November 2018

Dr. Kerry Rowe was invested into the Order of Canada, Novemver 20th, 2018. Created in 1967, the Order of Canada reconizes outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation. Close to 7000 people from all sectors of society have been invested into the Oder. Those who bear the Order's iconic snowflake insignia have changed our nation's measure of success and, through the sum of their accomplishments, have helped us build a better Canada. 

Full article

November 2018

Dr. Kevin Mumford and his group of graduate students have experiened a rare occurrence in their lab: an artist became part of their research group. This experience was made possible through a partnership with Art the Science. Read more about it here:

Art the Science is Helping to Bridge the Gap between Science and Art, One Artist Residency at a Time (Phase 1)

October 2018

Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos, Cross-Appointed Professor to the Department from the Royal Military College (RMC), is the recipient of this Year’s Class of 1965 Teaching Excellence Award. The purpose of the Teaching Award at RMC is to recognize excellence in teaching and to promote good teaching throughout the University. Each year the students nominate a number of professors for the award. The prize is awarded to the winner in recognition of his/her “exemplary concern for students, dedication to teaching, enthusiasm in lecturing ”and his/her “ability to stimulate learning". Recipients of this Award are held in high esteem by both their students and their colleagues at RMC.

RMC club article

Kingston Whig Standard Article

Queen's article

June 2016

Dr Kerry Rowe was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Western Ontario in the June 17th convocation for Engineering and Dental Students. The abbreviated citation reads
“The Canada Research Chair in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, R. Kerry Rowe is a Civil Engineering professor at Queen’s University. After an eight-year term as Chair of Western’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rowe moved to Queen’s to serve as the Vice-Principal (Research) from 2000-10. An expert in landfill design, contaminant migration and containment of contaminated sites, Rowe is the only Canadian civil engineer to be elected as both a fellow of the Royal Society (U.K.) and as a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. With projects based from the Arctic to Antarctica, his research has impacted regulations around the world.”http://news.westernu.ca/2016/06/rowe-use-critical-thinking-knowledge/

April 2016

Dr Ian Moore delivered the 2016 John Adjeleian Lecture of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carleton University. His lecture titled “What Lies Beneath – Working Towards a Happy Ending to the Deteriorated Pipe Horror Story” presented research results from his studies over the past decade with graduate students and other collaborators, assessing the remaining stability of deteriorated pipes and developing design procedures for their repair and replacement. This distinguished lecture series is named in honour of Professor John Adjeleian, a former head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the structural consultant responsible for many landmark buildings in the Capital Region.

February 2016

Dr Kerry Rowe has been elected as a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Engineering. As explained on the Academy’s website, it “is made up of more than 2200 peer-elected members and foreign members, senior professionals in business, academia, and government who are among the world’s most accomplished engineers. They provide the leadership and expertise for numerous projects focused on the relationships between engineering, technology, and the quality of life”. With just 231 members from outside the US, Dr. Rowe is one of only two Canadian civil engineers listed as foreign members.

Full article here.

January 2016

Dr. Delwyn Fredlund, OC, P.Eng of Golder Associates (and Professor Emeritus of the University of Saskatchewan) has commenced a two month visit to the GeoEngineering Centre at Queen’s - RMC, funded as part of the Visitor Program generously funded by Golder Associates. During his visit to Queen’s, Dr. Fredlund will present seminars and lectures, engage in research discussions with faculty members and graduate students, and pursue his goal of bringing unsaturated soil mechanics into routine geotechnical engineering practice.

The Visitor Program is a partnership between Golder Associates and the GeoEngineering Centre that commenced in 2013, with the objective of bringing scholars and Golder personnel to Queen’s to build further our research collaborations. Dr. Fredlund has been widely recognized for his pioneering work in the area of unsaturated soil mechanics, and his visit to Kingston is an outstanding opportunity for our graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows studying in the Departments of Civil and Geological Engineering at Queen’s and Civil Engineering at the RMC.

November 2015

This past week, post graduate students from the Royal Military College of Canada as well as Queen’s University had the pleasure of taking part in a site visit of the currently ongoing TTC Subway works on the Toronto-York-Spadina-Subway-Extension (TYSSE) line. The students, being part of the GeoEngineering Centre at Queen’s / RMC, have a focus and interest in the tunneling and mining applications of Civil Engineering. As such, they were extremely excited for this opportunity to witness a real-life application of the topics and materials that they study and research on at RMC and Queen’s. RMC associate professor Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos was the organizer of the field trip, and joined the students on the visit along with Queen’s University professor Dr. Mark Diederichs. full article

Congratulations to Fady Abdelaal, Kerry Rowe, and Richard Brachman, for their paper "Brittle rupture of an aged HPDE geomembrane at local gravel indentations under simulated field conditions". Receiving an honorable mention and recognized as "one of the best papers published in Geosynthetics International in 2014". This marks the second year in a row that the same three were authors of one of the best papers published in Geosynthetics International as their paper last year was selected as the best paper published in 2013.

