George M. Filz, Ph.D., P.E., Dist.M.ASCE, a recognized leader in geotechnical engineering, has been named to the 2017 class of ASCE Distinguished Members for his outstanding contributions to deep soil mixing.
Filz is currently a professor and director of the Center for Geotechnical Practice and Research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). Through his work in research and practice, he has improved design...
Bilal M. Ayyub, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, Dist.M.ASCE, has been honored by ASCE as a Class of 2017 Distinguished Member for his leading contributions in uncertainty and risk analysis for infrastructure resilience and sustainability in a changing climate with life-cycle economics.
Ayyub is one of the world’s leading researchers in risk methods for the protection of critical infrastructure and key resources. His inputs have led to...
Stephen A. Curtis, P.E., D.PE, Dist.M.ASCE, whose career as a practitioner of civil engineering spans 39 years, has been honored as part of ASCE’s 2017 class of Distinguished Members for his prominent contributions to port and harbor engineering and for advancing the profession through leadership of conferences, forensic investigations, and dissemination of those results to the port community.
Curtis exemplifies what all engineers strive to...
Charles Dowding, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE, Dist.M.ASCE, for his decades of vital contribution to geotechnical engineering and engineering education, has been honored as an ASCE Distinguished Member.
Dowding’s insight into frequency response has enabled the discernment of cases of structural distress as apart from that caused solely by environmental effects. Such structures include residential and commercial buildings, buried pipelines, large excavations in rock (including caverns and...
Distinguished Member Joel Ivan Abrams, chairman of the University of Pittsburgh’s civil engineering department for more than 20 years and a past president of ASCE’s Pittsburgh Section, has died at 88.
Abrams, P.E., Dist.M.ASCE, served as department chairman from the mid-1960s through 1987, and was founding director of Pitt’s groundbreaking program in public works. “He was a passionate defender of the value and the transformational...
Distinguished Member Miguel A. Mariño, U.S. representative to the International Association of Hydrological Sciences from 2003 through 2008 and a prolific groundwater hydrology researcher, has died. He was 76.
Mariño was distinguished professor emeritus of hydrologic sciences in the University of California, Davis departments of civil and environmental engineering, and biological and agricultural engineering. The products of Mariño’s research have been adopted around the world,...
Distinguished Member John M. Hanson, nationally renowned as an investigator of high-profile failures of concrete and steel structures, and a former president of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc., has died. He was 84.
Hanson, Ph.D., P.E., NAE, Dist.M.ASCE, retired from WJE’s board of directors in 2014 after a 42-year career with the firm, including serving as president from 1979 through 1992. He managed some of...
Distinguished Member Jacob Dekema, a World War II veteran and former San Diego Section president who supervised the postwar boom of freeway construction in and around San Diego, has died at 101.
As supervisor of the state transportation department’s District 11 from 1955 to 1980, Dekema was able to carry out an early vision for San Diego that shapes it to this day. Family, friends...
Consider it the Hall of Fame of civil engineering. The best of the best.
Distinguished Member status is reserved for the most eminent of civil engineers in the Society. There are only 228 Distinguished Members among the Society’s current membership of over 150,000 people.
Meet the Class of 2017 Distinguished Members, as recently elected by ASCE’s Board of Direction:
• Bilal M. Ayyub, Ph.D., P.E., Dist.M.ASCE; University...
ASCE Distinguished Member Edward Cohen, who oversaw the creation of ASCE 7 and shared in ASCE’s 1987 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement award for restoration of the Statue of Liberty, has died at 96.
Cohen, P.E., NAE, Dist.M.ASCE, was CEO of Ammann & Whitney in New York City from 1977 through 1996, where he spent the majority of his career, rising from associate engineer starting in...
