Appendix A
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members
Scott A. Anderson (Chair) is a principal geotechnical engineer at BGC Engineering in Golden, Colorado. He has more than 35 years of geotechnical design and construction experience in the transportation, water resources, mining, and pipeline industries. In addition to working as a consultant to these industries, Dr. Anderson is a former researcher, professor, and government agency leader. He has led and provided oversight and review to geohazard and construction site characterizations, and design and construction activities, often focusing on risk-based assessments. He is devoted to learning and advancement through the research and deployment of new technology in many areas of practice as demonstrated through work as a committee chair and member of several technical committees of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board (TRB) and support to TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program for nearly 20 years. He has been a Steering Committee member for the Geotechnical Extreme Event Reconnaissance Association for more than 10 years and is a member of American Society of Civil Engineering Geo-Institute committees, including the Innovative Technologies and Tools in Geotechnical Engineering Committee. Prior to joining BGC Engineering, Dr. Anderson was the geotechnical services team leader for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Resource Center from 2008 to 2017, and he held geotechnical leadership roles for the Federal Lands Highway Division of FHWA for 6 years. Selected awards include the FHWA Engineer of the Year in 2014, the K.B. Woods Award in 2016 from TRB, and the 2017 Jahns Distinguished Lecturer for the Association of Engineering Geologists and the Geological Society of America. Dr. Anderson holds a B.A. and an M.S. in engineering geology from the University of Colorado Boulder and Colorado State University, respectively. He received an M.S. and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Mersedeh Akhoondan has more than 15 years of experience in condition assessment and rehabilitation of metallic and reinforced concrete infrastructures, specializing in service-life modeling of different types of infrastructure. She has designed and managed corrosion testing programs, developed rehabilitation plans and specifications for corrosion control systems, performed failure analysis and metallographic evaluations of field coupons, and conducted soil corrosivity studies. Dr. Akhoondan is a registered civil engineer in the states of Florida, New York, and Texas. She has authored or co-authored more than 30 technical publications. Dr. Akhoondan received her B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering and a Ph.D. in corrosion engineering from the University of South Florida.
Susan E. Burns is the Dwight H. Evans Professor and the associate chair for administration and finance in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Burns’s research focuses on applications in geoenvironmental engineering with particular emphasis on beneficial use of waste materials; erosion, infiltration, and stormwater treatment on roadway rights-of-way; bio-mediated ground improvement; and fundamental chemical and engineering behavior of soils. Funding for her research group has come from a range of agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Education, the Virginia Transportation Research Council, the Georgia Department of Transportation, Southern Company, and other industrial sources. Dr. Burns is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and she was named the 2020 Engineer of the Year by the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers. In 2021, Dr. Burns received the Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award, which is Georgia Tech’s highest award for teaching, and was named one of the 100 most influential women in Georgia Engineering by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Georgia. Dr. Burns earned a B.C.E. (1990) and an M.S. in civil engineering (geotechnical) (1996), an M.S. in environmental engineering (1996), and a Ph.D. in civil engineering (1997), all from Georgia Tech.
Homero Castaneda-Lopez is an associate professor and the director at the National Corrosion and Materials Reliability Laboratory within Texas A&M University (TAMU). He is also the instructor for NACE Cathodic Protection certifications. Dr. Castaneda has 19 years of experience using electrochemical and nondestructive techniques to monitor interfacial phenomena in materials and theoretical modeling of corrosion science and engineering, energy generation and storage, and infrastructure and electrochemical processes for different industries. He has been the principal investigator for multiple projects on corrosion science and engineering for the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and several Fortune 500 companies. Before joining TAMU, he worked for 5 years at the University of Akron (2011 to 2015) as an assistant professor and before that at the Battelle Memorial Institute as a senior scientist (2006–2010) in advanced materials and energy systems in Columbus, Ohio. Before Battelle, he was the technical director and research leader of corrosion, materials, and pipelines in the Mexican Petroleum Institute for 3 years. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in the areas of corrosion science and engineering, coatings degradation and materials reliability, materials characterization, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. He holds eight patents and four copyrights. He received the H.H. Uhlig award from NACE International in 2018. He is NACE Fellow Class of 2019. He is the editor of three journals related to electrochemistry, corrosion, and pipelines. He received his B.S. in chemical metallurgical engineering (1994) and M.S. in materials science (1997) from the National University of México and his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Penn State University in 2001.