Dr Carlos Santamarina, Professor at Georgia Tech., delivered the Victor Milligan lecture on February 11th. His lecture titled “Energy Geotechnical – Enabling New Insights into Soil Behaviour” was the 50th Terzaghi Lecture of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Dan Jones won first place in the "Best Student Paper" competition held by the North America Geosynthetics Society at the Geosynthetics 2015 conference held in Portland, Oregon. The competition is held every two years and Queen's students have been a consistent winners every year that the completion has been held since 2005 (and had a second place position in 2003). Congratulations to Dan for maintaining the excellent record with his presentation "Hydration of Geosynthetic Clay Liners in Antarctica". The written paper is co-authored by Dr. Kerry Rowe(QU) and Dr. Rebecca McWatters (Australian Antarctic Division).

GeoEngineering Centre's work making a ‘real impact’ interview with Kerry Rowe in Queen's Gazette

November 2014

The university recognized the 2014 Queen’s Prize for Excellence in Research recipients at fall convocation ceremonies November 18.

“Queen’s is proud to celebrate the achievements of five outstanding members of our research community,” says Steven Liss, Vice-Principal (Research). “It’s important to recognize the broad range of academic subjects our winners represent, which demonstrates the span of research excellence at Queen’s.”

Dr. Moore (Civil Engineering) received the award for his achievements in fundamental and applied engineering research and for his unequalled advances in the understanding and design of buried pipes. Dr. Moore is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and in 2002 he became the second civil engineer to be awarded a Killam Research Fellowship.

Fady Abdelaal

October 2014

Congratulations to Kerry Rowe, Fady Abdelaal, and Richard Brachman for achieving the Best Paper Award in Geosynthetics International for 2013.

Rowe, R.K., Abdelaal, F.B. & Brachman, R.W.I. (2013). Antioxidant depletion of HDPE geomembrane with sand protection layer. Geosynthetics International, 20, No. 2, 73–89.

10th Victor Milligan lecture
On October 22, 2014, Professor Guy Houlsby delivered the Tenth Victor Milligan Lecture. Guy Houlsby has been Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Oxford since 1991, and was Head of the Department of Engineering Science from 2009 to 2014. His main research is in geotechnical engineering, and he is an internationally recognised expert on offshore foundations, where he has a particular interest in the understanding of the behaviour of shallow foundations. Much of his recent work has been applied to foundations for offshore wind turbines. He has also carried out extensive work in theoretical soil mechanics and plasticity theory. He has published over 200 scientific papers and is a past Editor of the ICE’s journal “Géotechnique”. Recently he has developed a particular interest in renewable energy, and has a rapidly expanding research group working on tidal power. He is a Director of the spinout company Kepler Energy Ltd, developing tidal power systems using the novel "Transverse Horizontal Axis Water Turbine" (THAWT). He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Royal Academy of Engineering. 

Funding for the Victor Milligan Lecture is provided by Golder Associates, in memory of the late Victor Milligan, one of the founders of the company, the first Editor of the Canadian Geotechnical Journal, and a Terzaghi Lecturer for the American Society for Civil Engineering. Professor Houlsby’s Milligan Lecture “Interactions in Offshore Foundations Design” was the 54th Rankine Lecture prepared for the British Geotechnical Association and presented on the 19th of March, 2014. 

Congratulations to Richard Bathurst for his paper that won Honourable Mention for Best Paper Award in Geotextiles and Geomembranes for 2013.

Santos, E.C.G., Palmeira, E.M and Bathurst, R.J. 2013. Behaviour of a geogrid reinforced wall built with recycled construction and demolition waste backfill on a collapsible foundation. Geotextiles and Geomembranes, Vol. 39, pp. 9 -19.

September 2014

At the CGS conference in Regina, the excellence of contributions made by centre faculty and students was acknowledged in various ways.

Doctoral student Matthew Perras received the A.G. Stermac Award for service to the Canadian Geotechnical Society.

Mohamed Hosney and Kerry Rowe received honourable mentions for winning the 2014 R.M. Quigley Award for their paper in the Canadian Geotechnical Journal titled: “Changes in geosynthetic clay liner (GCL) properties after 2 years in a cover over arsenic-rich tailings”.

Dan Jones received 2nd prize in the best graduate student award for his presentation “Evaluation of Geosynthetics for Hydrocarbon Containment in Antarctica” (advisor Kerry Rowe).

Undergraduate students Kevin Azocar, Derek Ernst, Hugh Gillen, and Tim Packulak received 2nd place for an undergraduate student group for their report “Design of an Underground Light Rail Transit Station and Tunnel Network in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: A detailed design of Rideau Station segment of the Confederation Line” (advisor Mark Diederichs)

Dr. Richard J. Bathurst was elected President-elect of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) for the two-year term commencing January 2015. He also delivered the plenary opening Giroud Lecture at the 10 International Geosynthetics Conference in Berlin. The Giroud Lecture is the top invited lecture in the field of geosynthetics and is named in honour of Dr. J.P. Giroud who is recognized as the father of the geosynthetics discipline.

At the same conference he was awarded the International Geosynthetics Society Service Award for his long-term service as editor of the journal Geosynthetics International.

Dr. R. Kerry Rowe received the same award for his long-term service as editor of the journal Geotextiles and Geomembranes. The editors of the geosynthetics professions two top journals are both members of the Geo-Engineering Centre at Queen’s-RMC.

June 2014

We are pleased to announce that Mr. Prabeen Joshi has won the 2014 local CGS Kingston Section Member in Training/Student Competition. This is an annual CGS Kingston Competition that is open to all students and young members in training (MIT) within industry in the geotechnical field in Kingston. The prize consists of financial support in order to off-set the costs to attend the annual CGS conference. This year’s conference will take place in Regina, SK from September 29 - October 1, 2014. Congratulations to Mr. Prabeen Joshi and we wish you continued success.

