DFI Europe Board of Trustees Announces New President, Vice President and Trustee

November 3, 2022, Hawthorne, N.J.:

DFI Europe, a regional chapter of Deep Foundations Institute (DFI), announces that Maurice Bottiau of Franki Foundations, Belgium, is the new president; Anne Lemnitzer, Ph.D., P.E., University of California, Irvine, is the new vice president; and Valérie Bernhardt, managing director of Setec-Terrasol in France, is joining the board starting in 2023.

DFI Europe President Maurice Bottiau is succeeding Frank Haehnig, who has been the president of DFI Europe for 10 years. Bottiau is the director of the French, Dutch and U.K. branches of Franki, and has more than 30 years of experience in the design and execution of piling, diaphragm walls and soil improvement. He has served in numerous international industry leadership roles, including EFFC president, DFI trustee and DFI Europe board founder and member. He was the DFI John Mitchell Lecturer at the 2022 DFI-EFFC International Conference on Deep Foundations and Ground Improvement in Berlin.

DFI Europe Vice President Anne Lemnitzer, Ph.D., P.E., is on the faculty in geotechnical engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and is a visiting scholar at the University of Applied Sciences, Leipzig, Germany (HTWK). She is co-editor in chief of the DFI Journal and a member of the DFI Board of Trustees. Lemnitzer has served as the lead in developing the chapter’s educational workshop for high school and college students to introduce, educate and inspire careers within the geotechnical engineering profession. She was on the organizing committee for the DFI-EFFC Conference in Berlin and chaired DFI’s 2018 Annual Conference.

Trustee Valérie Bernhardt is managing director of both Terrasol (a subsidiary of the Setec) and SCEL (the Setec branch in the U.K.), as well as a board member of Setec. She is also an elected member of the Geotechnical Board of Syntec Ingénierie. She is a volunteer for the French Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (the French Chapter for the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering) and chaired the society between 2016 and 2020. In addition, Bernhardt is a shareholder of Time for the Planet, a citizen community dedicated to global action against greenhouse gases.