step Award, awarded by contractors for contractors, recognizing one of the industry's highest ratings for safety.

Jack has earned recognition as past president as well as a founding member of local and state chapters of Associated Builders and Contractors, and he was an ABC National board member. Jack continues as chairman and CEO of DFC, with his son John as president, partner Robert Favret as executive vice president as well as vice president of estimating, and wife Maura as vice president of business development.

Jack is profoundly commitment to his community. He has long been an active supporter of a long list of worthy programs, such as the American Heart Association, Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross, and Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, to name a few. After the most devastating storm in American history, Jack generously opened DFC’s doors to the Red Cross, allowing them to open St. Tammany’s first Red Cross Hurricane Katrina financial aid center right there in his office. During those first days after the storm, as Jack made sure all of his 53 employees were safe and secure, his office was the distribution point for more than $2 million dollars of aid to over 2,000 people who lined up at his door. And he didn’t stop there. Jack went on to create an organization called Suited for Success where DFC distributed business clothes free of charge to people who had lost their business clothes and needed to get back to work. Jack was featured in a January 2006 CNN special Hurricane Katrina report called "The Silver Lining". The report detailed stories about area business leaders whose selfless commitment to the community was highlighted by both care for their employees and a dedication to rebuilding Louisiana’s communities.

Jack has been a Commissioner of the Causeway Commission, a chairman and board member on the Public Affairs Research Council, a board member for Center for Development and Learning and Louisiana Association of Business, and member of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. The St. Tammany West Chamber of Commerce has named Jack Business Person of the Year for being a leading St. Tammany business professional.

In the arena of political involvement, Jack has served on the St. Tammany Economic and Industrial Development District, St. Tammany Economic Development Foundation, Louisiana Association of Business and Industry’s (LABI) Southpac, and along with three other businessmen, created the Business Congress of Louisiana (BCL). He was recently inaugurated into the Louisiana State Senate representing District 11.

Ronald Rodi

Ronald "Ron" Rodi was born and raised in New Orleans. He attended Louisiana State University and received his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering in 1978. During this time at LSU, Mr. Rodi served a term as President of the ASCE Student Chapter, not realizing the future network he was building with the engineering community beyond the campus.

Upon graduation in 1978, Mr. Rodi remained in Baton Rouge. Not long thereafter, he landed the job of his dreams. As a young engineer, Mr. Rodi had the opportunity to work under the tutelage of C. Carter Brown, one of the pillars of the Louisiana engineering profession. The years Mr. Rodi spent there as an EIT and PE not only furthered his engineering skills but instilled in him a distinct sense of professionalism and business acumen. As icing on the cake, Brown & Butler frequently designed projects for LSU, and Mr. Rodi would soon be immersed in many small yet intriguing campus projects that would continue till this day. It was also during this time that Mr. Rodi became deeply engaged with the Louisiana Engineering Society. One of the former advisors to the ASCE Student Chapter, Jim Porter, recommended Mr. Rodi for the “highly esteemed” position on the public relations committee. Little did he realize that his initial commitment in this organization would lead to nearly 30 years of active involvement, including being honored as their 1984 Outstanding Young Engineer, presiding as State President for the Society’s Centennial and continuing to this day to serve as the State’s Society’s Legislative Chairman.

Shortly after Mr. Brown retired, Mr. Rodi resigned from Brown & Butler, and in 1985 began his private practice. The friendships he had made at LSU and the professional relationships he had built over his short career helped to sustain Mr. Rodi in the early years of his fledgling practice. Over the next few years, Mr. Rodi had a brief stint of civil engineering graduate courses, and served one semester as an Adjunct Instructor in the LSU CEE Department…. all at the time of trying to support a young family. Despite the sagging Louisiana economy, it was an exciting time, including the advent of personal computers, which enhanced the ability of young engineers to compete with the more established firms. Mr. Rodi became more invested in the Baton Rouge community during that period, particularly in the Greater Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce serving for nearly five years on the Chamber’s Drainage Task Force. This experience reunited Mr. Rodi with his LSU hydrology professor, Raphael Kazmann. This forum and the opportunity to work side-by-side with Prof. Kazmann further instilled in Mr. Rodi that the sound practice of engineering requires both professional inquiry and scrutiny.

