Dynamic Soil Properties and Liquefaction

Prof. B.K. Maheshwari, President, ISET is presently a Professor in the Department of Earthquake Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee. He completed his bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Jodhpur, master's degree in Earthquake Engineering from the University of Roorkee and Ph.D. from the Saitama University Japan. He later worked in Tokyo, Japan and then as a post-doctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America (USA). Prof. Maheshwari is serving as a faculty in IIT Roorkee since December 2004.

Prof. Maheshwari has about 30 years of research experience and experience of working in all areas of geotechnical earthquake engineering, particularly dynamic soil-structure interaction, liquefaction, dynamic soil properties, constitutive modelling, nonlinear finite element analysis, slope stability, landslides and disaster mitigation & management. He has published around 175 researcharticles including 60 papers in journals of international repute. Under Prof. Maheshwari’s guidance, nine Ph.D. theses were awarded and the other five are in progress. He worked on 8 sponsored research projects funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the Norwegian Government. He has also worked on many industrial consultancy projects and carried out surveys for many damaging earthquakes. Prof. Maheshwari has been awarded a gold medal from the University of Roorkee, Monbusho Fellowship for Ph.D. in Japan and Engineer in Training (EIT) from Ohio State Board, USA. He has been awarded IIT Roorkee’s prestigious Shamsher Prakash Research Award. He has also been awarded the Excellent Research Contribution Award by the International Association of Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics (IACMAG) in Kyoto, Japan. He has served as the Head of the Centre of Excellence in Disaster Mitigation and Management, IIT Roorkee between 2015 to 2018. He was part of the delegation for the India-Japan High-Level Policy Dialogue on Education, led by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) secretary to Tokyo, Japan in July 2016. He was the Organizing Secretary for the prestigious 16th Symposium on Earthquake Engineering held in December 2018 at IIT Roorkee. He served as a Shamsher Prakash Chair Professor between 2019 to 2022. Recently, Prof. Maheshwari was awarded the John Booker Medal during the 16th International Conference of the International Association for Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics (IACMAG) held in Torino, Italy in September 2022.

Dr. Abhishek Kumar is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Guwahati. His primary areas of research include seismic microzonation or urban centres, seismic source zonation, seismic hazard analysis, synthetic ground motion development, forward and inverse ground response analysis, stability analysis of Tailingpond and ground improvement. He has guided 3 PhDs and has published over 45 international journal papers in various reputed journals. He has also published over 45 conference papers and 7 book chapters. Dr. Kumar is a recipient of the Young Engineer Award from the Indian National Academy of Engineering in the area of Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering. He has also received the Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) faculty award from the Department of Science & Technology (DST) and the Young Engineer award from the Institution of Engineers, India. Dr. Kumar has been working with different agencies including the Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Earth Science, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), JSW amongst others for various research and consultancy projects.

Dr. Rajib Sarkar is currently working as an Associate Professor in the Departmentof Civil Engineering, IIT(ISM) Dhanbad. He has completed M.Tech and Ph.D. from IIT Roorkee. He is a recipient of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) fellowship for post-doctoral research at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom (UK) Dr. Sarkar has supervised four research scholars who have been awarded a Ph.D. degree and other six are in progress. His broad research area is geotechnical earthquake engineering. His core areas of research are soil-pile-structure interaction, liquefaction, seismic hazard analysis, and discrete element modelling. Dr. Sarkar has authored 46 refereed journal publications of international repute and 31 conference/symposium publications along with 11 book chapters. He is currently working on several research projects sponsored by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Coal India Limited (CIL), National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) amongst others. He has also completed several consultancy projects of national importance.He is also the Associate Editor of the Indian Society of Earthquake Technology’s (ISET) Journal of Earthquake Technology. Dr. Sarkar has been awarded a gold medal by the University of North Bengal and the Indian Service of Engineers prize from IIT Roorkee. He is a recipient of the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award in Soil-Structure Interaction from the ISET. He has also received the Young Engineers Award from the Institution of Engineers (India in recognition of his contributions to the field of Civil Engineering.