 
Yan Yu 
 
Kerry Rowe

May 2014

Congratulations to Kerry Rowe and Yan Yu who have won this year’s Donald R. Stanley Award for their paper " A practical technique for estimating service life of MSW leachate collection systems", which was published in the Canadian Geothechnical Journal, Volume 50 pp. 165-178.

And:

The 2013 Thomas C. Keefer Medal Honorable Mention (runner-up)
Yu, Y. and Rowe, R.K. 2012. Modelling leachate-induced clogging of porous media. Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 49(8): 877-890.

The Awards Gala took place in Halifax on May 30.

Prabeen Joshi

March 2014

Congratulations to Mr. Prabeen Joshi who has won the 38th Annual Michael Bozozuk Student Forum, a competition for graduate students at Carleton, Ottawa, Queen`s and RMC. Prabeen’s presentation titled “Performance of Geosynthetic Clay Liner Overlaps Under Non-Uniform Stresses” is a part of his doctoral research work with Dr. Kerry Rowe and Dr. Richard Brachman, examining physical and hydraulic performance of modern municipal solid waste landfill and mine tailings liners.

January 2014

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Mike Hulley from the Civil Engineering Department at Royal Military College as a Research Director of the GeoEngineering Centre. Since completing his Ph.D. in 1991, Mike has been actively engaged in the consulting engineering industry. Mike’s experience includes opening and managing offices, providing senior technical direction, managing complex environmental projects, authoring numerous engineering reports, and being an active managing partner of a successful engineering consulting firm. Mike is a technical leader in the field of water resources and has led water resources projects throughout the US and Canada. Presently, Mike is an associate professor in the faculty of civil engineering at the Royal Military College of Canada and a partner of Profound Engineering Limited

Mike specializes in the development and application of custom computer models in support of a variety of water quantity and quality investigations. His current focus is on the development of computer-models addressing regional and local groundwater management, saltwater intrusion, low-impact development measures for stormwater management, receiving water quality, and river hydrodynamics. In addition to Mike’s strong industrial experience, he is actively developing research projects addressing low-impact-development measures, climate change, surface water quality, water and wastewater treatment, and groundwater modelling.

Mike is a Designated Consulting Engineer and licensed professional engineer in Ontario and co-owner of Profound Engineering Limited.

November 2013

Dr. Yoshi Miyata and Dr. Richard J. Bathurst are the recipients of 2013 Technical Achievement Award of the Japanese Chapter of the International Geosynthetics Society for their invited paper "Geogrid pullout model for limit state design of reinforced soil walls", Geosynthetics Technical Information, Japan Chapter of IGS, Vol. 28, No. 2, 8 p. published in 2012.

October 2013

CGS recognizes GeoEngineering Centre Members and students at GeoMontreal

Several members of the GeoEngineering Centre and their students were recognized at CGS events held in conjunction with GeoMontreal, the 66th annual conference of the Canadian Geotechnical Society.

PhD student Ryley Beddoe received the first prize for best Graduate Student Paper in 2013 for her paper titled “Physical modeling of rainfall induced landslides”. She gave a presentation of her paper during the morning plenary session on the last day of the conference.

The runner-up winner of the Undergraduate Report Award (Individual) prize was Dale Brunton (Civil Engineering) for his paper “Characterizing the Instability Line of Silica Sand as a Potential Landslide Triggering Mechanism”.
The first prize winners of the Undergraduate Report Award (Group Category) were Gary Cui, Jessica Galavan, Duncan Leung, and Matthew Lloyd (Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering) for their paper, “Holmestrand Underground Rail Cavern”.

Quigley Award Honourable Mentions for the best paper in the Canadian Geotechnical Journal in 2012: First Honourable Mention went to R. Kerry Rowe, Melissa Chappel, Richard Brachman, and Andy Take for their paper “Field study of wrinkles in a geomembrane at a composite liner test site” and the Second Honourable Mention went to R. Kerry Rowe for his paper “Short- and long-term leakage through composite liners”.

Finally, Jean Hutchinson was the recipient of the CGS Thomas Roy Award. The Thomas Roy Award is presented to honour an individual for his or her excellence in the field of engineering geology OR to a group of individuals for a paper that makes a significant contribution to the advancement of engineering geology in Canada. Thomas Roy was one of Canada’s earliest geologists and civil engineers whose work formed the foundation for the profession in Canada. 

*****

In other news, the Editorial Board Members of the journal Geosynthetics International voted the following paper 

Chappel, M. J., Rowe, R. K., Brachman, R. W. I. & Take, W. A. (2012). A comparison of geomembrane wrinkles for nine field cases. Geosynthetics International, 19, No. 6, 453–469.

as the best Geosynthetics International paper published in 2012.

June 2013

NSERC has announced the award of a Discovery Accelerator Supplement to Dr.R.J. Bathurst who is a member of the GeoEngineering Centre. He joins Drs Jean Hutchinson and Kerry Rowe who received the same award last year. These highly competitive awards, are given to about 1 in 25 discovery grant award holders nationally and are awarded to proposals that suggest high-risk, novel or potentially transformative research that could contribute to groundbreaking advances in the area of study. The GeoEngineering team has been exceptionally successful receiving these funds since the accelerator supplement program was initiated six years ago. A total of seven of these awards have been made to our sixteen team members, a success rate that is almost ten times the national average.

