Prof. Dennes T. Bergado
To honor Professor Dennes T. Bergado’s retirement from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), the SEAGS-AGSSEA December 2013 journal is published as a Commemorative Issue with the general theme on “Soft Ground improvement and Geosynthetics, which has been the main area of Prof. Bergado’s personal research activity over the past 3 decades and to which he has contributed enormously”. Prof. D.T. Bergado has been the SEAGS Secretary General from 2000 to 2013 as well as Society Journal editor from 1996 to 2001.
From the Preface by the editors:
This special issue is dedicated to Professor Dennes T. Bergado to commemorate his retirement from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in June, 2013. The general theme of this issue is: Soft Ground improvement and Geosynthetics, which has been the main area of Prof. Bergado’s personal research activity over the past 3 decades and to which he has contributed enormously. The idea of having a special issue for Prof. Bergado’s retirement came from Prof. A. S. Balasubramaniam in March 2012. When he asked us to be guest editors for this issue, we accepted the invitation happily and eagerly. Prof. Bergado was Prof. Jinchun Chai’s supervisor for his Doctor of Engineering Degree in AIT (1992), and he is also a close friend of Prof. Shuilong Shen.
Click to read the December 2013 issue
We were determined to make the issue one of very high standards and a lasting and memorable contribution to the subject area. We started to invite active researchers in the field to contribute their new research results or state-of-the-art papers in April 2012. All those we invited responded warmly and enthusiastically, and we believe this was because of Prof. Bergado’s outstanding contribution to the field as well as his friendly personality. We informed all who agreed to contribute that all papers would be subject to strict critical review and only those papers that satisfactorily addressed all review comments would be finally included in this issue. Thirteen (13) full papers were received by the end of 2012. Review and revision works took about 4 months and in May 2013, the 13 high quality papers were finally accepted and ready for publication. Among these papers, 7 are review articles, i.e., state-of-the-art papers, and 6 contain essentially new and previously unpublished material.
In the meantime, we invited senior professors in the field of geotechnical engineering who know Prof. Bergado well to write their thoughts and reflections about him for this special issue. The notes penned by Prof. H.G. Poulos, Prof. S.K. Kim & Prof. N. Miura are included with this preface. It is hoped that these short notes will provide inspiration to young researchers and engineers working in the area of ground improvement and the application of geosynthetics.
Finally we would like to thank all the contributors and people who helped us to make this special issue a success. We wish Prof. Dennes T. Bergado a very happy retirement and at the same time urge him to continue to contribute professionally to the fields of soft ground improvement and the use of geosynthetics. We feel he still has much to offer to our profession.
Some excerpts from the tribute messages for Prof. D. T. Bergado written by senior professors:
A feature of Professor Bergado’s research is his focus on solving geo-problems in Asia, and his recent research has expanded to include geotechnical aspects of natural disasters, including tsunamis. He and his team have addressed not only the science of the problems they have tackled, but also the technology of application of the science.
H.G. Poulos
Coffey Geotechnics, and the University of Sydney, Australia
December 2012
Professor Dennes T. Bergado has long served at the institute (AIT) as an educator of geotechnical engineering. Through his long teaching career at AIT he has produced a lot of prominent geotechnical engineers, most of whom are now doing leading roles in the Asian region. His research works have mainly been concerned in soft ground improvement and geosynthetics. Lots of papers related to this discipline have been published in international journals and proceedings.
Sag-Kyu Kim
Professor Emeritus, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea
December 2012
Prof. Bergado’s brilliant successes come not only from his creative and innovative researches but also his pleasant personality which attracted excellent students and also practicing engineers. In other words, he has a good sense of management. He is really an all-around player.
Norihiko Miura
December 2012
