Outstanding Journal Paper Award for 2021

Dr. Yong Tan (Fig. 1) is a full professor of the Department of Geotechnical Engineering, College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University in Shanghai, China. He received his B.Eng. in building engineering from Tongji University (1999), M.Eng. in Geotechnical Engineering from Tongji University (2002), and Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Massachusetts (2005). Subsequent to his doctoral research, he joined Terracon Consultants, Inc., in Savannah, Georgia, as Staff Geotechnical Engineer and later was promoted to Project Engineer. In June of 2009, Dr. Tan joined Tongji University as Lecturer and then was promoted to Associate Professor in December 2011 and Full Professor in December 2016. He had been a visiting scholar at the Department of Structural Engineering, University of California, San Diego, during 2015–2016. Dr. Tan’s areas of specialization include deep excavation and tunnelling, foundation engineering, forensic geotechnical engineering, and engineering failures associated with climate change. His research has been supported by both state agencies and local industrial companies. Within the past 20 years, the key research and consulting projects that he has been involved in included the relocation of US Route 44 in Massachusetts, expansion of both the Port of Savannah and the Southern Elba Island Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Terminal in Georgia, construction of metro lines in both Shanghai and Nantong, deep excavations for the mega basements of several landmark buildings in Shanghai, and forensic investigations on several civil engineering failures in China.

To date, Dr. Tan has already published over 50 technical papers in leading professional journals, of which eight were top 1% highly cited papers and two were top 0.1% hot papers as measured by essential science indicators (ESI). He was recognized by Elsevier as one of the most cited Chinese researchers in civil engineering (2020) and in geological resources and geological engineering (2021). Dr. Tan is the recipient of the prestigious Outstanding Journal Paper Award of 2014 from the Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities for his integrated research on spatial corner stiffening behaviors of subway excavations in Shanghai soft clay. He is a reviewer of more than 80 international journals and was awarded the 2021 ASCE Outstanding Reviewer by the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. Dr. Tan is an active member in several professional societies, including ASCE, Deep Foundation Institute, Associated Research Centers for the Urban Underground Space, Underground Space Committee of Chinese Society of Rock Mechanics and Engineering, and the Tunnel and Underground Engineering Committee of the Chinese Society of Civil Engineers (CSCE).

Dr. Ye Lu (Fig. 2) is an associate professor of the Department of Civil Engineering at Shanghai University in Shanghai, China. She holds a B.Eng. in building engineering from Tongji University (2001), a M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Massachusetts (2005), and a Ph.D. in geotechnical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (2010). Dr. Lu joined Shanghai University in 2011 as Lecturer and then was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014.

Her main research interests include deep excavations, pile foundations, slope stability analysis, microstructure of engineering materials, fluid–solid coupling numerical simulation, and image analysis. Dr. Lu has already published over 30 technical papers in international journals. She is a reviewer of over 10 international journals and supervisor of more than 20 graduate students in geotechnical engineering. In addition, Dr. Lu is a member of ASCE.

Mr. Dalong Wang (Fig. 3) is currently a senior engineer and General Manager of the Engineering Instrumentation and Monitoring Company affiliated with Shanghai Geotechnical Investigation and Design Institute Engineering Consulting (Group) Co., Ltd., in Shanghai, China.

He is a licensed professional geotechnical engineering and has over 20 years of working experience in field instrumentation, monitoring, and management of underground engineering projects. He has been in charge of numerous civil engineering projects in China, e.g., Rehabilitation of the Collapsed Shanghai Metro Line 4, Shanghai Bund Underground Passage, Shanghai World Financial Centre, Shanghai Tower, Shanghai International Financial Centre, Shanghai Deep Drainage and Storage Pipeline System Project underneath Suzhou River, and Qingdao Metro Line 2. He has received several awards, including the Shanghai Excellent Engineering Survey Award. Mr. Wang received his B.Eng. in geology and M.Eng. in geotechnical engineering from Tongji University in 1999 and 2002, respectively.

The editorial board also selected as an honorable mention the paper “Protecting the Historic Buildings of Mexico: The Barrel Vault of San Agustin Church in Morelia,” by Leslie E. Alejo, Nuno Mendes, Paulo B. Lourenço, and Guillermo Martínez, which was published in the April 2021 issue.