Twenty years ago, two young engineers decided to become partners. In 1988, Michael Songy (a 1979 LSU CE) and Mr. Rodi began Rodi & Songy Inc. From one employee to twenty in four years, they were both beginning to see the fruits of their joy and labor. Then in 1992, they took what most considered an unlikely venture…. Rodi & Songy merged with Chenevert-Soderberg Architects to become one of the area’s few jointly-owned A/E firms, CSRS. Today, the firm has grown to 65 full-time employees providing civil engineering, land surveying, architecture and program management to clients throughout Louisiana.

Mr. Rodi’s professional memberships include the Louisiana Engineering Society, of which he has had nearly 30 years of active service including serving as Baton Rouge Chapter President, State Private Practice Group Chairman, State President and State Legislative Chairman. He is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Water Works Association, the National Society of Professional Engineers and the Water Environment Federation. Mr. Rodi is a registered engineer in two states.

Throughout his career, Mr. Rodi has had the privilege and good fortune of working as both a consulting engineer and on a volunteer basis for LSU. His engineering experiences for the Baton Rouge campus and other institutions of the LSU System span nearly 30 years. For the past eight years, he has served on the College of Engineering Industrial Advisory Board and is currently serving on the Dean’s Advisory Council. On the departmental level, he is currently serving on the Civil & Environmental External Advisory Board and CEE Campaign Steering Committee. The former provides vital input to the Department regarding important developments in business and industry and gives suggestions for visibility, planning and function for the Department. The CEE Campaign Steering Committee, of which he is now heading, is responsible for planning to raise at least $4 million for the Department over the next four years as part of the Forever LSU Campaign.

Mr. Rodi’s active and committed involvement in the College of Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering here at LSU is an awesome evidence of his love for this university and his enthusiastic dedication to its continued success.

Mr. Rodi and wife Renee have two sons, James and Matthew and reside in Baton Rouge. Both are currently pursuing degrees at LSU.

Larry A. McKee

Larry A. McKee received a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1958. Upon graduation, he began his professional career working for private engineering consulting firms in the Baton Rouge area. After gaining twelve years’ experience, he acquired 100% ownership of Professional Engineering Consultants (PEC) on May 1, 1970.

Upon the leadership and direction of Mr. McKee, and in the pursuit of excellence, PEC enjoyed stable and continuous growth and became recognized throughout the southeastern United States for its expertise in all phases of public works planning and development.

Mr. McKee has strived throughout his career to improve the engineering profession. He has served as president of the Louisiana Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers as well as president and national director of the Louisiana Council of Engineering Companies. He is one of only two engineers, from Louisiana, to serve as National Vice President of American Council of Engineering Companies.

Mr. McKee was appointed, by Governor Buddy Roemer, to the Professional Engineering and Land Surveying Board where he served for six years and chaired the Board for one year. Mr. McKee also has served as an adjunct professor of Civil Engineering at Louisiana State University where he is an honorary member of Chi Epsilon and a member of the College of Engineering Dean’s Club.

Kenneth L. McManis

Dr. McManis received his Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette in 1963. He then went on to earn his Master of Science and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department in 1966 and 1975.

Upon completion of his graduate research at LSU, he was awarded the Michael Claus Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Research.

After years of practice and teaching, Dr. McManis joined the University of New Orleans (UNO) as an Associate Professor. He was then selected as chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He remained in this position for twenty-six years until his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 2004. He then accepted a position as professor and department head of the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, Louisiana, which he presently serves.

In 2000, he was appointed to serve a six year term on the Louisiana Professional Engineering and Land Surveying Board by the Governor.

Some of Dr. McManis’s awards and honors include the College of Engineering Distinguished Service Award, University of New Orleans (2004); Contractors Educational Trust Fund Professorship (1994-2004); Who’s Who in Science and Engineering (1994); LEF Engineering Faculty Professionalism Award, Louisiana Engineering Foundation; and Who’s Who in Engineering (1980). He is also a member of Chi Epsilon, Sigma Chi, and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. Dr. McManis is a registered Professional Engineer and a Professional Land Surveyor in the state of Louisiana.

Dr. McManis continues to provide service to the Civil Engineering profession. His leadership and enthusiasm make him respected by all.