Mr. Jeff Oke, supervised by Drs Mark Dietrich and Nicholas Vlachopoulos, won the CGS Kingston Section Competition. He will receive free registration and $900 support to attend GeoMontreal 2013 this fall. Congratulations Jeff!

May 2013

SCIMAGO has recently released their new journal ranking system based on the Scopus database. This includes assessment of the 96 journals in the category Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology.

This ranking is based on ‘SJR’, a new assessment measure that uses average weighted citations over a three year period, and which omits self cites. The listing indicates that the top five journals ranked for their impact and influence are

1. Geotextiles and Geomembranes (edited by centre member Dr Kerry Rowe)
2. Geotechnique
3. Geosynthetics International (edited by centre member Dr Richard Bathurst)
4. Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 
5. Canadian Geotechnical Journal (edited by centre member Dr Ian Moore)

These five journals are ranked ahead of the remaining journals in this category, including others widely acknowledged for their excellence. Other members of the GeoEngineering Centre also sit on the boards of these and other journals ranked highly within the SCIMAGO assessment.

Queen’s University professor Kerry Rowe (Civil Engineering and GeoEngineering Centre at Queen’s-RMC) has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom. Dr. Rowe is one of only four Canadians, and the world’s only civil engineer, elected to the prestigious institution in 2013.

Read full article on Queen's web site

And on the Royal Society web site

Professor Jean-Louis Briaud, President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering has announced that Dr. Greg Siemenshas been selected as one of just three recipients of the ISSMGE Young Member Award. In announcing the award, Dr. Briaud indicated that Greg "was selected after an international competition of some of the best that this world has to offer". This international recognition in GeoEngineering is awarded to up to three young members in recognition of outstanding contributions to the development of geotechnical engineering through scientific and technological work. The award will be made in Paris at the occasion of the 18th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering.

April 2013

Dr. Yoshi Miyata and Dr. Richard J. Bathurst are the recipients of The Japanese Geotechnical Society Best Research Paper Award 2012 for their paper "Reliability analysis of soil-geogrid pullout models in Japan", which was published in the August 2012 issue of Soils and Foundations.

March 2013

The Engineering Institute of Canada has awarded the John B. Stirling Medal to Dr Ian Moore. In its press release, the Institute indicates that this is one of five senior awards of the EIC that recognize “outstanding achievement or service to the engineering profession". In particular, the Stirling medal is "for leadership and distinguished service at the national level within the Institute and/or its Member Societies". It recognizes Ian’s contributions to the national society through editorship of the Canadian Foundation Engineering Manual published in 2006, his term as Vice-President Technical of the Canadian Geotechnical Society in 2003 and 2004, and his contribution as founding chair of the Kingston Chapter of the Canadian Geotechnical Society.

February 2013

Fawzy Ezzein and Dr. Richard J. Bathurst are the recipients of the 2013 ASTM Hogentogler Award for their paper  “A Transparent Sand for Geotechnical Laboratory Modeling,” that appeared in the November 2011 edition of the ASTM Geotechnical Testing Journal.

January 2013

Dr. Richard J. Bathurst began his 2013-2014 term as President of the Canadian Geotechnical Society.  He was also awarded the 2014 Giroud Lecture by the International Geosynthetics Society which will be delivered at the opening session of the 10th International Geosynthetics Conference to be held in Berlin in 2014.

Drs Ian Moore and Richard Brachman, in collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Civil Engineering, Drs Yves Filion and Neil Hoult, have been awarded $1.2M for a project titled "Deterioration and long-term performance of buried infrastructure" from the Canada Foundation for Innovation in the recent Leading Edge Fund competition. The funding will be used to support $3.0M upgrades to the testing facilities for buried infrastructure at the GeoEngineering Laboratory at West Campus.

That facility is the leading such experimental facility internationally, and has been used to undertake hundreds of tests involving more than 30 graduate and undergraduate students since the laboratory was commissioned in 2004 (constructed using earlier funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Province of Ontario). The new capabilities will include simulation of deep burial loading on pipes of up to 2.5m diameter, and studies of the effects of pipe corrosion and backfill erosion on the remaining strength of deteriorated pipe infrastructure.

December 2012

A successful graduate field course was conducted from 2-9 December 2012 in collaboration with the Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering Department at Queen’s University, the National Technical University of Athens and the University of Thessaloniki (Northern Greece).  The course was organized by Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos and also directed by Dr. Paul Marinos from NTUA who is a prominent International figure in the field and  past president of the IAEG.
The 1 week course involved circumnavigating Greece and visiting tunnelling sites (primarily road, rail, and gold mines) throughout the country in limestones, clays, gneiss, molassic rocks, flysch, phyllites, ophiolites, basement schists and fault zones.   The tunnels were at various stages of construction and the student work along the way included geological model construction, seismic hazard prediction, ground classification and tunnel design with student presentations in the evenings among other deliverables.

November 2012

Dr. Kerry Rowe is awarded with Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee award. Read full article here

October 2012

Dr Ian Moore delivered the opening keynote lecture at the 3rd International Conference on Pipelines and Trenchless Technology in Wuhan, China, on Saturday October 20th, a conference jointly supported by the ASCE and the China University of Geosciences. His presentation, 'Large scale laboratory experiments to advance the design and performance of buried pipe infrastructure' described experiments in the Geoengineering Laboratory developed at West Campus in collaboration with Dr Richard Brachman, seminal studies conducted by current and former graduate students Mohamed Almahakeri, David Becerril, John Cholewa, and Andrea Lougheed.

