Plenary speakers

Francesca Ceccato

is a researcher at the University of Padua (Italy), where she currently teaches “Geological and Geotechnical Engineering” and “Numerical Modelling in Geomechanics” in the master programs of Water and Geological Risk Engineering and Civil Engineering. She has also been involved in the international teaching program Engineering for Africa within the cooperation between the University of Padua (Italy) and the Ecole National the Traveaux Publiqe (Camerun).

She is the secretary of TC103-Numerical methods of ISSMGE, a member of the Italian Geotechnical Association (AGI) and a member of the editorial board of Soils and Foundations.

Her main research topics include numerical modelling in geomechancis, with particular interest in the Material Point Method (MPM), assessment of river embankment vulnerability, soil characterization and the preservation of historical heritage, in particular the study of ancient foundations of the city of Venice. She is member of the core developer team of the open-source code Anura3D, based on MPM, and participate intensively in the activities of the Anura3D MPM research community.

Pierre Delage

Pierre Delage, Emeritus Professor of geotechnical engineering at Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées in Paris, is member of the French Academy of Agriculture and of the InSight Science Team (InSight is a NASA geophysical mission on Mars). He has been Vice-President of the French Geotechnical Group (CFMS), Chief editor of the Revue Française de Géotechnique and Géotechnique Letters, Panel member of Géotechnique and of various other journals, and Chair of the Technical Oversight Committee of the ISSMGE. He is now in charge of the Geo-Engineers without Borders (GeoWB) project of the ISSMGE.

He developed researches on the fundamental mechanisms governing the response of multi-phase geomaterials submitted to changes in stress, water content and temperature (for sensitive clays, deep marine sediments, unsaturated soils, compacted soils, compacted bentonite, loess, oil reservoir chalks, oil sands, geosynthetic clay liners, shales, Martian and Lunar regoliths), with applications to earth-dams and embankments, deep geological radioactive waste disposal, offshore oil extraction, thermal behaviour of clays and claystones, soil contamination and seismic wave propagation at the surface of planets.

He co-authored more than 400 papers and communications in conferences, including 145 papers in international journals and 27 invited/keynote lectures. He co-edited 12 special issues of journals or conferences proceedings, including the 1^st Int. Conf. on Unsaturated Soils in Paris (1995), the 18^th ICSMGE (Paris 2013) and the 3^rd European Conference on Unsaturated Soils (Paris 2016), that he chaired.

Marina Pantazidou

is an associate professor at the Civil Engineering School of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. Apart from university appointments in the US and Greece, her professional experience also includes work in hazardous waste consulting. Her research topics are drawn from environmental geotechnics and engineering education. She is author of 100 publications, 25 of which on geotechnical engineering education topics. She has been a guest editor for two special issues on geotechnical engineering education, one on case studies developed for geotechnical engineering instruction. She has been actively involved with the Hellenic Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (secretary general 2012-2015 and board member 2015 - )  and the ISSMGE Technical Committee TC306 on Geo-engineering Education (core member 2010-2013, vice chair 2013-2017, chair 2017 - ).  She chaired the ISSMGE Int. Conf. on Geotechnical Engineering Education GEE2020, (streamed from) Athens, Greece, June 23-25.

Alessandro Tarantino

is Professor of Experimental Geomechanics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. His current research interests include the direct measurement of water tension in soils and plants, micromechanical behaviour of saturated and unsaturated clays, soil-plant-atmosphere interaction, and stability of natural and engineered slopes subjected to rainwater and floodwater infiltration. He has led major European consortium research projects including the Marie Curie European Training Network 'TERRE’ (Training Engineers and Researchers to Rethink geotechnical Engineering for a low carbon future, 2015-2019). He is co-editor of the books ‘Advanced Experimental Unsaturated Soil Mechanics’ (2005) and ‘Laboratory and Field Testing of Unsaturated Soils’ (2009). He has been keynote/theme lecturer at numerous International Conferences (the 8th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils in 2023 and the ICE Géotechnique Lecture in October 2023 the most recent ones).

Jorge G. Zornberg

has over 35 years of experience in practice and research in geotechnical and geosynthetics engineering. His research focuses on transportation geotechnics, environmental geotechnics, geosynthetics, unsaturated soils, and expansive clays. As an engineering consultant, he has been an expert witness in litigation and forensic geotechnical cases. From 2010 to 2014, Prof. Zornberg served as president of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS). He has authored over 500 technical publications, written several book chapters, and been awarded three patents. Prof. Zornberg received numerous prestigious awards, including the 2024 Peck Lecture Award. He was also recognized with the Mercer Lecture, ASCE’s Croes Medal, the IGS Award, ASCE’s Collingwood Prize, as well as the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) awarded by the President of the United States. In 2019, the IGS established the “Zornberg Lecture,” an honorary lecture recognizing his contributions to the discipline of geosynthetics.