Kam K. Movassaghi

Dr. Kam K. Movassaghi is currently President and CEO of Movassaghi Group, PEC, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He has experience in civil engineering in the areas of consulting, academia, and government. Dr. Movassaghi received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette in 1963. He then went on to earn his Master of Science and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University’s CEE Department in 1965 and 1971, respectively.

Dr. Movassaghi served as an engineer in several engineering firms in his early career. He then joined the faculty at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette (formerly Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette). He was then selected as head of the Department of Civil Engineering. Under his direction the department expanded programs in research, developed a design computation laboratory, developed a graduate engineering management program, and received very successful ABET accreditation reviews.

In 1998 Dr. Movassaghi was appointed by then Governor M.J. “Mike” Foster as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. With this position, Dr. Movassaghi was able to increase the annual construction project lettings by 78 percent with no net increase in annual revenues. He also implemented a comprehensive management plan to expedite completion of the TIMED program, the largest construction program in the history of the department. Dr. Movassaghi accomplished these and many among other notable feats in the 6 years as he served the state in this role.

Some of Dr. Movassaghi’s awards and honors include the President Award of Merit, Louisiana Engineering Society (2004); Highway Safety Award, Louisiana Highway Safety Commission (2004); National Government Engineer of the Year, American Society of Civil Engineers (2002); Engineering Faculty Professionalism Award, Louisiana Engineering Society (1997); and Outstanding Civil Engineer of the Year, Louisiana Section of American Society of Civil Engineers (1995). He is also a member of American Society of Civil Engineers, Louisiana Engineering Society, Phi Kappa Phi, Chi Epsilon, and Sigma Xi. Dr. Movassaghi is a registered Professional Engineer and a Professional Land Surveyor in the state of Louisiana.

In addition to his many contributions to the engineering community, he has given to his local community through various avenues of community service Dr. Movassaghi is a loving husband and father of two children.

George Munfakh

Dr. George A. Munfakh presently serves as Senior Vice President of Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas engineering firm at which he is in charge of the Geotechnical and Tunneling Division. He is considered one of the leading innovators in the field of geotechnical engineering. Dr. Munfakh received his Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the University of Aleppo, Syria, in 1967. He received both his Master of Science and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 1970 and 1973, respectively.

Dr. Munfakh has 30 years of experience with Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade, & Douglas. As the manager of the Geotechnical and Tunneling Division, 96 staff in eighteen offices report to Dr. Munfakh. His project experience includes underground facilities, marine facilities, and surface facilities. Dr. Munfakh is considered a worldwide recognized expert in ground improvement and has given many keynote conference speeches on the subject.

Some of Dr. Munfakh’s professional affiliations include the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers, Chi Epsilon, and Phi Kappa Phi. He was also the past chairman of the Met Section Geotechnical Division. Some of the awards and honors that Dr. Munfakh has received are the American Road & Transportation Builders Association’s Globe Award for Environmental Excellence (2002), presenting the prestigious ASCE Martin S. Kapp Lecture (1999), Parsons Brinckerhoff Professional Publication Award for the technical paper entitled, “Ground Improvement Engineering – The State of the Practice” (1996) and the Michael Claus Memorial Award for Excellence in Engineering Research from LSU (1973). Dr. Munfakh has professional registration in Syria.

Dr. Munfakh has published over 35 works during his career. He is a highly respected engineer who has continued to share his expertise with the profession through papers, lectures, and seminars.

James M. Coleman

James Coleman received his Ph.D. in geology from Louisiana State University in 1966. He was a Boyd Professor for the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College and formally served as Executive Vice Chancellor of LSU. Dr. Coleman’s research interests focused on relationships between process, form, and sedimentary characteristics, especially in deltaic and offshore regions. He is the former chairman of the Marine Board, a member of the Ocean Sciences Board of the National Research Council, a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1990, a recently elected member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and awarded the Kapitsa Medal of Honor for his contributions to the field of Petroleum Sciences. In 2001, he was appointed as a member of the Presidential U. S. Ocean Policy Commission.

