Professor Lyesse Laloui Elected as ISSMGE President for 2026–2029 at Vienna Council Meeting

At the ISSMGE Council Meeting held on Sunday, 14 June 2026, in Vienna,  on the occasion of the XXI International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ICSMGE 2026), Professor Lyesse Laloui was elected as the new President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) for the term 2026–2029.

Professor Laloui is a Chair Professor of Soil Mechanics, Geo-Engineering and CO₂ Storage at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he directs the Laboratory for Soil Mechanics. A world-renowned expert in geomechanics, geo-energy and sustainability, he has been affiliated with EPFL since 1994 and has built an internationally recognized research record spanning constitutive modeling of geomaterials, energy geostructures, CO₂ sequestration, and multiphase porous media mechanics. He holds over 19,000 citations across more than 560 publications and is the founder and Honorary Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment. He has previously served as Vice President Europe of ISSMGE.

The newly elected Board for 2026–2029 is composed of the following Vice Presidents and Appointed Members:

• Africa: Engr. Sebastian Ozoamalu
• Asia: Dr. Anil Joseph
• Australasia: Professor Rolando Orense
• Europe: Professor Loretta Batali
• North America: Professor J. David Frost
• South America: Daniela Pollak Aguiló
• Appointed Board Member: Daniele Cazzuffi
• Appointed Board Member: Professor Denis Kalumba
• Appointed Board Member: Professor Dietmar Adam

The Council Meeting also confirmed that the next quadrennial International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (XXII ICSMGE) will be held in Shanghai, China, in November 2029. The following Council Meeting is scheduled to take place in Istanbul, Türkiye, from 20–25 August 2028, in conjunction with the XIX European Regional Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering.