Bernard Amadei

Last updated
Bernard Amadei
Born (1954-07-23) July 23, 1954 (age 70)
Roubaix, France
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions University of Colorado Boulder
Website www.colorado.edu/faculty/amadei

Bernard Amadei (born July 23, 1954) is a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, founding president of Engineers Without Borders (USA), co-founder of the Engineers Without Borders-International Network, and founding director of the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities. He is also a recipient of multiple awards and distinctions (see below) and holds seven honorary doctoral degrees.

Contents

In 2009, he was recognized with an Award of Excellence from Engineering News-Record. In 2012, Dr. Amadei was appointed as a Science Envoy to Pakistan and Nepal by the U.S. Department of State.

Education

Amadei is a native of Roubaix, France, born on July 23, 1954. [1] Amadei earned a Diploma of Engineer (Dipl. Eng.) in 1977 in the area of Applied Geology from the School of Applied Geology and Mining Engineering (Ecole Supérieure de Géologie Appliquée et de Prospection Minière) in Nancy, France (currently known as the École nationale supérieure de géologie or ENSG). [1] [2] [3] Following a year of service in the French Army (August 1977 to August 1978), he began graduate studies abroad. He earned a Master of Science from the University of Toronto in 1979 and was awarded a doctorate (PhD) in civil engineering in 1982 from the University of California, Berkeley for his thesis publication entitled "The Influence of Rock Anisotropy on Measurement of Stresses in Rock in situ." [1] The Obama administration, following up the president's announcement of the program in Cairo, named Dr. Amadei one of three Scientific Envoys appointed by Secretary of State Clinton in November, 2012. [4]

Establishment of Engineers Without Borders-USA

A firm belief in the principle that engineers must hold the public welfare paramount, or above any other responsibility, led Amadei to reconsider his involvement in a hydroelectric plant in Costa Rica in 2002. He thought that this project would displace too many local residents and violate this principle of "do no harm." This realization came along about two years after his first experience with a humanitarian engineering project. [5]

In 2000, Amadei organized an effort resulting in the construction of a water pump for a village in Belize. He undertook the effort at the suggestion of an immigrant landscaper working at his residence. Amadei saw that the installation of a pump to supply drinking water to the village of San Pablo would have a social impact on this community. Young girls in the village were tasked with carrying water each day from the river to the village. This meant that they could not attend school. Using the engineering talent of himself and his students to bring clean drinking water to the village had a huge social benefit to the community. [6] This comprehension of the larger meaning of engineering inspired Amadei to create a volunteer organization that could enable engineers to donate their services in this manner. [5]

From a small beginning with just a few students volunteering alongside him, the Engineers Without Borders-USA organization has grown to 15,900 members in 400 chapters. Humanitarian aid has been provided in 48 countries, benefiting more than 600,000 people. [5]

Awards and distinctions

List of works

Related Research Articles

<span title="French-language text"><i lang="fr">Grande école</i></span> French institutions of higher education

A grande école is a specialized top-level educational institution in France and some other previous French colonies such as Morocco or Tunisia. Grandes écoles are part of an alternative educational system that operates alongside the mainstream French public university system, and take the shape of institutes dedicated to teaching, research and professional training in either pure natural and social sciences, or applied sciences such as engineering, architecture, business administration, or public policy and administration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">École nationale supérieure des mines de Nancy</span> French engineering College

Mines Nancy is one of the leading French engineering Grandes Écoles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grenoble Institute of Technology</span> Research institute in France

The Grenoble Institute of Technology is a French technological university system consisting of eight engineering and management schools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Society for Rock Mechanics</span>

The International Society for Rock Mechanics - ISRM was founded in Salzburg in 1962 as a result of the enlargement of the "Salzburger Kreis". Its foundation is mainly owed to Prof. Leopold Müller who acted as President of the Society until September 1966. The ISRM is a non-profit scientific association supported by the fees of the members and grants that do not impair its free action. In 2021 the Society had 6,800 members and 49 National Groups.

Engineers Without Borders – USA (EWB–USA) is a non-profit humanitarian organization. It represents the United States within the larger international Engineers Without Borders in the U.S. It involves the implementation of sustainable engineering projects, while involving and training engineers and engineering students.