Few of the many awards that he received are listed below:

• Awarded Honorary Life Membership in the American Association Petroleum Geologists, 2001
• Awarded the Einstein Medal by Russian Academy Natural Sciences for contributions to science
• Awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa in Earth sciences by the International University of Dubna, Moscow, Russia for achievements in the field of Earth Sciences, August, 2000
• Designated LaBorde Chair of Marine Science, March, 2000

He served on numerous National Committees and Boards. Few of them are listed below:

• Named by Governor Foster to Advisory Commission on Coastal Restoration and Conservation, ’02-‘08
• Named by President Bush to serve on U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2001 (elected chair of Research, Education, and Marine Operations Committee)
• Member of Ocean Studies Board of the National Research Council – 1999-2003
• Chair of the Engineering & Technology Subcommittee – 1999-2002
• Elected to Executive Committee of Ocean Studies Board – 2000-2003
• Minerals Management Service Advisory Board Outer Continental Shelf Scientific Committee: Vice Chair - 1995-1997; Chair Elect - 1998; Chair – 1998-2000
• Appointed by Secretary Interior to permanent discretionary membership, 2000 Steering Committee, International Workshop on Offshore Lease Abandonment and Platform Disposal, April 1996

Ann Forte Trappey

Ann Forte Trappey, born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, is presently CEO and President of Forte and Tablada, Inc, a consulting engineering and land surveying firm. Ann received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1982. After graduation, Ann worked for eight years at the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development in three departments: the Planning Section, the Computer Graphics Section and Road Design. In 1991, she began her employment at Forte and Tablada, Inc., as Chief Civil Engineer. As a design engineer, she oversaw major road, drainage and sewer improvement projects, new utilities and utility relocation projects, bridge and other structural projects for various local municipal and state government agencies. After assuming the role of Chief Executive Officer in January 1993, she continued her work as a design engineer along with the tasks of managing the firm. Ann’s experience in the planning and designing of infrastructure improvements has been extensive. Ann is a registered Professional Engineer in Civil Engineering both in Louisiana and Mississippi along with being a Registered Professional Engineer in Environmental Engineering in Louisiana.

Ann is the first female to be elected to numerous seats on the American Council of Engineering Companies/Louisiana (ACEC/L) and the American Council of Engineering Companies/Louisiana (ACEC/L) and the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC – national parent organization of ACEC/L) beginning in 1995. She has served on the LSU College of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Committee since 1999 and will become the Chairman in 2005-2006. In 1985 she was the State Young Engineers Chairman of the Louisiana Engineering Society. After this position, she served other capacities being the first woman elected to the position of State Director in 1993-1995. She has held numerous chairmanships of the Baton Rouge Chapter of the Louisiana Engineering Society. In addition, she is President (2003-2005) of the Louisiana Engineering Foundation having served on that Board since 1991. She is a member of the Society of American Military Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers, and National Society of Professional Engineers.

Along with the time that Ann dedicates to professional service, she spends an enormous amount of time participating in community service. As a member of the Baton Rouge Rotary, from 1994 to present, she has served in the role of volunteer and chairperson on numerous committees. She has also been a member of the Baton Rouge Junior League since 1994 serving in many capacities. Ann has served on the Board of Directors for the Girl Scout Audubon Council during 1998, 1999, and 2001 to present. While on the board of the Council, she has assisted in developing a Strategic Plan for the Audubon Council and served as the 2002 Nominating Committee Chairman. Ann also commits her time to the YMCA, serving on the Metropolitan Board of Directors from 1998-present and serving as Board Vice-Chair for the 2003-2004 term. In her capacity with the YMCA, she has assisted in the development of the maintenance priority program for YMCA branches.

Her recent valuable assistance in making possible the acquisition of the LSU River Modeling Building, which houses a small scale physical model of the Mississippi River Delta, is a perfect example of the time, effort and funds she freely donates to projects that are of great value to the engineering profession, civil engineering in particular.

In 1995, Ann was honored by the Baton Rouge Business Report with the “Class of Top 40 Under 40 Award” for “stepping up the ladder of success, making a difference in their company, industry, profession and/or community.” Again in 1996, she was presented with the “Alumni Order of Omega Award” given to a fraternity alumni chosen from all Greek organizations here at LSU as a woman who has displayed “outstanding community service, service to her fraternity and service to LSU.”

