Julio Valdes Named Senate Distinguished Professor

The SDSU University Senate will honor the Senate Distinguished Professor and five college awardees for 2010-11 at 10 a.m. to noon, Monday, April 25, in Casa Real. Breakfast will be served.

About the event

Julio Valdes, with the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering, is the 2010-11 Senate Distinguished Professor. Valdes will give a lecture titled, "Clastic Soil Mechanics."

Valdes will introduce physics-based definitions by which soils are classified and treated as engineering materials. Emphasis will be placed on the results of experimental studies that seek to identify emergent phenomena and behavior alterations caused by clastic action, i.e., the breakage of grains.

About Valdes

Valdes received a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering, with an emphasis on geomechanics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002. That year, he joined the SDSU faculty.  

Valdes directs the SDSU Geo-Innovations Research Laboratory.  He has co-authored numerous publications with SDSU students on various topics, including:

• Controllable filtration
• Wave-based experimental methods
• Granular media behavior

Valdes' publication highlights include:

• Karanicola, V., Ngo, A.T., and Valdes, J.R. (2011). Plankton filtration with compressible crumb rubber packs. Chemosphere 82(4).
• Fernandes, F., Syahrial, A.I., and Valdes J.R. (2010). Monitoring the oedometric compression of sands with acoustic emissions. ASTM Geotechnical Testing Journal 33(5).
• Valdes, J.R. and Koprulu, E. (2008). Internal stability of crushed sands: experimental study. Geotechnique 58(8).

Other awardees

This year’s college awardees include:

• Christianna Alger, College of Education
• Andrew Cooksy, College of Sciences
• Joseph Price, College of Sciences
• Ming Tsou, College of Arts and Letters