A direct shear test is a laboratory or field test used by geotechnical engineers to measure the shear strength properties of soil or rock material, or of discontinuities in soil or rock masses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Baptiste Bélanger</span> French mathematician

Jean-Baptiste Charles Joseph Bélanger was a French applied mathematician who worked in the areas of hydraulics and hydrodynamics. He was a professor at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, École Polytechnique and École des Ponts et Chaussées in France. In hydraulic engineering, he is often credited improperly for the application of the momentum principle to a hydraulic jump in a rectangular open channel in 1828. His true contribution in 1828 was the development of the backwater equation for gradually varied flows in open channels and the application of the momentum principle to the hydraulic jump flow in 1838.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">École nationale supérieure des mines de Saint-Étienne</span>

École nationale supérieure des mines de Saint-Étienne, also called École des Mines de Saint-Étienne or simply Mines Saint-Étienne and commonly abbreviated EMSE is a prestigious French graduate engineering school training engineers and carrying out industry-oriented research. Its function is to support the development of its students and of companies through a range of courses and fields of research, from the initial training of generalist engineers ingénieurs civils des mines, to PhD teaching; from material sciences to micro-electronics via process engineering, mechanics, the environment, civil engineering, finance, computer science and health engineering.

Charbel Farhat is the Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, where from 2008 to 2023, he chaired the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. From 2022 to 2023, he chaired this department as the inaugural James and Anna Marie Spilker Chair of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is also Professor in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, and Director of the Stanford-King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Center of Excellence for Aeronautics and Astronautics. From 2017 to 2023, he served on the Space Technology Industry-Government-University Roundtable; from 2015 to 2019, he served on the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB); from 2008 to 2018, he served on the United States Bureau of Industry and Security's Emerging Technology and Research Advisory Committee (ETRAC) at the United States Department of Commerce; and from 2007 to 2018, he served as the Director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center at Stanford University. He was designated by the US Navy recruiters as a Primary Key-Influencer and flew with the Blue Angels during Fleet Week 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franz Pacher</span>

Franz Pacher was an Austrian civil engineer and a pioneer of modern tunneling. He is one of three men who are considered to be the chief developers of the New Austrian Tunneling method (NATM).

The term Engineers Without Borders is used by a number of non-governmental organizations in various countries to describe their activity based on engineering and oriented to international development work. All of these groups work worldwide to serve the needs of disadvantaged communities and people through engineering projects. Many EWB national groups are developed independently from each other, and so they are not all formally affiliated with each other, and their level of collaboration and organizational development varies. The majority of the EWB/ISF organizations are strongly linked to academia and to students, with many of them being student-led.

The shear strength of a discontinuity in a soil or rock mass may have a strong impact on the mechanical behavior of a soil or rock mass. The shear strength of a discontinuity is often considerably lower than the shear strength of the blocks of intact material in between the discontinuities, and therefore influences, for example, tunnel, foundation, or slope engineering, but also the stability of natural slopes. Many slopes, natural and man-made, fail due to a low shear strength of discontinuities in the soil or rock mass in the slope. The deformation characteristics of a soil or rock mass are also influenced by the shear strength of the discontinuities. For example, the modulus of deformation is reduced, and the deformation becomes plastic rather than elastic. This may cause, for example, larger settlement of foundations, which is also permanent even if the load is only temporary. Furthermore, the shear strength of discontinuities influences the stress distribution in a soil or rock mass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">École nationale des travaux publics de l'État</span> French engineering school

The École nationale des travaux publics de l'État or ENTPE is an engineering school part of the French Grandes Écoles founded in 1954 in Paris by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport and located since 1976 in Lyon Metropolitan Area (Vaulx-en-Velin). The main vocation of ENTPE is to train engineers who will serve as technical managers within the French civil service into the State Public Works Engineering Corps or "Ingénieurs des Travaux Publics de l'Etat (ITPE)", even though nowadays half of the students are intended for the private sector, in particular in large French companies in the construction or transport sectors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Lorraine</span> Multi-campus public university in Lorraine, France

The University of Lorraine, abbreviated as UL, is a public research university based in Lorraine, Grand Est region, France. It was created on 1 January 2012, by the merger of Henri Poincaré University, Nancy 2 University, Paul Verlaine University – Metz and the National Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine (INPL). It aimed to unify the main colleges of the Lorraine region. The merger process started in 2009 with the creation of a Pôle de recherche et d'enseignement supérieur (PRES) and was completed in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">École nationale supérieure de l'énergie, l'eau et l'environnement</span>

The École nationale supérieure de l'énergie, l'eau et l'environnement(Ense3) is one of the engineering schools of the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble. As a grande école, students are admitted through a nationwide competitive examination. It was formed by the merger of the École nationale supérieure d'hydraulique et de mécanique de Grenoble (ENSHM) and the École nationale supérieure d'ingénieurs électriciens de Grenoble (ENSIEG).