Ann is married to Dr. Fred Trappey and has two children, Francois and Elise. She is a resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Verdi Adam

Verdi Adam is presently President and Principal of GEC, Inc., a comprehensive consulting firm based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with offices in New Orleans, Jacksonville, Florida, Chicago, Illinois, and Lafayette, Louisiana. Since receiving his M.S. in civil engineering degree in 1954 from LSU, Mr. Adam has been involved in all phases of highway and transportation engineering. His career began with the then Louisiana Highway Department. Mr. Adam is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of paving and structural materials and pavement design with particular emphasis on asphalt pavements. He served as Chief Engineer for the Offices of Highways and of Aviation, director of Construction and Maintenance Division, and Materials and Research Engineering of the Department of Transportation of Louisiana.

Mr. Adam, in the 1960s, was one of the lead highway engineers in the country in the development, debugging and implementation of stochastic approach to end-result highway specifications. He has made numerous presentations in the United States and in several foreign countries, and he has assisted transportation departments of a number of states in developing statistically based quality assurance programs while reducing the need for manpower and unnecessary testing.

Mr. Adam also served as the Chief of Paving and Structural Materials Group of the Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C. Mr. Adam in this latter capacity assisted the U.S. Congress, Department of Transportation and various highway and transportation departments in formulating overall transportation policies.

Mr. Adam established the Environmental Division at DOTD in response to the State and Federal environmental regulatory needs of highway design and construction. Beginning in the early sixties until early nineties, with the exception of a two year break when he was in Washington, Mr. Adam taught the highway engineering course for the Department of Civil Engineering at LSU as an Adjunct Assistant and later as an Adjunct Associate Professor. In 1982 he was appointed to the Louisiana Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors by Governor Treen for a six year term. He served as a member and Chairman of the Board.

Verdi Adam has won awards such as the Louisiana Highways and Transportation Hall of Honor in 1998. He has also been awarded the Industry Recognition Award, which is given for his outstanding contributions to the asphalt pavement industry during 1970 in recognition of development of statistically based end-result specifications for asphalt pavements, which are now nationally implemented, and development of concepts and specifications for the use of consistency at service temperatures for asphalt cements.

Mr. Adam has been very active in research organizations and professional associations and has written many research papers, reports and articles. He has served as Vice-Chairman of the Highway Transport Subcommittee and Chairman of the Bituminous Materials Technical Section of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Dipak Roy

Illinois and joined LSU in 1979. He has 23 years of teaching experience, 28 years of research experience, and has supervised 7 PhD and 50 M.S. students. He has supervised more the 40 research projects worth over three million dollars. In 1995 he joined Polytechnic University in New York to develop their program.

Dr. Roy has received awards and honors as Fulbright Fellow. He was named researcher of the Year in Civil Engineering at LSU in 1992. He received the Halliburton Foundation Faculty Development Award. Roy was also listed in Men & Women of Science in America, Who’s Who in Frontiers of Science, Technology, and Personalities of the South. He was awarded the Oak Ridge Associate University Faculty Participation Award. Roy has also been interviewed by ABC, FOX and PBS.

Dipak Roy’s research interests include mathematical modeling of natural environmental systems, fate and transport of contaminants, and biotechnology application in environmental engineering. He holds three patents based on his work at LSU.

Dr. Roy is a member of several professional associations, which include the Water Pollution Control Federation, the American Chemical Society, Phi Kappa Pi, and Chi Epsilon. He is also a professional registered engineer in civil and environmental engineering in Louisiana.

* Deceased

Wm. Clifford Smith

William Clifford Smith was born on April 21, 1935 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His wife is the former Jo-Anne Toups from Schriever, Louisiana, and they have seven children.

William Clifford Smith attended the public school system in Terrebonne Parish and received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1958. Since he had grown up in his father’s footsteps in the civil engineering field, he immediately became a partner in his father’s firm, and the name was changed to T. Baker Smith & Son, to illustrate his formal entrance into the profession.

Following his father’s death in 1962, he reorganized and operated the company as President and sole owner. Today, he is Chairman of the Board of the cooperation.

He has been a registered civil engineering and land surveyor in Louisiana since 1958 and a registered civil engineer in Mississippi since 1985. His professional organizations in the engineering field are the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, American Society of Civil Engineers, National Society of Professional Engineers, Louisiana Engineering Society, Louisiana Society of Professional Surveyors, and National Society of Military Engineers. He also received the A. B. Patterson Medal for Engineer-in-Management on February 7, 1986, presented by the Louisiana Engineering Society.

