The Geo-Institute Board of Governors has nominated Katerina Ziotopoulou, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE and Lucky Nagarajan, A.M.ASCE , to join the G-I Board for a term beginning in October 2024.
Katerina Ziotopoulou is an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Davis (UC Davis), and a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of California. Prior to joining UC Davis, she served on the faculty at Virginia Tech. She received her PhD (2014) and MS (2010) degrees in Civil Engineering from UC Davis, and her undergraduate 5-year diploma degree in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (2007).
Dr. Ziotopoulou specializes in geotechnical earthquake engineering with an emphasis on investigating ground failure due to earthquake-induced liquefaction and cyclic softening, and its mitigation. She combines the development of advanced numerical tools with multiscale experimental methods, the establishment of validation protocols that connect the two, and the upscaling to system-level analyses of case histories accounting for the spatial variability of soil deposits. She is a faculty advisor in the Center for Geotechnical Modeling of UC Davis, a national shared-used centrifuge facility under NHERI (Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure). Funding for her research has come from federal, state, and industry sources, including a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2020. Her research outcomes have significantly impacted both research and practice and have been adopted in hundreds of projects worldwide. One of Katerina’s key educational and professional development contributions is her sustained and dedicated dissemination of state-of-the-art models and approaches for dynamic numerical modeling of soil and soil-structure systems. She is passionate about teaching and mentoring and has successfully maintained a steady line of funding related to enhancing the mentoring of underrepresented students in engineering, mentoring women through career transitions, and addressing the unique challenges faced by first-generation graduate and international students.
Katerina Ziotopoulou is the recipient of the 2021 Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award of ASCE, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the 2024 International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering’s TC203 Young Researcher Award, and the 2024 U.S. Universities Council on Geotechnical Education & Research (USUCGER) Early Career Educator Award. At UC Davis, she has been honored with a Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award (2023) and an Excellence in Teaching Award (2022). She is an Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental Engineering, and an Editorial Board Member of Computers and Geotechnics and the Canadian Geotechnical Journal. She is also serving on the Advisory Board of the DesignSafe NHERI Cyberinfrastructure . She has chaired the EERI Student Awards Committee, and the 2021 EERI Annual Meeting. Within ASCE, she was a member of the Organizing Committee of GeoCongress 2022 and later served as the Technical Co-Chair of GeoCongress 2024. She has been a member of the Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering Committee since 2014 and of the Innovative Technologies and Tools in Geotechnical Engineering Committee since 2022.
Lucky Nagarajan is the Director of Business Development for Consulting and Instrumentation & Monitoring at Geocomp, A Sercel Business. She obtained her Bachelors from Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Technology in India and moved to the United States to get her Masters in Civil Engineering. She has 19 years of experience in North America, South America, and India across multiple market sectors, including oil and gas, energy, mining, dams, high rise buildings, and more. Her wide-ranging project experience includes work on the second largest crude oil pump station in the U.S., barrier wall design and construction of a dam in Brazil, and the SOE design and construction of the permanent steel structure for the Cuttack canal.
Nagarajan has consistently worked to contribute to the advancement of the geoprofession both in the workplace and through her involvement in the G-I, ASCE, and other professional societies. She is a member of the G-I Awards Committee and Innovative Technologies and Tools Committee. She has long been involved in the Met Section G-I Chapter. Recently she moved to Tampa, where she is now active in the G-I West Coast Florida Chapter, working on organizing monthly events and recruiting speakers. Her activities for ASCE include involvement in the ASCE Met Section Chapter, including currently serving on its Board; serving on the ASCE Board Level Task Committee “Building the Civil Engineering Team for the Future,” and serving as a volunteer and a guest judge at the ASCE Future City Competition in NYC. She was the Chair of the IFCEE 2024 Technical Committee.
Nagaranjan has also been an active member in the Deep Foundations Institute and is currently on its Board of Trustees. She has been the chair of its Women in Deep Foundations Committee (WiDF) since 2020 and co-founded WiDF chapter in Metro NYC, Mexico, and India. She is the Co-Chair of the DFI-India Support Committee. she was recognized and featured in “Daughters of Indian Soil” journal by the Indian Geotechnical Society to celebrate 75 Influential Indian Women in the geoprofession. She was also recently elected to join the Advisory Board of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce -- Women’s Network.
Petition Candidacy for the Board of Governors
At this time, any G-I member wishing to serve or nominate another member has 45 days to declare a petition candidate.
To add candidates to the ballot via petition, signatures expressing support for a candidate must be obtained from a minimum of 150 GI members in good standing with the following distribution requirements:
At least fifteen signatures shall be obtained from each of at least five different ASCE Geographic Regions for a total of 75 signatures from five of the ten ASCE Geographic Regions (i.e., 15 signatures/region x 5 regions = 75 signatures).
The balance of the remaining signatures necessary to reach the minimum requirement of 150 may be obtained without consideration of ASCE Geographic Region distribution. The Geo-Institute Member Identification number shall be provided for each signee. G-I staff shall check the validity of all petitions. Once verified, the candidate(s) shall be added to the ballot. No petitions will be accepted after the specified deadline has passed.
For more information on the Board’s nomination process and how to nominate a petition candidate, see the Geo-Institute Policies and Procedures document