Dame Sarah Marcella Springman DBE FREng (born 26 December 1956) 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. [1]
Born in London in 1956, Springman was educated at Wycombe Abbey, where she was later a governor from 1993 to 1996. [2] [3] She studied engineering sciences at Cambridge University (Bachelor level) from 1975 to 1978 [4] and returned for a MPhil in soil mechanics in 1983. She carried on her doctoral research in soil-structure interaction, earning her doctorate between 1984 and 1989. From 1979 to 1983, she worked as an engineer on geotechnical projects in England, Australia, and Fiji (primarily on the Monasavu Dam in Viti Levu), before she became a chartered engineer and Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1983. [5] She is married to Rosie Mayglothling. [6]
Springman was a doctoral student in the Soil Mechanics Group at Cambridge University, and was supervised initially by Mark F. Randolph, until he moved to the University of Western Australia in 1985, who was succeeded by Malcolm Bolton. She was the first female research fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, before becoming a university lecturer in 1990. She has been professor of geotechnical engineering at ETH Zürich since 1997, and was the Deputy Head of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering from 2013 to 2014. [2] [4] She became Rector of ETH Zürich on 1 January 2015. [7]
Supported by various funds to introduce computer aided learning at ETH Zurich, she worked with Les Davison from the University of Western England to improve opportunities for teaching and learning of soil mechanics through the Computer Aided Learning in Civil Engineering (CALICE) [8] project (1999-2006), which was shortlisted for a Medida Prix award in 2002. CALICE was redesigned and extended to become the GeoTechnical Information Platform (GeoTIP) [9] (2005-2020).
The emphasis of Springman's research is on geotechnical modelling of soil structure interaction problems, including design and construction of abutments, pile foundations, reinforced soil, and ground improvement of soft and sensitive soils (e.g. sand compaction piles, dynamic compaction). Springman combines physical modelling in a geotechnical centrifuge with numerical modelling so that the data may be used to develop, calibrate or validate new design methods. At ETH Zürich, her group uses a 2.2-metre (7 ft) drum geotechnical centrifuge to carry out practical studies on a range of geotechnical problems. [4]
Springman is an advocate for access for women to STEM / MINT studies and engages in many events and campaigns to support this. [10]
In March 2021, it was announced that Springman would be the next Principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in succession to Sir Gordon Duff. She took up the position on 1 February 2022. [11] In June 2022, she gave a farewell lecture at the ETH in Zurich. [12]
In addition to being a civil engineer, she represented Great Britain at the elite level in triathlon from 1983 to 1993, competing in the 1990 Commonwealth Games Triathlon in Auckland, New Zealand, and winning twenty elite European Triathlon Union (ETU) Championship medals in triathlon and duathlon. [13]
She served as Vice-President of the International Triathlon Union (ITU) from 1992 to 1996, during which time, she played an important role in getting triathlon into the Olympics and establishing it as a recognised sport for the Commonwealth Games. She stepped down as President of British Triathlon on 31 December 2012 after celebrating Team GB's first triathlon medals won at an Olympic Games. She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Sunday Times and Sky Sports Sportswomen of the Year Awards in London in 2013. [14]
She is a member of the International Olympic Committee's Sustainability and Legacy Commission. On 18 August 2016, she was chosen as a presentation official at the Olympic triathlon medal ceremony, at which brothers Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee received gold and silver medals for Team GB in Rio de Janeiro. [15] [16] The International Triathlon Union named her to their Hall of Fame in 2019. [17]
She started rowing in 1994 as part of a Women's Rowing Development Project, sponsored by the ARA (now British Rowing), which was based at Thames Tradesmen Rowing Club, coached by Doug Parnham. Subsequently, she has won medals at the British Rowing Championships for Rob Roy BC in the single and quad sculls and in the Swiss National Rowing Championships for Belvoir RC (Zurich) in the single, quad sculls and women's eight and in European and World Masters Championships in various boat classes. [18] She is a 3-time winner of the Masters CRASH-B World Indoor Rowing sprints over 2000m, [19] [20] [21] and holds World [22] and British [23] indoor rowing records in the 60-69 age group.
Springman was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1997, Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012 [24] [7] and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to engineering and international sports administration. She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Bath, Berne, Sheffield, and Wollongong, Australia, and is an Honorary Fellow of all three of her Cambridge Colleges. [25]
Geotechnical engineering, also known as geotechnics, is the branch of civil engineering and Geological engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. It uses the principles of soil mechanics and rock mechanics to solve its engineering problems. It also relies on knowledge of geology, hydrology, geophysics, and other related sciences.
Karl von Terzaghi was an Austrian mechanical engineer, geotechnical engineer, and geologist known as the "father of soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering".
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.
Ralph Brazelton Peck was a civil engineer specializing in soil mechanics. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1976 "for his development of the science and art of subsurface engineering, combining the contributions of the sciences of geology and soil mechanics with the practical art of foundation design"?
Arthur Casagrande was an American civil engineer born in Austria-Hungary who made important contributions to the fields of engineering geology and geotechnical engineering during its infancy. Renowned for his ingenious designs of soil testing apparatus and fundamental research on seepage and soil liquefaction, he is also credited for developing the soil mechanics teaching programme at Harvard University during the early 1930s that has since been modelled in many universities around the world.
Evelyn L. Hu is the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and of Electrical Engineering at Harvard University. Hu has made major contributions to nanotechnology by designing and creating complex nanostructures. Her work has focused on nanoscale devices made from compound semiconductors and on novel devices made by integrating various materials, both organic and inorganic. She has also created nanophotonic structures that might someday facilitate quantum computing.
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.
Andrew Noel Schofield FRS FREng is a British soil mechanics engineer and an emeritus professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Cambridge.
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
The International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) is an international professional association, presently based in London, representing engineers, academics and contractors involved in geotechnical engineering. It is a federation of 90 member societies representing 91 countries around the world, which together give it a total of some 21,000 individual members. There are also 43 corporate associates from industry. The current ISSMGE President is Dr Marc Ballouz.
J. Carlos Santamarina is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Clough Chair at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA.
Alexander M. Puzrin is professor of geotechnical engineering at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, working in the field of geomechanics.
Thomas William Lambe was an American geotechnical engineer and an emeritus professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jean-Pierre Giroud is a French geotechnical engineer and a pioneer of geosynthetics since 1970. In 1977, he coined the words "geotextile" and "geomembrane", thus initiating the "geo-terminology". He is also a past president of the International Geosynthetics Society, member of the US National Academies, and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.
Jorge G. Zornberg is Professor and Joe J. King Chair in Engineering in the geotechnical engineering program at the University of Texas at Austin. He has over 35 years' experience in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering. He is also one of the pioneers of geosynthetics.
Rolf Peter Brenner was a Swiss civil engineer and geologist specialized in soil mechanics.
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.
Edward Kavazanjian Jr. is an American civil engineer who specializes in geotechnical engineering. He is the Ira A. Fulton Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the Arizona State University School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environmental.
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.
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