Professor Reddy helps host Geo-Chicago conference

In mid-August, approximately 600 engineers, scientists, academicians and students from 32 countries gathered in Chicago for the ASCE specialty conference Geo-Chicago 2016: Sustainability, Energy, and the Geoenvironment.

The conference, which was chaired by CME Professor Krishna Reddy, provided a unique forum to explore recent advancements, new directions, and opportunities for sustainable and resilient approaches to design and protect infrastructure and the environment. The conference featured the presentation of technical papers, panel discussions, short courses, workshops, keynote lectures, posters, mini-symposiums honouring geo-legends, exhibits, a technical tour, and much more.

“The conference was a great success,” said Reddy. “It gave attendees the opportunity to learn new and emerging technical challenges of sustainability, geo-energy, and the geo-environment. Moreover, it gave the unique opportunity for the attendees to make new friends as well as explore the dynamic city of Chicago. It was so nice to see so many participants from around the world interacting with each other to the advancement of geoenvironmental engineering.”

The conference featured two exclusive workshops – the US-Japan and US-India Bilateral workshops. The US-Japan workshop on focused on Geoenvironmental Engineering, and the US-India Bilateral workshop was on establishing linkages between geoenvironmental practices and sustainability. Several academicians, practitioners and professionals gathered to discuss the similarities and differences in the state-of-the-art and identify potential areas of collaboration for constructive research benefitting both the countries.

The action plan and follow up includes, preparing state-of-the-art papers that give an overview of the current situation in both the countries on the topics identified and the need for collaborative research on the same.