Fred Yi, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, principal engineer for Mid Pacific Engineering Inc., in Los Angeles, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Yi is a 30-plus-year veteran of geotechnical and geotechnical earthquake engineering, including nine years managing a civil engineering consulting firm in Japan and more than 18 years as geotechnical consulting services in California. He serves in various capacities in geotechnical and geologic project execution – evaluation of liquefaction potential and seismic settlement, static and seismic slope stability analysis, seepage analysis, etc. He provides recommendations for deep foundation, tieback and shoring design, soil nails and other slope stabilization. He is Mid Pacific’s technical source.
Yi has prepared hundreds of OSHPD- and DSA-compliant reports for hospital and school sites throughout California, including Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC), the $1.2 billion Campus Transformation Project. The LLUMC new hospital project is the world’s first true 3D base-isolated new hospital complex, consisting of a 16-story adults’ hospital tower and a 9-story children’s hospital tower. Yi has served as geotechnical engineer of record (GEOR) for this project as well as many OSHPD and DSA projects since 2002.
He has also coauthored a book, “Seismic Design of Substructure” (in Japanese), and authored several papers on liquefaction, seismic settlement and seismic design; developed programs including GeoSuite© and LabSuite©; and developed methods to calculate seismic settlement and lateral spreading. He has worked on projects in Japan and the U.S., among them bridge super-structures, tunnel and vertical earth structures, dams, water and drainage structures, offshore structures, abutments and retaining walls, ground and slope stability, and model tests.
Yi received his B.S. from Tsinghua University and his M.S., with a specialty in Soil Dynamics, from China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research. From there, he spent over two years as a research engineer at China Institute of Water Conservancy and Hydroelectric Power Research in Beijing, before pursuing his Ph.D., with a specialty in geotechnical earthquake engineering, from the University of Tokyo.