Kenneth L. Fishman is a principal at McMahon and Mann Consulting Engineering and Geology, P.C. and is the leader of its Earth Reinforcement Testing Division. He has 40 years of combined experience in civil and geotechnical engineering that includes teaching, research, and consulting and is an expert on state-of-the-art techniques for performance monitoring, characterization of corrosion potential, and service-life modeling for mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls and other geotechnical applications. He has been a consultant, co-principal investigator (PI), or PI on various projects sponsored by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, and various state departments of transportation (DOTs) on projects related to service-life design, condition assessment, corrosion monitoring, and durability studies for buried steel including MSE structures, elements of deep foundation systems, and pipelines. These projects include research, implementations of research results, training, and applications of the state-of-the-art techniques for performance monitoring and characterization of corrosion potential. He is author of more than 50 publications in the area of geotechnical engineering, including FHWA-HRT-05-067, NCHRP Report 477, FHWA-NHI-09-087, NCHRP Report 675, NCHRP Research Report 958, several comprehensive reports describing results from FHWA/state DOT-sponsored demonstration projects, and pooled-fund studies. He has participated in numerous workshops and webinars sponsored by NCHRP, FHWA, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the Transportation Research Board (TRB), and others including two recent webinars related to asset management and performance modeling
sponsored by the FHWA Office of Asset Management and Resource Center, AASHTO, and TRB. Dr. Fishman earned his Ph.D. for his work in geotechnical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1988.
Gerald S. Frankel is a distinguished professor of engineering, a professor of materials science and engineering, and the director of the Fontana Corrosion Center at The Ohio State University (OSU). Prior to joining OSU in 1995, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Technical Institute in Zurich and then a research staff member at the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. His primary research interests are in the passivation and localized corrosion of metals and alloys, corrosion inhibition, protective coatings, and atmospheric corrosion. He has authored more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He is a member of the editorial board of Corrosion and a fellow of the Association for Materials Protection and Performance, the Electrochemical Society, and ASM International. He received the W.R. Whitney Award from NACE International in 2015, the U.R. Evans Award from the UK Institute of Corrosion in 2011, the OSU Distinguished Scholar Award in 2010, the 2010 Electrochemical Society’s Olin Palladium Award, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists in 2004. From 2012 to 2016, he served as a member of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board after being appointed by President Obama. In 2016, he became the director of a U.S. Department of Energy–funded Engineering Frontier Research Center focused on the performance of nuclear waste forms. He earned his Sc.B. in materials science engineering from Brown University and his Sc.D. in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Stacey Kulesza is an associate professor in civil engineering at Texas State University where her research focuses on transportation geotechnical infrastructure design, performance-monitoring, and durability studies with particular emphasis on the electrical properties of soils; integrated site characterization; anthropogenic impacts on soil properties; and soil erosion potential. She also studies asset-based frameworks toward creating authentic engineering identities, particularly in military veterans and women. She currently serves on two technical committees of the Transportation Research Board and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Geo-Institute including serving as the chair for the ASCE Geo-Institute Outreach and Engagement Committee. She is a registered professional engineer in the state of Kansas and was the 2020 Tri-Valley Young Engineer of the Year in Kansas. She received her B.S., M.E., and Ph.D. in civil engineering with a focus in geotechnical engineering from Texas A&M University.
Brenda J. Little retired in January 2018 from the Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, where she served as a senior scientist. Her career has focused on the investigation of microorganism–material interactions including biodeterioration, biodegradation, and bioremediation (i.e., chemistries produced by microorganisms). Her publications include two co-authored books and more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics. Dr. Little is now an independent consultant and the sole proprietor of B.J. Little Corrosion Consulting, LLC, and she serves as the past president of the International Biodeterioration and Biodegradation Society (IBBS). Dr. Little is a fellow of NACE International and on the editorial board for International Biodeterioration and Biodegradation, the official journal for the IBBS. Dr. Little received her Ph.D. in chemistry from Tulane University.
Randall W. Poston (NAE) is a senior consultant at Pivot Engineers, a structural engineering consulting firm in Austin, Texas. He was a Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Purdue University College of Engineering from 2019 to 2021. For the past 35 years, Dr. Poston has been engaged in the evaluation, repair, strengthening, and design of more than 700 structures. His expertise includes the investigation of structural failures, evaluation of corrosion of steel in concrete, structural concrete repair and strengthening design, and nondestructive testing of concrete structures. He has been elected a fellow of the American Concrete Institute (ACI), the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Post-Tensioning Institute, and the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering; is an active member of numerous national and international technical committees including being a current member of ACI Committee 318; and was the chair of Committee 318 during the 2014 code cycle. Dr. Poston was the past president of ACI from 2019 to 2020. Dr. Poston was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2017. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in civil engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
Elizabeth Rutherford is a senior metallurgical engineer at Energy Transfer with more than 15 years of experience in pipeline integrity, failure investigation, root-cause analysis, and quality assurance. She has worked on pipeline failures in a variety of terrains in the United States in addition to numerous preventive inspections and repairs. She is actively involved in both Pipeline Research Council International and joint industry projects addressing research gaps and identifying technologies to move the industry forward safely. For the past 3 years, her focus has been on the quality assurance side of the business, monitoring the acquisition and production of pipe for new construction projects. Prior to joining Energy Transfer, Ms. Rutherford spent 3 years with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a reactor inspector with special emphasis on in-service inspection. Ms. Rutherford received her B.S. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Missouri–Rolla (now the Missouri University of Science and Technology).
