A successful Sowers Symposium was held by the ASCE Atlanta Geotechnical Section on 18 May 2004 with about 190 attendees from the region. The one-day meeting was held at the Georgia Tech GCATT facility and honors the late Regents Professor George F. Sowers.
Keynote speakers included Professor Andrew Whittle from MIT and Dr. Ed Cording, Emeritus Professor from University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. The 7th Sowers Lecture was delivered by Professor Ken Stokoe of the University of Texas-Austin. Guests included Frances Lott Sowers and members of her family. John Wolosick of Hayward Baker and Randy Sullivan of Golder Associates served to introduce the guest speakers. Professor Whittle's talk focused on the Role of Advanced Constitutive Modeling of Excavations in Soft Clay and Dr. Cording spoke on the Assessment & Monitoring of Movements Due to Ground Tunneling. Professor Stokoe addressed the Growing Importance of Stress Wave Measurements in Solving Geotechnical Problems.
In addition, PhD student Ruiting Wu received the 2004 Sowers Award, MS Students Pierre Ramondenc and J. Alfredo Fernandez were presented with the 2004 Lai Award, and senior Robert Hurt claimed the Barksdale undergraduate student award.
Photo: Professor Andrew J. Whittle, Em. Professor Edward J. Cording, and Professor Kenneth H. Stokoe II