MEMBER PROFILE Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos: Civil Engineering “Touches our Lives” surprising. She met her husband at Patras during their undergraduate studies, and they both earned M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. They decided to apply for academic positions, and both have been teaching and working on their research at U-M since 2008. Athanasopoulos-Zekkos says she chose Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos is an engineering professor with a penchant for pairs. She speaks and writes in two languages, Greek and English. She also has two principal and quite different research focuses: seismic effects on California’s coasts and levees, and effects of pile driving in urban environments in Michigan. She and her husband, Dimitrios Zekkos, have two sons, who are joining their parents in Greece during their current sabbatical at the National Technical University in Athens. Athanasopoulos-Zekkos was born in Michigan when her father was working on his Ph.D. in engineering. She was only one year old when she and her parents returned to their native Greece, but Professor Richard Woods, then head of the University of Michigan’s civil and environmental engineering department, always stayed in touch with the family. She has now traveled full-circle back to the University of Michigan (U-M). Career Shaping During her time in Greece, Athanaso- poulos-Zekkos earned a five-year degree in engineering from the University of Patras. She returned to the U.S. with a scholarship and earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. According to Athanasopoulos-Zekkos, it is quite common for children in Europe to study English in school after “regular” classes, so her bilingual skills are not engineering as her academic concentration in part because in Greece one has to choose a major for university studies at graduation from high school. Looking back, she says she knew only that she was good at math, chemistry and physics. These talents, she says, tended to lead her to civi l engineering. Furthermore, she saw civil engineers as “touching our lives.” The profession’s visible projects, such as bridges, dams and roads also help society. Similarly, pile driving in sandy soils can cause settlement in urban environments and near bridge foundations. She and her team used data from buried sensors (geophones and accelerometers) that will have important consequences in damage detection for major bridges and highways. This project was originally supported by Michigan’s Department of Transportation, which is very interested in her work. Professor Woods, once the head of the civil and environmental engineering depart- ment at Michigan, and now emeritus profes- sor, notes Athanasopoulos-Zekkos interest ’ in “tackling practical problems” regarding safety as well as “technical unknowns.” He offers examples of her supporting and encouraging female students doing their research at sites formerly populated only by male construction workers. She sees civil engineers as “touching our lives” through visible projects, such as bridges, dams and roads. Engineering Challenges When Athanasopoulos-Zekkos was exposed to various kinds of engineering in her classes, she concluded that “soils present a challenge: you can’t sample everywhere, you have to predict and extrapolate.” She went with that challenge. Her dual research reflects her under- graduate thoughts about “touching lives,” and her work has real-life significance. She points to her focus on seismic issues in California in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where the potential for flooding is constant. Weak flood protection systems in a seismic area can be a critical issue. She received the 2015 ASCE Arthur Casa- grande Professional Development Award for her contributions “in the seismic risk assessment of levee protection systems against flooding.” During her sabbatical, Athanaso- poulos-Zekkos will be a visiting professor at the National Technical University in Athens. There she will work with the geotechnical group on geotechnical engineering research, particularly ongoing work on findings from the recent earthquake in Cephalonia, Greece, with respect to liquefaction of gravelly soils. A Student Appraisal Adam Lobbestael, Ph.D. began his graduate d e g r e e a t U-M wi t h P r o f e s s o r Athanasopoulos-Zekkos as his advisor. Lobbestael worked with her in both her areas of interest. On the seismic side, he helped Athanasopoulos-Zekkos investigate the feasibility of using a bendable fiber reinforced cementitious composite (called Engineered Cementitious Composites or ECC) for levees in seismic areas. Lobbestael DEEP FOUNDATIONS • MAR/APR 2016 • 65