LUCIANO PICARELLI
Luciano Picarelli is Full Professor in the scientific-disciplinary grouping ICAR07 (Geotechnics) at the Department of Civil Engineering, Design, Construction and Environment of the Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” in Naples, Italy. He is Chairman of the Joint Technical Committee on Natural Slopes and Landslides JTC1 of the Federation of International Societies of Land Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, of Rock Mechanics and of Applied Geology and Environment and member of the National Commission for the prediction and prevention of major risks. He is Associate Editor of the international magazine Landslides and member of the Editorial Committee of the Italian Geotechnical Review. He is the author of over 200 publications, including book chapters with international circulation. He is a scientific consultant for national research and study bodies. He is a reviewer of articles and projects, respectively on behalf of national and international journals and international research organizations.
L. Picarelli was President of the Degree Council and of the Associated Study Courses in Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Territory and Director of the Interdepartmental Research Center in Environmental Engineering. He was the coordinator of a consortium of European universities in the framework of the Erasmus project and member of the Academic College of the High Specialization School and Study Center for Maintenance and Conservation of Historic Centers in Unstable Territories of the Umbria Region.
L. Picarelli was coordinator of national projects and responsible for international research projects. He has held courses and conferences in Italy and abroad; in 2008 he held the Annual Conference "Arrigo Croce". He was general speaker and editor of the proceedings of numerous national and international conferences. He received in 2014 in Beijing the Varnes medal. In 2015, he delivered the Suklje Conference in Ljubjiana.
L. Picarelli was a member of numerous national and international technical-scientific committees, member of the Presidential Committee of the Italian Geotechnical Association, consultant for the area of hydrogeological risk and member of the Scientific Council of the Center for Competence Analysis and Monitoring of Environmental Risks , Naples, consultant of the National Department for Civil Protection, of the Regions of Campania and Molise and of other territorial entities in relation to serious problems of hydrogeological instability.
CHARLES WANG WAI NG
Dr Charles W.W. Ng is currently the CLP Holdings Professor of Sustainability, Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Associate Vice-President for Research and Development at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He is the President of International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (2017-2021).
Professor Ng was elected an Overseas Fellow from Churchill College, Cambridge University, in 2005 and was also elected as a Changjiang Scholar (Chair Professor in Geotechnical Engineering) by the Ministry of Education in China in 2010. He is Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers and the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. Currently, he is an Associate Editor of the Canadian Geotechnical Journal.
Professor Ng has published some 350 SCI journal articles and 250 conference papers and delivered more than 50 keynotes and state-of-the-art reports in 6 continents. He is the main author of three reference books: (i) Soil-structure Engineering of Deep Foundations, Excavations and Tunnels by Thomas Telford, (ii) Advanced Unsaturated Soil Mechanics and Engineering, and (iii) Plant-Soil slope Interaction by CRC Press of Taylor & Francis. He has received many awards including the 2017 Telford Premium Prize from the Institution of Civil Engineers, UK, the Henry Adams Award from the Institution of Structural Engineers, UK, the first Tan Swan Beng Award from the Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society, and the R. M. Quigley Award from the Canadian Geotechnical Society three times for his three best papers published in 2007, 2012 & 2016.
GIOVANNI B. CROSTA
Giovanni Crosta is Full Professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca. He makes part of the editorial board of Engineering Geology, Landslides, Geological and Geotechnical Engineering, and Italian Journal of Geosciences. He authors more than 120 international publications and books in the fields of Engineering Geology, Rock and Soil Mechanics, Hydrogeology, Geomorphology and Geoinformatics (GIS).
Prof. Crosta was awarded with the Best Paper Award for the Journal Landslides in 2012, for his work on the numerical modeling of debris avalanche propagation from collapse of volcanic edifices, and in 2014 was awarded with the Best Paper Award by the JTC1, during the ISL 2016 in Naples. In the current XIII ISL, Prof. Crosta is awarded with the Heim Lecture, recognizing him as an active researcher with a strong track record of work on landslides and their related phenomena and a disciplinary background from the domain of Soil Mechanics.
IKUO TOWHATA
Professor (Emeritus) at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tokyo, Japan. Professor at Kanto Gakuin University, Japan. He graduated as a Civil Engineer at University of Tokyo (1977) and then as a Doctor of Engineering at the same University (1982).
He has acted as Vice-President of Asia in the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) and as President of the Japanese Geotechnical Society. He has published more than 400 English papers in international journals and conferences, including a comprehensive book on geotechnical earthquake engineering with Springer in 2008. He has been member of several reconnaissance field groups to areas affected by large earthquakes like Japan, Taiwan, India, Mexico, etc. His areas of interest include lateral flow of liquefied ground, mitigation of liquefaction-induced damage, laboratory reproduction of weathering and deterioration procedures of rocks and its application to risk assessment of natural slopes, dynamics in mass movement due to slope failure, temperature effects on mechanical behavior of clay, observation of movements of particles in sand undergoing shear deformation, engineering nature of municipal waste deposit and its utilization, slope instabilities and debris flows.
