also completed field work on pile-driving projects, with vibration measurements and geophysical testing. Lobbestael says his former professor “stands out” among her peers as an excellent teacher, saying she has high standards and encour- aged him to think independently. She gave him a sense of ownership of their research, not only as an “employee,” he says. Most important, Lobbestael says Athanasopoulos-Zekkos maintains a sense of “approach- ability.” Her students feel they can go to her when they have problems. Passion for Teaching Athanasopoulos-Zekkos offers her philosophy regarding teaching, saying that education at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels plays a major role in shaping an individual’s professional life. She is “passionate” about teaching, she says, and since joining U-M in 2008, she has enjoyed every class, and appreciates how unique each student is. She tries to respect the educational background of each student and to help each one to reach his or her full potential. She focuses on engineering practice and on case histories, using everyday examples of civil engineering applications to develop students’ engineering judgment and professional ethics. Professor Athanasopoulos-Zekkos also spends a lot of time with her graduate students, and has weekly meetings to discuss their research findings. She especially enjoys seeing them “mature and become independent creative thinkers.” As a scholar, Athanasopoulos-Zekkos has an impressive list of awards and honors, including the 2015 ASCE Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award and the NSF CAREER Award. As a graduate student she received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the 2004 Harry Bolton Seed Award from UC Berkeley. Her list of accomp- lishments includes scores of lectures, a long list of papers published in refereed journals and conference publications, and chapters in books. She has also overseen several doctoral dissertations. Culture Comparison Moving from Berkeley, Calif., to Ann Arbor, Mich., might seem like a culture collision. It was not, says Athanasopoulos: both communities have lively and diverse cultures. The couple thinks Ann Arbor has a “great downtown, diverse and family oriented, with an international flavor.” She pointed to a recent production of Antigone on the Michigan campus with the French actress Juliet Binoche. She says she and her husband can find anything they want for themselves and for their children on the U-M campus, including a large and prestigious medical school and competitive sports. Athanasopoulos-Zekkos only recently joined DFI, but believes it is a “very important” organization, saying the technical committees handle important issues, and that DFI organizes many conferences and lectures, student and young engineer events, bringing academia and the deep foundations industry together. The family will be in Greece until August 2016, and she and her husband are excited about their sons becoming bilingual in Greek and English and completing that “full circle,” emulating their mother. By Virginia Fairweather