The social, civic, and business organization of which he is a member include the Houma-Terrebonne Chamber of Commerce, Terrebonne Historical and Cultural Society, Board of Directors of Entergy Corporation, member of the Mississippi River Commission, and member of the Board of Regents.

Ara Arman

Ara Arman, born in Istanbul, Turkey, is Senior Vice-President of Gulf Engineers and Consultants, Inc. Arman received his Bachelor of Science degree from Robert College School of Engineering, Istanbul, Turkey in 1955, and Master of Science from University of Texas, Austin, Texas in 1956, all in civil engineering. Upon graduation, he joined Louisiana Department of Highways as an Assistant District Laboratory Engineer of the Testing and Research Section, and was promoted to District Laboratory Engineering in 1958, and Soils Design Engineer in 1961. In 1963, he started his stellar career at Louisiana State University as an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1967 and full Professor in 1970. He also served as the Assistant Director of the Division of Engineering Research 1965-1976.

In 1976, Arman became the Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering. He was appointed Associate Dean for Instruction and Undergraduate Studies in 1980, a position he served for seven years. He effectively participated in the legislative establishment in 1986 of the Louisiana Transportation Research Center, LTRC, jointly sponsored by Louisiana State University and Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. Arman served as the founder and director of LTRC until 1989 when he retired from LSU to join Woodward-Clyde Consultants as Senior Consultant and Vice-President, and later as Vice-President and Principal until 1998.

Arman is a professional civil engineer registered in the state of Louisiana with over 40 years of experience in the field of environmental, civil, geotechnical, and geosynthetics engineering. He is a member and officer of many national and international professional and honorary engineering organizations. He has in excess of seventy publications in the field of geotechnical engineering, chemical stabilization of soils, use of geosynthetics as applied to transportation, ports, airports, industrial sites and other facilities. They have been published in technical journals and books in several countries including the USA, Great Britain, France, Turkey, Switzerland, Sweden, USSR, Germany and Japan.

Arman is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and is the 2001 recipient of the prestigious A.E. Wilder, Jr. Award for Outstanding Service of the American Consulting Engineers Council.

In 1963, Arman was married to former Claudia Carr of Bogalusa, Louisiana, and they have two children Eric and Michelle. Arman presently resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Elvin Dantin

A native of Golden Meadow, Elvin Dantin* received a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Civil Engineering from LSU in 1949 and 1952 respectively. He then served the department as an assistant professor for 6 years, before moving west to pick up a Ph.D. from Stanford University. In 1962 he returned to his home state to resume his service to the LSU CEE Department, a career that would span for 30 years.

Dr. Dantin was one for the forward-looking faculty in the College. He not only found time to contribute to the fine undergraduate program that the Department is known for, but also broke new ground expanding the Department's research output. An early director of the College's Division of Engineering Research (1961-63), Elvin was the founding director for the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute (1981-84). He laid taproots that nourished the young incoming faculty as the University made the difficult transition towards a Research I status. In 1984 he "retired", received a nice chair from the Department and moved to sunny Florida.

Retirement, hardly, Elvin then became a Founding Dean and set about the creation of the College of Engineering at the FAMU/FSU campus in Tallahassee. During a ten year period Elvin added the establishment of three ABET accredited departments, hired thirty faculty, and established approved Masters degree programs in four departments. Slowing down a bit, in 1993-94, Elvin settled back as chairman for the FAMU/FSU Department of Civil Engineering for over a year before finally accepting his second retirement. The college honored Elvin's contributions through the establishment of a Named Professorship (The Elvin Dantin Professor of Engineering) in his name.

*Elvin Dantin passed away in 2009.

L. Lane Grigsby

L. Lane Grigsby, a native of Louisiana, is Chairman of the Board of Cajun Contractors. Grigsby graduated with a BSCE degree from LSU in January 1967 after having transferred from the United States Military Academy at West Point. Initially, Grigsby went to work with Pyburn and Odom Consulting Engineers in Baton Rouge, but "decided that technical engineering didn't fit his personality." He joined Crown Builders as a field engineer in civil construction and progressed to Executive Vice President in 1970. Crown Builders was subsequently acquired by merger with a German engineering group and became Lurgi-Knost, Inc. Grigsby opened the east coast office of Lurgi-Knost in Jacksonville, FL, but returned to Baton Rouge as Manager of Purchasing until the firm dissolved in April 1973.

