My involvement with civil engineering began at age seventeen when I began working as a union construction laborer in the Washington D.C. area. While earning my degree in philosophy at Clark University, Worcester, MA, I became an apprentice operation engineer. As an apprentice and Journeyman, I worked on many aspects of the Washington D.C Metro project, including assisting with the operation of a tunnel boring machine. I worked as a driller for eight years in the D.C area and Iraq. This practical experience with geotechnical engineering led to my enrolling in the civil engineering program at The University of Texas in 1981.

While not directly related to geomechanics, my first degree in philosophy taught me to analyze the implications of a complicated situation, to see the forest and the trees. I also learned to write facilely. My philosophy studies also included a year at the City University of London.

During this time I became a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers and worked as a driller, and on numerous tunneling projects. I became profoundly involved in geoengineering in its most applied sense - in order to do a good job as a driller I had to develop an intimate understanding of the behavior and interrelation of the various geological materials I drilled through. It was through this experience that I began my present passionate involvement with engineering and the earth. Included in my work as a driller was a one year assignment in Iraq. In planning the foundations for a large grain silo, we did not have access to extensive boring logs that we would here. We learned to take our cues from nature and "read" the environment for geological information, which to me is part of the essence of geological engineering.

While in Iraq I decided to pursue training as an engineer. I entered The University of Texas in 1981, and stayed for my Bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D. degrees. My major was in geotechnical engineering, with many courses taken in geology and geophysics. The application of geological insight to engineering came naturally to me and was helped by my advisor throughout my university career, Dr. Priscilla P. Nelson, who worked for several years as a geologist. I worked with the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology on the preliminary siting of the Superconducting Super Collider, and later wrote the tunneling section of the Central Texas (Austin) proposal to the National Research Laboratory Commission.

My main research thrust involves both active and passive acoustic imaging of rock. Although this work is funded by Shell Exploration and Production, matching my NSF Young Investigator award, the resulting techniques will be easily applicable to the imaging and monitoring of our aging infrastructure.

The passive monitoring is done with acoustic emission, using high-fidelity displacement sensors developed in my laboratory. We are looking to develop very low stiffness sensors so we can successfully monitor internal dislocations in soil. The active imaging utilizes the reflection tomography tools developed by exploration geophysicists. This project too involves development and refinement of new instrumentation.

During my tenure at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, I became involved with the application of parametric modeling to identifying the soil system of sites subjected to earthquake strong motion. In as much as an earthquake is nondestructive, this allows in situ characterization of soils undergoing a wide variance of strains. I have worked closely with Bechtel Corp., EPRI, NIST, the Japanese PHRI, and the USGS in continuing this work. We are able to make statistical estimates of soil damping for a variety of sites which have vertical arrays in place.