Sai Vanapalli

Biography

  Dr. Vanapalli received his Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan in 1994. Since then, he has been actively involved with research activities related to mechanics of unsaturated soils. Presently, Dr. Vanapalli is Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa. He is passionate about developing simple procedures that are consistent with the established practice protocols of conventional geotechnical engineering, which involve the mechanics of saturated soils. Such techniques would encourage practicing engineers to implement the mechanics of unsaturated soils into engineering practices. During the past 5 years, his research focus has been to develop simple techniques for designing foundations and to estimate foundation settlements in unsaturated soils. More recently, he has been developing simple techniques to estimate and model the 1-D heave in expansive soils. Dr. Vanapalli has been an author and co-author of over 125 research publications in peer- reviewed journals, refereed conferences and other conferences, including one book chapter, four keynote papers, and two state-of-the-art reports for international unsaturated soil conferences. He has supervised 16 graduate students, 25 undergraduate students, and 3 postdoctoral fellows. Presently, he is supervising 10 graduate students of which four are working toward their PhDs. He is enthusiastic about teaching his undergraduate and graduate students, in particular, about the basic concepts of the mechanics of unsaturated soils and their implementation to solve numerous practical problems. He organized six student conferences from 2005, offering guidance and supervision to the students on research related to the mechanics of unsaturated soils. Dr. Vanapalli has been an active participant and organizer of several national and international geotechnical conferences. He was Co-Chair for the Diamond Jubilee Canadian Geotechnical Conference held in Ottawa, Canada, 2007 and Co-Chair of the 12 IACMAG, Goa, India, 2008. He is Advisor for the 14th Pan-Am Conference and the 64th Canadian Geotechnical Conference, Toronto, 2011. He was invited to deliver 4 keynote or plenary addresses for international conferences. More recently, he was invited to address the 5th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils, Barcelona, Spain, September 2011 as a panel member to present and discuss the applications of unsaturated mechanics in engineering practice. He also received the Stermac Award for his outstanding contributions to the Canadian Geotechnical Society in 2010.

Research Interest

  Fields of Interest Geotechnical Engineering Unsaturated Soil Technology Geo-environmental Engineering Studies (Soil liners and soil covers) Pavement Design Freeze-Thaw and Wetting-Drying behaviour of compacted soils Critical State Soil Mechanics