UMR professor heads up international conference, several from UMR to speak
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Dr. Shamsher Prakash, professor emeritus of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at UMR will chair the Fifth International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering on April 13-17 in New York.
The conference covers case histories about structures and foundations and how they react to natural and man-made disasters. Approximately 30 countries from all over the world will be represented. The conference is hosted by the UMR civil, architectural and environmental engineering department and UMR’s Natural Hazards Mitigation Institute.
Along with Prakash, four other UMR representatives will present sessions. Dr. Abdeldjelil "D.J." Belarbi, professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering, will present "Preliminary Observations of Geotechnical Failures During the 21 May 2003 M 6.8 Boumerdes Earthquake, Algeria"; Dr. Ronaldo Luna, associate professor of civil engineering, and Dr. J. David Rogers, the Karl F. Hasselmann chair and associate professor of geological and petroleum engineering, will present, "Impact of Geographical Information Systems on Geotechnical Engineering"; and Luna and Wei Zheng, a Ph.D. student in civil engineering at UMR, will present, "Nonlinear Site Response Analysis in the New Madrid Seismic Zone."
Examples of other topics to be presented include, "The World Trade Center, A Bathtub, A Case History," and "The Leaning Tower of Pisa-Revisited."
Also at the conference, Prakash will present a special session to honor Ralph B. Peck, who is considered a leader in the development and practice of soil mechanics and foundation engineering. Peck has served as a consultant for major foundation projects throughout the world since 1939, such as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the transit systems in Chicago, San Francisco and Washington D.C. Prakash performed his doctoral studies under the guidance of Peck at the University of Illinois in the 1960s.