KEN HO
Ken Ho is currently the Deputy Head of Geotechnical Engineering Office, the geotechnical specialist arm of Hong Kong SAR Government. He pursued his post-graduate research at Imperial College London in soil mechanics and earthquake engineering. He has worked on a wide range of international civil engineering projects as a geotechnical and earthquake expert in London and Hong Kong.
His areas of expertise include disaster mitigation, landslide risk management, together with earthquake, slope, foundation and underground space engineering. He has made contributions to his specialist field over the years. He has continued to enjoy the challenges of using technical expertise to solve practical engineering problems by making advances in both theory and practice.
He has been a Justice of the Peace since 2012 and is the Chairman of Imperial College Alumni Association of Hong Kong and Vice Chairman of ICE HKA.
DAVE PETLEY
Prof. Petley initially graduated with a BSc in Geography from Kings College London in 1990 before moving to UCL to study for a PhD in earth sciences. His first two lectureships were at the University of Sunderland and then the University of Portsmouth. In 2000 he moved to the Department of Geography at the University of Durham, and then in 2014 to the University of East Anglia. At Durham, Dr. Petley established and was Director of the Institute for Hazard, Risk and Resilience. He was also the first Deputy Head of Faculty (Research) in Social Sciences and Health. In 2012 he was appointed as the first Dean of Research at Durham and also held the position of Dean of Global Engagement.
He took up the role of Vice-President for Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield in November 2016 having previously been Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise at the University of East Anglia.
Prof. Petley research focuses on landslides. He works in particular on the understanding of landslide mechanics through both state of the art monitoring of their movement using field instrumentation and the development of novel lab testing approaches. He has also worked extensively to document and analyse patterns of landslide costs, in particular in respect to loss of life. His research areas are focused mainly in high mountain areas, most notably Taiwan, New Zealand, China, Chile and Nepal. In recent years Dr. Petley has been particularly interested in landslides triggered by major earthquakes. He sits on the Slope Safety Technical Review Board of the Hong Kong Government and runs a popular blog that is hosted by the American Geophysical Union.
Dr. Petley has held a number of external roles, and sat on the Council of the Royal Geographical Society for six years. He has worked extensively with governments, the military, mining companies, the oil industry and the insurance sector.
JORDI COROMINAS DULCET
He is Professor at the Department of Geotechnical Engineering and Geo-Sciences at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and leader of the research group EnGeoModels – Monitoring and Modelling in Geological Engineering. His research topics focus on the monitoring and modelling of rock masses by unmanned aerial vehicles and photogrammetry technics as well as terrestrial laser scanning; the monitoring and modelling of landslides, rockfalls and torrential processes; and the impacts and mitigation of future climate changes for engineering geology practice. He was awarded the Varnes Medal in 2017, distinction granted by the International Consortium of Landslides.
CEES VAN WESTEN
Dr. Cees van Westen graduated in 1988 for his MSc (doctoral) in Physical Geography from the University of Amsterdam. After working with the University of Amsterdam for one year on landslide related problems in Austria and Switzerland, he joined the Division of Applied Geomorphology of ITC (University of Twente) in 1988, and specialized in the use of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems for natural hazard and risk assessment. He obtained his PhD in Engineering Geology from the Technical University of Delft in 1993, with a research on "Geographic Information Systems for Landslide Hazard Zonation". During his work at ITC he has been working in various positions. Starting as an AIO (PhD student), he changed to working as lecturer, and assistant professor before being appointed as associated professor in 2000. Dr. Van Westen has worked on research projects, training courses and consulting projects related to natural hazard and risk assessment in many different countries, such as Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, Georgia, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Nepal, China, Vietnam and Philippines. Since 2005 he is Director of the United Nations University - ITC School on Geoinformation for Disaster Risk Management.
NÚRIA MERCÈ PINYOL PUIGMARTI
Núria Pinyol is Associated Lecturer in the Department of Geotechnical Engineering and a postdoc researcher in the International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE). She obtained her PhD at Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in 2010. Her thesis describes the thermo-hydro-mechanical analysis of rapid landslides. It was awarded by UPC as the best thesis in the field of Civil Engineering presented in the period 2009-2010. One of her research interests still focused in the field of landslides. She is currently working modelling landslides using a coupled MPM (Material Point Method) code under development. She has been recipient of many distinctions like the Telford Gold Medal in 2016 and the Geotechnical Research Medal in 2014, awarded by the Institution of Civil Engineers, United Kingdom.
MARTA LUCÍA CALVACHE
Marta Calvache graduated as BSc in Geology. She then pursued a Master and Doctorate degree in Geosciences. Since 1986 she has been working at the Colombian Geological Service (SGC), where she currently is the Technical Director of GeoHazards. She has been active in the areas of geohazards, volcanology, hazard and risk assessment.
SERGIO MORA CASTRO
Dr. Mora is an engineering geologist; specialist in geotechnics and risk and disaster management, environmental and natural resources management; with additional experience in land use and territorial planning, rural development and renewable energy resources. He holds a PhD in Rock Mechanics from the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie Appliquée et de Prospection Minière, Nancy, France. He has more than 35 years of professional and academic experience in Central America, Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Oceania. He has worked as a specialist in risk assessment for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, among others.
