Dr. Kenneth Stokoe earned his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Michigan in 1972.  He joined the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin in 1973. He directs the Geotechnical Engineering Center http://www.ce.utexas.edu/dept/area/geotech/index.html and the NSF-funded NEES Equipment Site at the University of Texas (http://nees.utexas.edu/Home.shtml).  Dr. Stokoe has received various awards and presented numerous invited, theme and distinguished lectures.  More recently, Dr. Stokoe was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering in 1997, the nation's highest honor for engineering professionals.  In 2004, he was the Distinguished Lecturer for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and was awarded the Harold Mooney Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG), “in recognition of scientific and technical excellence and innovation leading to the advancement of near-surface geophysics”.

Dr. Stokoe has been working in the areas of in situ seismic measurements, laboratory measurements of dynamic material properties, and dynamic soil-structure interaction for the past 35 years. He is an expert in evaluating the soil properties in place to determine their vulnerability to earthquakes.  Dr. Stokoe has been instrumental in developing several seismic methods for in situ shear wave velocity measurements and combined torsional shear/resonant column systems for laboratory evaluation of dynamic material properties.