Dr. R.J. Bathurst and former graduate student Dr. Bing Huang are the recipients of the 2011 Best Paper Award of the journal Geotextiles and Geomembranes for their paper “Analysis of installation damage tests for LRFD calibration of reinforced soil structures, Geotextiles and Geomembranes, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 323-334”. The paper was co-authored with Mr Tony Allen of the Washington State Department of Transportation State Materials Laboratory.

R. Kerry Rowe, professor and Canada Research Chair in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering, GeoEngineering Centre at Queen-RMC and Department of Civil Engineering, was recently honoured by the Indian Geotechnical Society by being invited to present their most distinguished lecture, the IGS-Ferroco Tezaghi Oration.  This lecture, which honours the worlds most distinguished geotechnical engineers, is presented every two years.  Rowe’s lecture, presented to a packed auditorium at IIT Delhi in New Delhi on 5th October 2012,    was on “Design and construction of barrier systems to minimize environmental impacts due to municipal solid waste leachate and gas”.

At the Annual Canadian Geotechnical Conference in Winnipeg, the R.M. Quigley Award of the Canadian Geotechnical Society was presented to former GeoEng graduate student Dr Pete Quinn together with Drs Mark Diederichs, Kerry Rowe and Jean Hutchinson for the paper titled "A new model for large landslides in sensitive clay using a fracture mechanics approach" published in the Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Vol 48(No 8): pp. 1151-1162. This manuscript was selected by the Associate Editors as the best of the 148 papers published in the journal during 2011.

August 2012

Fawzy Ezzein (RMC Civil) and Fady Abdelaal (Queen’s Civil) placed 1st and 2nd (respectively) at this year’s National Canadian Geotechnical Society’s (CGS) 2012 Graduate Student Competition. This is quite an outstanding accomplishment. The competition entailed a 15 minute presentation recorded in front of a live technical audience including a question and answer period. There were 10 graduate presentation entries from multiple universities spanning the country.

Along with the accolades, the 1st Place Award includes a $750 honorarium and a certificate, one-year’s membership in CGS, free conference registration, and an opportunity to present at the Annual Conference to be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The 2nd Place Award includes a $500 honorarium and a certificate, one-year’s membership in CGS and free conference registration to GeoManitoba 2012.

Graduate Student Presentation Award – 1st Prize
Name:   Fawzy Ezzein
Title:  A Transparent Granular Sand for Geotechnical Modelling
Department:  Civil Engineering, Royal Military College of Canada
Advisor:  Dr. Richard Bathurst

Graduate Student Presentation Award – 2nd Prize
Name:   Fady Abdelaal 
Title:  Cracking of HDPE Geomembranes
Department:  Civil Engineering, Queen’s University
Advisor:  Dr. Kerry Rowe

June 2012

Kerry Rowe has received extraordinary recognition from the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering and Technical Committee 215 on Environmental Geotechnics, who have established the R. Kerry Rowe Lecture, "in recognition of Professor Rowe's outstanding impact in the field of Environmental Geotechnics and excellence in scholarly achievements". The lecture is to be given at the opening plenary session of the Environmental Geotechnics Congress held every 4 years. The inaugural lecture is scheduled to be given at the 18th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering to be held in Paris, France, in September 2013 and at the 7th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics to be held in Melbourne, Australia, in November 2014. The lecture will be delivered by a person "having made a distinguished recent contribution to the theory and practice of Environmental Geotechnics".

NSERC has announced the award of Discovery Accelerator Supplements to two members of the GeoEngineering Centre, Drs Jean Hutchinson and Kerry Rowe. These highly competitive awards, given to just 4 of the 38 scholars at Queen's receiving new Discovery Grants this year (and about 1 in 25 discovery grant award holders nationally), are awarded to proposals that suggest high-risk, novel or potentially transformative research that could contribute to groundbreaking advances in the area of study. The GeoEngineering team has been exceptionally successful receiving these funds since the accelerator supplement program was initiated six years ago. A total of six of these awards have been made to our sixteen team members, a success rate that is almost ten times the national average. See http://www.queensu.ca/news/articles/queens-researchers-receive-34-million-nserc-funding for further information.

May 2012

The Engineering Institute of Canada has announced that it is awarding Dr Kerry Rowe the institute`s highest honour, the Sir John Kennedy Medal. Their award citation notes that "he is known for his seminal and outstanding contributions to the engineering science and practice of Geoengineering. Kerry Rowe has led international research efforts in both Geosynthetics and Landfill Engineering, transforming practice in Canada to the highest level internationally, and reaching across boundaries to guide the development and implementation of engineering science on these topics in many countries. His extraordinary professional contributions included the training of many high-level technical experts, his leadership as President of the Canadian Geotechnical Society and the Engineering Institute of Canada, and his work as one of the leading researchers in the country. Kerry Rowe has been recognized with the highest honours for Geotechnical Engineering scholarship internationally (the Rankine Lecture), for Engineering in Canada (the Killam Prize) and beyond (as an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering)....we take great pride in honouring this distinguished Canadian engineer, researcher and teacher with the Institute’s most senior honour".

