Prof. Puzrin passed by EPFL on May 19th and gave a lecture entitled “Evolution of submarine landslides: Unifying shear band propagation approach”. During the presentation he demonstrated how well the shear band propagation approach could better than traditional approaches predict historical submarine landslides. This approach was used for deciding where to safely construct a new oil pipeline.
Alexander M. Puzrin has been Full Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the ETH Zurich since 2004. He is engaged in the constitutive modeling of geomaterials and the analysis of progressive and catastrophic failure in soils, with applications to creeping terrestrial and tsunamigenic submarine landslides. His interests include applications of novel sensor technologies to geotechnical monitoring and development of innovative chemical and biological soil improvement techniques. He has been involved as an expert and consultant in large-scale geotechnical projects in the UK, the US, Russia, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Israel and Switzerland. He is a co-founder of the ETH Zurich spin-off company Marmota Engineering AG — a winner of the Venture 2010 competition — providing high-tech fiber-optics geotechnical monitoring services to the industry. Professor Puzrin was a recipient of the ETH Excellence in Teaching Award (Goldene Eule) in 2009 and 2013. His papers were awarded with Geotechnical Research Medals in 2004 and 2013, and the George Stephenson Medal in 2013 by the UK Institution of Civil Engineers. He served as the Editor of the international journal Géotechnique and the Chairman of the Géotechnique Advisory Panel from 2012–2015.