Qian Qihu is a Chinese military engineer. He is a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and winner of the Highest Science and Technology Award.

The École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie is a French grande école, located in Nancy, Eastern France, part of the University of Lorraine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Pyrak-Nolte</span> American geophysicist

Laura J. Pyrak-Nolte is an American geophysicist who is Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University. She is the former President of the International Society of Porous Media and former President of the American Rock Mechanics Association. In 2020 Pyrak-Nolte was awarded the Society of Exploration Geophysicists Reginald Fessenden Award. She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geological engineering</span>

Geological engineering is a discipline of engineering concerned with the application of geological science and engineering principles to fields, such as civil engineering, mining, environmental engineering, and forestry, among others. The work of geological engineers often directs or supports the work of other engineering disciplines such as assessing the suitability of locations for civil engineering, environmental engineering, mining operations, and oil and gas projects by conducting geological, geoenvironmental, geophysical, and geotechnical studies. They are involved with impact studies for facilities and operations that affect surface and subsurface environments. The engineering design input and other recommendations made by geological engineers on these projects will often have a large impact on construction and operations. Geological engineers plan, design, and implement geotechnical, geological, geophysical, hydrogeological, and environmental data acquisition. This ranges from manual ground-based methods to deep drilling, to geochemical sampling, to advanced geophysical techniques and satellite surveying. Geological engineers are also concerned with the analysis of past and future ground behaviour, mapping at all scales, and ground characterization programs for specific engineering requirements. These analyses lead geological engineers to make recommendations and prepare reports which could have major effects on the foundations of construction, mining, and civil engineering projects. Some examples of projects include rock excavation, building foundation consolidation, pressure grouting, hydraulic channel erosion control, slope and fill stabilization, landslide risk assessment, groundwater monitoring, and assessment and remediation of contamination. In addition, geological engineers are included on design teams that develop solutions to surface hazards, groundwater remediation, underground and surface excavation projects, and resource management. Like mining engineers, geological engineers also conduct resource exploration campaigns, mine evaluation and feasibility assessments, and contribute to the ongoing efficiency, sustainability, and safety of active mining projects

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yossef H. Hatzor</span> Israeli academic

Yossef H. Hatzor is an Israeli Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). He holds the Dr. Sam and Edna Lemkin Chair in Rock mechanics, and a joint appointment with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at BGU.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Nomination for Manuel Rocha Medal, Brief CV of Bernard Amadei" (PDF). www.isrm.net. International Society for Rock Mechanics. 1984. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 28, 2006. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  2. University of Colorado Boulder, Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering Department. "Faculty biography". ceae.colorado.edu. Archived from the original on June 9, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. École nationale supérieure de géologie. "History of ENSG". www.ensg.inpl-nancy.fr (in French). Archived from the original on December 10, 2007. Retrieved April 22, 2009.
  4. Marlow, Jeffrey. (December 11, 2012) The Promise and Pitfalls of Science Diplomacy. Wired Magazine.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Rubin, Debra K. (March 30, 2009). "Award of Excellence: Academic ignites engineering talent to drive levele of needed change". Engineering News-Record . 262 (10). New York: McGraw-Hill: 24–31. ISSN   0891-9526. Archived from the original on May 26, 2011. Retrieved April 19, 2009. Second page; archived from the original on April 22, 2009.
  6. Michels, Spencer (December 7, 2007). "Engineers Lend Technical Aid to Developing Countries". The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer . Public Broadcasting Service. Archived from the original on December 1, 2008. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
  7. "ISRM: The Rocha Medal". www.isrm.net. International Society for Rock Mechanics. Archived from the original on January 14, 2008. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  8. The Heinz Awards, Bernard Amadei profile
  9. ASCE, 2009 Distinguished Members Archived 2009-11-29 at the Wayback Machine .
  10. National Academy of Construction, Member Page, Bernard Amadei. The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 2013.
  11. Ashoka, Bernard Amadei. 2009.