It is also highlighted on the Queen's website

March 2012

Dr. R.J. Bathurst and former graduate student Dr Bing Huang are the recipients of the 2011 Best Paper Award of the international journal Georisk for their paper titled “Load and resistance factor design (LRFD) calibration for steel grid reinforced soil walls”. The paper was co-authored with Mr Tony Allen of the Washington State Department of Transportation State Materials Laboratory.

Mr Mohamed Almahakeri was awarded the Michael E. Argent Memorial Scholarship by the North American Society of Trenchless Technology at the 21st Annual North American NoDig Conference in Nashville. Mohamed is studying the impact of soil moving past buried flexible pressure pipes as part of his PhD, and for the past two years has been President of the Queen’s University Student Chapter of the North American Society of Trenchless Technology.

February 2012

The Canada Council of the Arts has announced the latest winners of the Killam Research Fellowships. Dr Kerry Rowe, one of seven Canadian scholars to be supported by this program during 2012-2014. Commenting on Dr Rowe’s selection the Canada Council of the Arts explained that “Kerry Rowe will examine the effectiveness of the modern barriers systems used in landfills to contain contaminants of emerging concern, like bisphenol-A, and develop guidelines for the design of barrier systems and landfill operations that will provide long-term environmental protection. He has received many awards and accolades for his research, including being elected a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering UK in 2010. His methods have been adopted by regulatory authorities in Canada and around the world. The Fellowships, among Canada’s most distinguished research awards, provide $70,000 a year for two years to each of the researchers. They enable researchers to be released from teaching and administrative duties so that they can pursue independent research”.

October 2011

Mr. Jeffrey Oke, PhD candidate with supervisors Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos and Dr. Mark Diederichs, won second place at the Canadian Geotechnical Society’s Graduate Student Presentation Competition.

A highlight of the Canadian Geotechnical Conference each year is the Canadian Geotechnical Colloquium. This keynote lecture is given by a member of the society between the ages of 35 and 40, who is funded to prepare a state of the art address and article on a topic involving new or changing practice. At the Canadian Geotechnical Conference banquet it was announced that Dr Andy Take has been selected to give the 2012 Canadian Geotechnical Colloquium at next year's conference in Winnipeg. Andy is being funded by the Canadian Foundation for Geotechnique (the non-profit charity that supports this event) to prepare his colloquium titled "Looking Deeper: Harnessing the Power of Digital Image Analysis to Gain New Insights into Geotechnical Failure Processes". Andy joins other members of the centre who have given past Colloquia: Kerry Rowe in 1987, Bernie Kueper in 1997, Ian Moore in 1998, Mark Diederichs in 2003, and Richard Brachman in 2006.
 
Congratulations to former graduate student Heather McLeod as well as Richard Brachman, Ian Moore and Andy Take who were awarded the R.M. Quigley Award of the Canadian Geotechnical Society at the Pan Am conference for their paper titled “Brachman, R.W.I., McLeod, H.A., Moore, I.D. and Take, A.W. 2010. Three-dimensional ground displacements from static pipe bursting in stiff clay, Canadian Geotechnical J., Vol. 47(4), pp. 439-450”. Congratulations also to Queen's Alum Paul Dittrich, Kerry Rowe, Dennis Becker and Kwan Yee Lo who received an honourable mention for the Quigley award for their paper "Influence of exsolved gases on slope performance at the Sarnia approach cut to the St. Clair Tunnel”, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Volume 47, No. 9, pp. 971–98. The Quigley award recognizes the best papers in the Canadian Geotechnical Journal each year, as judged by members of the Editorial board (without the Editor!). Formerly called the 'Best paper award', it was renamed in 1995 to honour Bob Quigley, a past Editor of the journal, whose high standards and breadth of geotechnical and geoscience scholarship and practice set exemplary benchmarks for the Canadian and international communities.

September 2011

Dr Scott Sloan delivered the fifth Victor Milligan Lecture titled "Geotechnical stability analysis" on September 20. Scott Sloan is the Laureate Professor and Director of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Geotechnical Science and Engineering at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, and was the 2011 Rankine Lecturer for the British Geotechnical Association. Funding for the Victor Milligan Lecture series is generously provided by Golder Associates.

Congratulations to Greg Siemens and Richard Bathurst for their Honourable Mention for the best paper published in Geotextiles and Geomembranes in 2010. The paper "Numerical parametric investigation of infiltration in one-dimensional sand–geotextile columns" , is in Volume 28, Number 5, on pages 460-474 . Geotextiles and Geomembranes is the geoengineering journal with the highest impact factor, and published 50 articles during 2010.

August 2011

Graduate Field Trip: Engineering Geology and Geomechanics

Geological Engineering is a challenging discipline combining an understanding of the geological makeup and history of an area with engineering skills to remediate natural hazards, to manage earth resources and to build with, on, over and through earth materials. Twelve graduate students from the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering at Queen’s spent much of this past June travelling over 3300km through Switzerland, Italy, France, Austria and Germany, visiting and studying key geo-engineering project sites, numerous natural hazard examples and learning about Alpine geology. This technical tour, supervised by Queen’s Professors Mark Diederichs and Jean Hutchinson, was part of a graduate field course related to engineering geology and rock engineering. The graduate students are involved in research projects related to tunnelling, mining, landslides, rockfall remediation and other railway geomechanics, rock characterization using remote sensing and nuclear waste related rock mechanics and rock engineering.

