People

The CBBG leadership and research team is an exemplar of diversity (43% Hispanic and 57% female), well above the national averages for Engineering professionals (NSF, 2013).

Edward Kavazanjian Jr., Ph.D., P.E.,
CBBG Center Director

Edward Kavazanjian returned to academia with an appointment at ASU in 2004 after 20 years in engineering practice. His industrial experience includes working for a large (over 2,000 employees) international firm specializing in civil infrastructure design; a small, entrepreneurial geotechnical specialty consulting firm; and 10 years with a geoenvironmental consulting firm that grew from 100 to over 400 people during his tenure. At the geoenvironmental consulting firm, he served on the Board of Directors, was discipline leader for geotechnical and landfill engineering, managed multi-disciplinary engineering services contracts of up to $8.4 million in value (for the City of Los Angles Department of Public Works), and managed geotechnical services on Superfund design/construct remediation projects with total value from $13 million to over $150 million. Professor Kavazanjian was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2013 for his work as a consulting engineer. He is widely recognized for his research on waste containment systems, seismic analysis and design of geotechnical features for transportation systems, and in the emerging field of biogeotechnical engineering.

Claudia E. Zapata, Ph.D.,
CBBG Center Deputy Director

Claudia Zapata is an Associate Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at ASU. Her research interests focus on laboratory and field characterization of problematic soils and bio-mediated geomaterials, the behavior of soils due to repeated loading and environmental effects, and modeling fluid flow and volume change of soils applied to pavement structures and residential foundation systems.  She is also heavily invested in engineering education and diversity and outreach activities.  Her current research activities include the study of fluid flow in soils due to thermal gradients and how it affects airfield pavement structures and the introduction of unsaturated soil mechanics principles into the undergraduate geotechnical engineering curriculum.  She has played a major role in the development of models to incorporate environmental effects into pavement design practice, including the newest AASHTO Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide, and in development of a database of unsaturated soil properties for the continental United States, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. 

Jason DeJong, Ph.D.,
Thrust leader for Hazard Mitigation (Thrust 1)

Jason DeJong is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCD. Through his Soil Interactions Laboratory, he directs research into bio-mediated soils processes, advanced site characterization, behavior of intermediate and gravelly soils, sustainable geotechnical practice, and deep foundation performance. Fundamental scientific advances in these research areas have been successfully upscaled to full-scale field deployment in practice, including MICP trials at a mining site, characterization of gravel in the foundation of several large dams in California, and development of standards on offshore site characterization. Professor DeJong has given several keynote lectures at national and international conferences and is the lead author of several pioneering publications on biogeotechnics. His work has been funded through more than $5M in industry, state and federal grants, which led to over 100 peer-reviewed publications and the training of more than 40 graduate students.

Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, Ph.D.
Thrust leader for Environmental Protection and Ecological Restoration (Thrust 2)

Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown has more than 10 years of experience conducting sponsored research in remediation. She has successfully worked on multi-disciplinary engineering projects totaling more than $9 million. She has an NSF-Career award, more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, 1 patent, and 7 pending patent applications. She is the director of the Microbiome Sequencing Laboratory at ASU. Her current research applies principles and tools of molecular microbial ecology to address key environmental engineering issues, including: 1) biodegradation of chlorinated organics, 2) biotechnology for energy production, and 3) genomics of microorganisms in humans. All these areas involve the management of microbial interactions to exploit the beneficial metabolic capabilities of microorganisms.

Paola Bandini, Ph.D., P.E.
Thrust leader for Infrastructure Construction (Thrust 3)

Paola Bandini is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at NMSU. She has 12 years of geotechnical engineering research and teaching experience. Her research has focused on the application of experimental and numerical methods to geomechanics. Her current research interests include determination of engineering properties of desert and diatom-containing soils, erosion control measures for transportation structures, sustainable use of materials in civil engineering (foam glass, waste tires, adobe), and modeling and evaluation of pavement performance. As a PI, she has managed $2.2 million in grants and contracts from state agencies and private industry. She leads the “Modeling for the Design, Construction, and Management of Geosystems” Committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB).

J. David Frost, Ph.D., P.E. 
Thrust Leader for Cross-Cutting Projects (Thrust 4)

David Frost is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to entering academia, he worked in industry in Ireland and Canada on infrastructure and natural resource related projects. A core focus throughout his career has been the study of natural and man-made systems and materials. His research is centered on the application and development of digital technologies for studying subsurface problems at multiple scales and he has received two U.S. patents for multi-sensor subsurface systems. He has graduated more than 30 PhD students, 40% of whom have gone on to academic positions. He has served on or led post-disaster study teams following disasters in the US, Turkey, India, China, Chile and Japan and is a founding member and co-chair of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association. He has organized numerous workshops and conferences on the applications of spatial analysis and image processing techniques to study the response of geomaterial systems under various loading conditions. He is a registered professional engineer in the US and Canada.

Delia Saenz, Ph.D.
Diversity Director

Delia Saenz is Associate Professor of Psychology and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Arizona State University. Her doctorate, in Social Psychology, was awarded from Princeton University in 1987. She served previously as an assistant professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame before moving to ASU. Dr. Saenz is also a Research Professor in the ASU Hispanic Research Center, and during her tenure at ASU, she has served administratively as Director of the Graduate Program in Social Psychology, interim Associate Dean of the Graduate College, and Director of the Intergroup Relations Center. Dr. Saenz is a Fellow of the Western Psychological Association, and has served as Representative at Large and Program Chair for WPA. She is also a member of the editorial board for Small Group Research.

CBBG Team