DFI announces the appointment of Professor Vern Schaefer of Iowa State University as chair of DFI’s Committee on Deep Foundations for Landslides and Slope Stabilization. He is succeeding Professor Erik Loehr of University of Missouri, who accepted a position on the DFI Board of Trustees.
Schaefer is the Focus Group Leader of Geotechnical & Materials Engineering in the Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Department at Iowa State University (ISU). While at ISU he worked on the Federal Highway Department’s (FHWA) SHRP2 (Strategic Highway Research Program) project, which addresses pressing needs to the nation’s highway system in the areas of safety, reliability, renewal, and capacity. Schaefer is currently on sabbatical with the FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) in Washington D.C., developing performance measures for geotechnical features to conform to the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) legislation, a transportation bill. Schaefer earned his B.S. in Civil Engineering from South Dakota State University, M.S. in Civil Engineering from Iowa State University and Ph.D. from Virginia Tech.
In May 2013 he received the Joseph C. and Elizabeth Anderlik Undergraduate Teaching Award, for Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, at ISU.
DFI’s Technical Committees focus on the unique issues of major methods and technologies within deep foundations and excavation, and keep DFI members and the industry up to date with the state of practice through publications, guidance documents, peer-review of papers, educational events and committee reports in Deep Foundations magazine.
