Alexander Puzrin

Last updated

Alexander Puzrin
ETH-BIB-Puzrin, Alexander (1965-)-Portr 17420.jpg
Alexander M. Puzrin (2020)
Born (1965-07-24) 24 July 1965 (age 58)
NationalitySwiss
Alma mater Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Known for Constitutive modeling, Soil mechanics, Landslides
Scientific career
Fields Geotechnical Engineering, Geomechanics
Institutions ETH Zurich
Thesis The soft clay behaviour under irregular cyclic loading (1997)
Doctoral advisor Samuel Frydman

Alexander M. Puzrin (born 24 July 1965) is professor of geotechnical engineering at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, working in the field of geomechanics.

Contents

Biography

Alexander Puzrin completed his undergraduate studies in Structural Engineering in 1987 at the Department of Civil Engineering, Moscow Institute of Civil Engineering, USSR, and received his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering in 1997 from the Department of Civil Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. From 1997 to 2001 he was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and then tenured associate professor at the same institution, and from 2002 to 2004 a tenured associate professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, United States. Since 2004 he is Full Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Research

The focus of Puzrin's research is on constitutive modeling of geomaterials and on the analysis of progressive and catastrophic failure in soils, with applications to creeping terrestrial and tsunamigenic submarine landslides. His interests include applications of novel sensor technologies to geotechnical monitoring and the development of innovative chemical and biological soil-improvement techniques. He has been involved as an expert and consultant in large-scale geotechnical projects in the UK, the US, Russia, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Israel and Switzerland. He is a co-founder of the ETH Zurich spin-off company Marmota Engineering AG. [1]

Awards

Alexander Puzrin's papers were awarded by the British Institution of Civil Engineers with Geotechnical Research Medals in 2004 and 2013, the 2013 George Stephenson Medal, the 2018 David Hislop Award, the Overseas Prize (Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya Award) in 2022, and the 2023 Environmental Geotechnics Award. In 2019, he received the Geomaterials Research Medal of the Alliance of Laboratories in Europe for Education, Research and Technology (ALERT). In addition, he served as the Editor of the international journal Géotechnique from 2012 to 2015. Since 2014, he is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was a recipient of the ETH Zurich Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009 and 2013.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ETH Zurich</span> Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich

ETH Zurich is a public research university in Zürich, Switzerland. Founded by the Swiss federal government in 1854, with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists; the school focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, although its 16 departments span a variety of disciplines and subjects.

Sir Alec Westley Skempton was an English civil engineer internationally recognised, along with Karl Terzaghi, as one of the founding fathers of the engineering discipline of soil mechanics. He established the soil mechanics course at Imperial College London, where the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department's building was renamed after him in 2004, and was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to engineering. He was also a notable contributor on the history of British civil engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Mair, Baron Mair</span>

Robert James Mair, Baron Mair, is a geotechnical engineer and Emeritus Sir Kirby Laing Professor of Civil Engineering and director of research at the University of Cambridge. He is Head of the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC). He was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, from 2001 to 2011 and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, from 1998 to 2001. In 2014 he was elected a vice president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and on 1 November 2017 became the Institution's president for 2017–18, its 200th anniversary year. He was appointed an independent crossbencher in the House of Lords in 2015 and is currently a member of its Select Committee on Science and Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ioannis Vardoulakis</span> Greek mechanician (1949-2009)

Ioannis Vardoulakis was an eminent scientist who is known for his major contributions in the modeling of geomaterials, geo-hazards and geotechnical processes. He was the pioneer of the bifurcation theory of geomechanics, which has led to a better understanding of the long-standing problem of mesh-dependency in the Finite Element Modeling. He also contributed to the enriched continuum modeling, which allowed for the first time the constitutive modeling of shear bands and worked extensively in experimental geomechanics, having developed ingenious devices to test geomaterials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London</span>

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is the academic department at Imperial College London dedicated to civil engineering. It is located at the South Kensington Campus in London, along Imperial College Road. The department is currently a part of the college's Faculty of Engineering, which was formed in 2001 when Imperial College restructured. The department has consistently ranked within the top five on the QS World University Rankings in recent years.

