Speakers
Keynote Speakers
Prof. Michel Virlogeux
Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées of Bridge Design and Construction
Michel Virlogeux is born on July 7, 1946 at Vichy , France. He has been educated at the Prytanée Militaire de La Flèche where his father was Professor of geography. He has been graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique in 1967 and from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in 1970.
He started working in Tunisia during three years (1971 to 1973), at the Direction des Ponts et Chaussées, and in the same time became Docteur Ingénieur of the Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris in 1973.
He came back from Tunisia in January 1974, to work at the SETRA, the technical service of the French Highway Administration. He worked there during more than 20 years, becoming head of the concrete bridges division in 1980, and of the large bridges division, steel and concrete, in 1987.
During this time he designed many bridges with his team, including the Normandie Bridge which held the world record of cable-stayed bridges from January 1995 to May 1998.
In February, 1995, he left the SETRA to work as an independent consultant. He has been associated to the design and construction of many major bridges, like the Vasco de Gama Bridge in Lisbon and the Rion Antirion Bridge in Greece, and designed or took part in the design of many bridges including the Millau Viaduct, the Jacques Chaban Delmas lift bridge in Bordeaux, the curved cable-stayed bridge at Térénez, and with Jean-François Klein the Third Bosphorus Bridge, the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge.
He has constantly given lessons in the French technical schools, and is still Professor at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées of Bridge Design and Construction.
He has been President of the Fédération Internationale de la Précontrainte (1996-1998), of the Fédération Internationale du Béton (1998-2000) and of the European Construction Institute (2008-2014).
He is Expert at Court in France, and has taken part in arbitrations in several countries.
He received many awards, including the Engineering New Record Award of Excellence for the Normandie Bridge (1995), the ISE Gold Medal (1997), the Fritz Leonhardt Price (1999), the Magnel Gold Medal (1999), the IABSE Award of Excellence (2003), the ICE Gold Medal (2005) and the fib Freyssinet Medal (2006).
He is Member of the French Académie des Technologies since its foundation, Fellow of the British Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Royal Society of Edimburgh.
Prof. Jorge G. Zornberg
The University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Zornberg, P.E., is a professor and Joe J. King Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his B.S. (Hons.) from the National University of Córdoba (Argentina), his M.S. from the PUC of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
He has over 35 years of experience in research and practice in geotechnical, transportation, and geoenvironmental engineering.
Prof. Zornberg has been involved in the analysis, design, and forensic assessment of retaining walls, reinforced soil structures, roadway systems, mining facilities, impoundment lining systems, and urban and hazardous waste containment facilities. He has served as an expert witness in litigation cases involving the collapse of earth retaining structures, damage to geosynthetic barrier systems, failure of roadways built on expansive clays, and siting of waste containment facilities. His research focuses on geosynthetics for roadway stabilization, soil-reinforcement interaction, earth retaining structures, bridge abutments, unsaturated soils, liners for waste and mining containment systems, and numerical and physical (centrifuge) modeling of geotechnical systems. He teaches graduate courses at the University of Texas on Earth Retaining Structures and Geoenvironmental Engineering.
Prof. Zornberg served as president of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS) from 2010 to 2014. He currently serves as a Trustee of the IGS Foundation and as vice-chair of the IGS Stabilization TC. He was the chair of ASCE’s 2017 Geo-Congress (Orlando, FL), of its International Activities Council, and of its Geosynthetics TC. Prof. Zornberg has authored over 550 technical publications, including several book chapters. He holds three patents. Prof. Zornberg has been invited to deliver keynote lectures in more than 30 countries worldwide.
In recognition of his contributions, Prof. Zornberg received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), awarded by President George W. Bush in 2002. Additionally, Dr. Zornberg was honored with the Ralph B. Peck Award (ASCE, 2024), Best Paper Award (Geosynthetics International journal, 2021), Best Paper Award (Geotextiles and Geomembranes journal, 2020), IGS Service Award (2018), Mercer Lecture Award (2015), J. James R. Croes Medal (ASCE, 2012), IGS Award (2004), Collingwood Prize (ASCE, 2000), and the Young IGS Member Award (1996). In 2019, the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS) recognized his “major contributions to the geosynthetics discipline” by establishing the “Zornberg Lecture,” an honorary inaugural lecture for the Pan-American Conferences on Geosynthetics.