Story continues here

Congratulations to Paul Dittrich, Kerry Rowe, Dennis Becker and Kwan Yee Lo who were awarded the Casimir Gzowski Medal at the annual conference of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in Ottawa. Drs Dittrich, Rowe, Becker and Lo won for their paper titled "Influence of exsolved gases on slope performance at the Sarnia approach cut to the St. Clair Tunnel”, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Volume 47, No. 9, pp. 971–98.

As superintendent of public works of the Province of Canada, Colonel Sir Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski (1813–1898) was responsible for improving waterways and canals and constructing roads, harbours and bridges. Later, he was involved in railroad construction and the design and construction of the international bridge at Fort Erie. A founder of the CSCE in 1887, he served as president from 1889 to 1891. Established by Sir Casimir in 1890, the Casimir Gzowski Medal is awarded annually by the CSCE for the best paper on a civil engineering subject in the area of surveying, structural engineering and heavy construction.

May 2011

Ian Moore received the John R. Booker Excellence Award of the International Association of Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics in recognition of his work on analysis and testing of buried infrastructure. The award was made at the 13th IACMAG conference in Melbourne Australia.

The first photo shows some of Dr Diederichs graduate research  team in the Niagara Beck Tunnel in March - 1 week before breakthrough. From Left to Right: Gary Kramer (Hatch Mott Macdonald), Mark Diederichs, Connor Langford (MSc Candidate), Nicholas Vlachopoulos (RMC), Anna Crockford (MSc) and Matthew Perras (PhD).

The second photo shows (left) Ehsan Ghazvinian (PhD Candidate), Dr Diederichs and (right) Matt Perras, standing inside a Mega-Packer fault migration experiment in the Grimsel Granite Laboratory under the Swiss Alps. This is a lab for nuclear waste storage geomechanics and hydrogeology. Both students are working on this topic for their doctoral projects.

April 2011

Dr Mark Diederichs was selected by the Canadian Geotechnical Society to undertake the Cross Canada Lecture Tour during April, making 14 presentations in 14 locations across Canada (Kingston, Kelowna, Prince George, Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Sudbury, Montreal, Quebec and Halifax). Mark is speaking on three topics:

1) Laser Scanning for Rock Mass Characterization on Slopes and Tunnels
2) Tunnelling in Rock Under High Stress Conditions
3) Geotechnical Performance of a Deep Geological Repository for Nuclear Waste

The tour is a highlight of the technical programs offered by the Canadian Geotechnical Society each year, and each tour features a leading GeoEngineering expert from Canada or abroad. The tour is supported through the Canadian Foundation for Geotechnique with the assistance of industrial sponsors (this year : BGC, EBA, Geo-Slope International and the Reinforced Earth Company). 

March 2011

Jean Hutchinson, head of the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering, has been named a fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada. Read full article on Queen's University web page.

Congratulations to Mr Kazi Rahman who has won the 35th Annual Michael Bozozuk Student Forum, a competition for graduate students at Carleton, Ottawa, Queen`s and RMC. Kazi’s presentation titled “Numerical Analysis of the Response of Adjacent Pipelines during Static Pipe Bursting” is part of his doctoral research work with Dr Richard Brachman and Dr Ian Moore, developing nonlinear computer models to capture ground movements and damage to adjacent infrastructure associated with pipe replacement by pipe bursting.

also.....

Mr Kazi Rahman was awarded the Michael E. Argent Memorial Scholarship by the North American Society of Trenchless Technology at the 20th Annual North American NoDig Conference in Washington D.C.

Ms Azadeh Hoor won the two yearly graduate student competition for the best student paper competition at the ASCE Geo-Institute/IFAI/GMA/ NAGS · Geo-Frontiers 2011 conference in Dallas, Texas.

Queen's students also won it in 2009 (Rebecca McWatters), 2007 (Melissa Chappel),and 2005 (Karina Lange).

January 2011

CFI article on shaking table (Dr. Bathurst) complete with movie: http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/articles/shakin-all-over

See two other recent articles in the Kingston press on the shaking table research by Dr. Bathurst and PhD student Saman Zarnani.

http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2935762

http://www.kingstonlife.ca/sitepages/?aid=3000&cn=Feature%201&an=FEATURE%201%20-%20Small%20City,%20Big%20Ideas

December 2010

Dr Kerry Rowe has been awarded the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, representing an investment of $1.4M over the next seven years. Our society generates a wide range of wastes, including municipal, industrial, hazardous, nuclear and mine waste, and Dr Rowe's research focuses on the measures in place in waste-disposal sites to ensure environmental protection, recognizing that some of them can, and will, fail at some time. This appointment to a Tier 1 (Senior) Canada Research Chair recognizes his world-leading expertise in both geotechnical and geoenvironmental aspects of the environmental protection systems in waste-disposal sites, including covers, systems to collect garbage fluids, and liners. Irrespective of whether the materials used are natural (e.g., soils, such as gravel) or manmade (e.g., plastics), his research is addressing the question of how long it will last and what happens if it fails. 
The Canada Research Chair program is funded by the Government of Canada "to attract and retain some of the world's most accomplished and promising minds" 
(see http://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/home-accueil-eng.aspx). 

Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos (cross-appointed to Queen’s Geology from RMC) organized a very successful field course for the tunnelling students within the Queen’s Geol/Geol Eng Dept.  The course was in collaboration with the National Technical University of Athens and the University of Thessaloniki (northern Greece).  The 1 week course involved circumnavigating Greece and visiting tunnelling sites (road, rail, LRT) throughout the country in limestones, clays, gneiss, molassic rocks, flysch, phyllites, ophiolites, basement schists and fault zones. The tunnels were in various stages of construction and the student work along the way included geological model construction, seismic hazard prediction, ground classification and tunnel design with student presentations in the evenings.  The Canadian contingent included Nicholas, Dr. Mark Diederichs and MSc students Connor Langford, Dani Delaloye, Anna Crockford, Colin Hume and Jeffrey Oke. The rest of the graduate students were from the two Greek Institutions. The course was directed primarily by Dr Paul Marinos from NTUA. Paul is a past president of the IAEG.

A video slide show of the trip is available online here:

www.geol.queensu.ca/people/mdiederi/Queens-NTUA-MSC-Tunnelling-Field-Trip.wmv

The video is 12 minutes but does capture the trip rather well.  As well, MASc student, Jeffrey Oke wrote about his experience in an RMC publication:

http://everitas.rmcclub.ca/?p=49775

At the annual meeting of the Japan IGS Chapter in Tokyo on 2 December, Dr. Bathurst and his colleague Dr. Miyata at the National Defense Academy in Japan were awarded the 2010 TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD of the IGS Japan Chapter for their work developing the K-stiffness Method for geosynthetic reinforced soil walls.

Dr Robert Holtz delivered the fourth Victor Milligan Lecture titled "Reinforced Soil Technology: From Experimental to the Familiar" on November 2. Bob Holtz, Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle is the co-author or editor of 10 books and book chapters, including "An Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering" (with W. D. Kovacs, 1981), and was the 2010 Terzaghi Lecturer for the American Society of Civil Engineers. Funding for the Victor Millgan Lecture series is generously provided by Golder Associates. 

September 2010

Professor Chris Clayton of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom delivered the third Victor Milligan Lecture titled "Stiffness at small strain - research and practice" on September 29th. Dr Clayton’s lecture was the 50th Rankine Lecture prepared and delivered earlier in 2010 for the British Geotechnical Association. Funding for the Victor Milligan lecture series is provided by Golder Associates, in memory of Canadian GeoEngineering pioneer, Dr Victor Milligan.

Congratulations to Mr. Jeffrey Oke who has recently won multiple awards.  He has recently been awarded the Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships and NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship awarded to high-calibre scholars who are engaged in master's or doctoral programs in the natural sciences or engineering.

Upon his recent graduation from the Royal Military College of Canada he recently won the following awards:

The W.M. Carleton Monk Memorial Scholarship.  The W.M. Carleton Monk Memorial Scholarship is awarded to the graduating RETP cadet who obtains the highest marks in academic subjects in the graduating year, provided attendance at a university following graduation.

The J.F. Lott Award is awarded for the top thesis mark in civil engineering.

Navy League of Canada Prize. The Navy League of Canada Prize is awarded to the best Sea Operations cadet in the graduating class based on high standards of proficiency in each of the four components (academic, sports, military and language ability).

The Commander Arturo Prat Leadership Award.  The Commander Arturo Prat Leadership Award is awarded in conjunction with the Navy League of Canada to the graduating naval cadet who has demonstrated outstanding leadership, moral values, performance, and potential for future service in the Profession of Arms.

OUA East, Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Randy Gregg Award. This award honours the hockey player who best combines outstanding hockey ability, academic achievement and community involvement.

Jeffrey Oke is currently enrolled in a Master’s program under the supervision of Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos.  We congratulate Jeff on his recent outstanding achievements and welcome him to our team.

Dr. Nicholas Vlachopoulos has recently been granted Department of National Defence Grants within the GeoEnvironmental  field amounting to $400K.  This funding will, in part, support the ongoing graduate work of recent graduate students, Ms. Tina Basso (Queen’s - Masters of Environmental Science) and Mr. David Thebault (RMC – Masters in Environmental Engineering).  Congratulations to Dr. Vlachopoulos for his continued success and to Tina and David for their acceptance to their respective programs.

July 2010
Kerry Rowe has been elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, England. He is one of only six international Fellows, and the only Canadian, whose election was announced at the academy’s annual general meeting in London on July 5. Kerry has previously been elected Fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Engineering as well as professional societies in Canada, USA and Australia. This honour was bestowed by Prince Phillip at a ceremony in the UK in the Fall.

More info on Queen's website

June 2010
The International Geosynthetics Society awarded Mr. Saman Zarnani (PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr. Bathurst) the Young IGS Member Achievement Award based on an international competition. This is an award that is given biennially to a young researcher under the age of 36 in the area of geosynthetics. It is very unusual for such a young person so early in their career to be recognized for outstanding technical contributions to the geosynthetics discipline. 

Congratulations!

Dr. Richard J. Bathurst was awarded the biennial International Geosynthetics Society Gold Medal Award for his technical contributions to the advancement of geosynthetics in earth retaining wall technologies.

Dr. Bathurst has now won this medal for an unprecedented third time. He was the first Canadian to receive the medal (1994), the first person to receive it twice (1998) and now the first person to receive it three times.