2014 Shamsher Prakash Prize for Excellence in Practice

We are happy to announce that the 2014 Shamsher Prakash Prize for Excellence in Practice has been won by Tamara E. Hebeler of GeoSyntec Consultants. 

 Ms. Hebeler is a senior engineer with Geosyntec Consultants, an international geoenvironmental consulting company with more than 1,000 people. She has more than fifteen years of experience focused in the area of civil and environmental engineering. Ms. Hebeler is based in Geosyntec's Atlanta, Georgia office and has been involved in all aspects of design for multiple large geotechnical, waste management, and remediation projects, including field exploration, site conceptual model development, preparation of design and construction level drawings, supporting design calculations and specifications, and project management. She has also been a company leader in designing innovative customized data collection systems. In the course of her career to date, Ms. Hebeler has worked for both private and government clients on a range of projects that have encompassed a variety of complex technical problems. Early in her career, Ms. Hebeler was a key team member in permitting a vertical expansion over existing unlined waste for a landfill near Memphis, Tennessee; the first such expansion in the state. As part of the project, Ms. Hebeler assisted in the development of a unique settlement profiling system, which quantitatively assessed the compression characteristics of the waste. Sha also coordinated a comprehensive large-scale blast densification field pilot study at a site in South Carolina to densify a loose soil layer prior to site development. The study included extensive laboratory and field characterizations and multiple carefully monitored blast events. She has co-authored "GEC No. 5: Evaluation of Soil and Rock Properties", a state-of-the-practice design manual for the Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) for the evaluation of soil and rock properties for geotechnical design applications. The manual was developed to provide geotechnical engineers with tools to assist in the rational development of subsurface investigation programs, as well as in the execution of laboratory and field testing programs involving soil and rock, and interpretation of data from these programs. Demonstrating her cross-disciplinary capabilities, Ms. Hebeler has been one of the primary engineers for one of Geosyntec's multi-million dollar military environmental service contracts since 2005. Her efforts have focused on site investigation, remediation, programmatic water quality compliance, pollution prevention, and community relations.

Ms. Hebeler is a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and served as Co-Chair of Geo-Congress 2006, "Geotechnical Engineering in the Information Technology Age". She has also been active in the Georgia section geotechnical committee, serving as Secretary and Technical Program Chair between 2003 and 2012. Ms. Hebeler's accolades include the Georgia ASCE Young Civil Engineer of the Year in 2006 and the Georgia Engineering Alliance Young Engineer of the Year in 2007.