Awards and experience

Awards

  • 1979 - 1984 University of British Columbia Graduate Fellowship
  • 1979 - 1984 Both M.S. and Ph.D. thesis work were sponsored by Exxon, Houston and Ertec Western Inc., California
  • 1985 Junior Faculty Research Award, University of Nevada, Reno
  • 1985 - 1986 Engineering Research Initiation Grant, Engineering Foun­dation (only 8 awards were made nationwide in all engineering fields)
  • 1992 Visiting Research Associate Professor at MIT
  • 1993 -  Member of β-Testing of the PACE Software being developed by the Shell Oil Co and SWK Engineering.
  • 1996 EERI Student Research Paper Competition Award was presented to Mahmoud EL- Gamal.  His paper was based on his Ph.D. work carried out under my supervision.
  • 1997 Shamsher Prakash Foundation Citation for work on Dynamic Soil Structure Interaction and Stability of Retaining Structures under Earthquakes.
  • 2007 Visiting Scholar, Lawrence Livermore National Security Laboratory, Livermore, CA
  • 2011  Award by Tectonophysics “Top-50 Most Cited Articles published in Tectonophysics 2005 – 2010.”  This honor was given to the following paper co-authored by me:  “A general framework for the occurrence and faulting of deformation bands in porous granular rocks” in Tectonophysics, Volume 411, Issue 1-4 (2005), Pages 1-18.

Non-academic experience/consulting (selected list)

On consulting basis he has been involved in a variety of projects for a number regional, national and international firms on broad ranging activities relating to geotechnical seismic design issues that included site-specific response analyses, soil-structure interaction, liquefaction and permanent deformation.

He was involved in a variety of consulting projects for a number firms including, Klohn Leonoff Consultants, Vancouver; Komex Consultants, Calgary; Exxon, Houston; GAB Corporation, Sacramento; Welsh Engineers, Denver; Pezonella Associates, Reno; EIC Consultants, Denver; Golder Associates, Denver; Harding and Lawson Associates, Reno; WESTECH, Reno; Pacific Eng. & Analysis, El Cerrito; Marvin & Associates, Reno; CNI Consultants, Tucson; Wood Rodgers, Reno; Weidlinger Associates, New York (Verrazano-Narrows bridge retrofit); Summit Engineers, Las Vegas; Robert Maddox & Associates;   Arora and Associates P.C, New York (Pulaski bridge retrofit).