Thomas Denis O’Rourke is an American educator, engineer and serves as the Thomas R. Biggs Professor of civil & environmental engineering at the Cornell University College of Engineering. O’Rourke took his Bachelor of Science in civil engineering at Cornell's engineering college in 1970 and his doctorate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyesse Laloui</span> Swiss civil engineer (born 1963)

Lyesse Laloui, is a Swiss engineer and Professor at EPFL, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He is Chair full Professor of Soil Mechanics, Geo-Engineering and CO2 Storage at EPFL's School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering and is the Director of the Soil Mechanics Laboratory

Harry George Poulos is an Australian of Greek descent civil engineer specialising in geotechnical engineering and soil mechanics, internationally known as an expert on soil behaviour and pile foundations.

Andrew John Whittle is Edmund K. Turner Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and former Head of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He specializes in Geotechnical Engineering and more particularly in numerical and constitutive modelling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Springman</span> British-Swiss triathlete, civil engineer, and academic

Dame Sarah Marcella Springman is a British-Swiss triathlete, civil engineer, and academic. She was educated in England and spent much of her career in Switzerland. She is a former rector of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and currently Principal of St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Kayen</span>

Robert Kayen is a civil engineer, geologist, and Industry Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is a leading international expert in the fields of earthquake engineering, seismic soil liquefaction, and seismic displacement analysis of ground failures. Kayen's research focuses on geotechnical engineering, engineering characterization of natural hazards and extreme events, and earth science aspects of civil engineering. His works have been applied in earthquake engineering design of improved ground, building foundations, bridge abutments, lifeline, and environmental systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ETH Library</span> Swiss public library

ETH Library is the largest public scientific and technical library in Switzerland. As the central university library and knowledge hub of ETH Zurich, the ETH Library ensures the provision of scientific and technical information. Furthermore, it also offers resources for the public and companies in research and development. Particular emphasis is placed on electronic information for university members and the development of innovative services.

Ronald Kerry Rowe, OC, BSc, BE, PhD, D.Eng, DSc (hc), FRS, FREng, NAE, FRSC, FCAE, Dist.M.ASCE, FEIC, FIE(Aust), FCSCE, PEng., CPEng. is a Canadian civil engineer of Australian birth, one of the pioneers of geosynthetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew deMello</span> British chemist

Andrew James deMello is a British chemist and Professor of Biochemical Engineering at ETH Zürich.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Mathys</span>

Alexander Mathys is a German scientist specializing in sustainable food systems and food technology. He is a tenure-track professor in Sustainable Food Processing at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. His work primarily focuses on finding sustainable and nutritional food and animal feed alternatives that would improve the sustainability performance.

David Muir Wood is an academic working in the field of geomechanics and soil mechanics, famous for having pioneered advances in mathematical modelling of soils, informed by experimental observation. The hallmark of his modelling efforts has been to formulate elegant models that capture the essence of the material response while being accessible to practitioners of Geotechnical engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Ng Wang-wai</span>

Charles Ng Wang-wai is the first CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability and Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He is also the vice-president of HKUST (Guangzhou) and the dean of the Fok Ying Tung Graduate School at HKUST, Clear Water Bay Campus. He is the immediate past president of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), where he served as the 17th President from 2017 to 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geoffrey Eustace Blight</span> South African geotechnical engineer

Geoffrey Eustace Blight was a professor in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits), serving twice as head of department.

Robert Scott Steedman CBE, FREng, FICE is a British engineer, former academic, TV presenter and standards expert. He is currently Director-General, Standards at BSI Group, the UK's national standards body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Niels Kuster</span> Swiss electrical engineer

Niels Kuster is a Swiss electrical engineer and Professor. The focus of his research is on the electromagnetic near field, basics for assessing/using the interaction of electromagnetic fields with organisms, and physiological simulations as part of biophysics.

References