CEE's Dr. Baecher to Deliver 2010 Harleman Lecture at PSU

Press Release

For release April 1, 2010

Professor Baecher to deliver 2010 Harleman Lecture at PSU

It was announced today that Professor Gregory Baecher of the Department’s Center for Excellence in Project Management will be delivering Pennsylvania State University’s 2010 Donald R. F. Harleman Honorary Lecture in Environmental Fluid Mechanics.

Dr. Harleman was a civil engineering graduate of Penn State ('43 BS) and a Ford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. In 2001, his former students raised funds to endow the Donald and Martha Harleman Professorship at MIT, and in 2002, Dr. Joseph R. Reed, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at Penn State provided the initial grant to establish the annual honorary lecture at PSU.

Dr. Baecher’s lecture will be entitled Tolerable Risk for Flood and Coastal Protec-tion. He will discuss his experiences as part of the Interagency Performance As-sessment Taskforce on Katrina, the Delta Risk Management Study in California, and various dam safety projects in Canada and Scandinavia.

Dr. Baecher is Glenn L. Martin Institute Professor of Engineering, and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His professional work deals with risks associated with civil infrastructure, particularly facilities related to water resources management and flood protection. For the past three years he has been part of the federal interagency effort to understand the behavior of the hurricane protection system of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and continues to advise the US Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction plans and levee safety. He also advises the Canadian hydropower industry on dam safety. Dr. Baecher was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2006.

Published April 5, 2010