At that time, Grigsby started Cajun Contractors and Engineers, Inc., in partnership with Bob Mixon. Over the ensuing years, Cajun has grown to become one of the largest construction companies in Louisiana. Since 1990, Cajun Constructors has been listed among ENR's Top 400 Contractors.

Grigsby is founder and stockholder of the Atlantic Company of America, a nationally recognized historical restoration business that was responsible for the restoration of the Washington Monument. He is also the founder of the Mapp Construction, Inc., a commercial contractor based in Baton Rouge.

Grigsby has been active in the Associated Builders and Contractors having served in every elected position and twice received ABC's Man of the Year Award. He has also served in leadership roles in a variety of organizations including the Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce; the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI); the Baton Rouge Metro Airport Commission; and the Medical Center Board of Directors. Since 1994, he has served on the Board of Directors of the Shaw Group, the 3rd largest EPC firm in the world. He has also been active in a variety of fund raising efforts to benefit LSU.

Grigsby currently serves on advisory boards of the LSU College of Engineering and the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Management.

Grigsby is married to Bobbi Fickes and they have three children, Tami, Todd, and Tricia.

Mr. Grigsby was inducted as a member of the LSU Engineering Hall of Distinction in 1997.

Chester P. Seiss

Mr. Chester Paul Siess* was born in Alexandria, LA in 1916. He received his BS in Civil Engineering from LSU in 1936. Mr. Siess worked for the Louisiana Highway Commission from 1936-1937. Then from 1937-1939, he worked as a Research Assistant and Graduate Student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received his masters in civil engineering in 1939. In 1939, Siess worked on the Chicago Subway and later for the NY Central Railroad in Chicago.

Mr. Siess then did full-time research in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at UIUC, beginning in 1941. In 1949, he joined the CE department at UIUC and did research on reinforced and prestressed concrete and highway bridges. He taught two graduate courses on Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Members and Structures. Siess was head of the CE department form 1973 until retirement in 1978. He did extensive consulting, chiefly on structural failures, and in connection with research programs of various government agencies. He was active in the affairs of American Concrete Institute (ACI). He chaired several committees and was President in 1974. Siess was a member of the Building Code Committee from 1952 to 1995, and chaired it from 1980-1983.

Mr. Siess became a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee in 1972. He was also a member or chairman of various committees of Highway Research Board, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), ASTM and many more.

Mr. Siess received various honors, including National Academy of Engineering, 1967, Honorary Member of ASCE in 1978, Honorary Member of ACI in 1969, and became President of ACE in 1974. He received the UIUC College of Engineering Alumni Honor Award for Distinguished Service in Engineering in 1985, LSU Engineering Hall of Distinction Charter Member in 1979, Chi Epsilon National Honor Member in 1994, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Distinguished Service Award in 1987.

* Deceased

Bingham C. Stewart

Bingham Cushman Stewart* was born in Cheneyville, Louisiana on February 24, 1905. He moved to Baton Rouge, where he attended Louisiana State University and received a Bachelor of Science Degree in 1926.

He worked for his father's construction company until 1932, when he became employed by the Louisiana Highway Commission. In 1936, he moved to New Orleans to work with W. R. Aldrich & Co., General Contractor, and in 1938, he was hired by Henry and Arthur Boh as general superintendent of Boh Bros. Construction Company.

In 1960, when Boh Bros. became incorporated in the state of Louisiana, Mr. Stewart was named Vice President and Director and served in that capacity until 1989, when he was named Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. In 1998, Mr. Stewart celebrated his 60th anniversary with the company.

On November 17, 1993, Mr. Stewart was named to the Louisiana Highway Hall of Honor and was honored as an outstanding citizen for his involvement in the state, highway, street, bridge and transportation systems.

Mr. Stewart served as Chairman of the Building Committee of the New Orleans Federation of Churches and of the Rayne Memorial Methodist Church, of which he was a member. He also served as President of the Board of Trustees of Methodist Hospital and was a member of the New Orleans Rotary Club, the Louisiana Engineering Society, and the New Orleans Country Club.

* Deceased

Sherri Hammond LeBas

Shahram Sankari