Ning Lu wins 2023 Karl Terzaghi Award

Ning Lu, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Colorado School of Mines, has been honored with the 2023 Karl Terzaghi Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Lu was selected for the award in recognition of his “seminal contributions to the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms governing the behavior of unsaturated soils and their implications in the slope stability and other geotechnical problems.” Lu will formally receive the award at Geo-Congress 2023 this month in Los Angeles.

The Karl Terzaghi Award was established in 1960 by the Soil Mechanics and Foundations Division, now named the Geo-Institute, of ASCE in honor of Terzaghi, an Austrian engineer who developed the field of soil mechanics. The award honors an author of outstanding contributions to knowledge in the fields of soil mechanics, subsurface and earthwork engineering and subsurface and earthwork construction.

Lu has twice been awarded the ASCE Norman Medal, the society’s highest award for technical papers, in 2007 and 2021. Lu’s research is focused on seeking common threads among basic soil physical phenomena, including fluid flow, technical transport, heat transfer, stress and deformation. He has a PhD and master’s degree in civil engineering, both from Johns Hopkins University, as well as a Bachelor of Science in geotechnical engineering from Wuhan University of Technology. Lu is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Geological Society of America and Engineering Mechanics Institute. He serves as editor of the Vadose Zone Journal of the Soil Science Society of America and associate editor of the Geotechnical Testing Journal of the American Society for Testing Materials.

The Geo-Institute of ASCE is a membership organization serving geo-professionals and the geo-industry. It is one of ASCE’s nine specialty institutes and has more than 13,000 members.