Earthquake Engineering for Embankment Dams: Instructors
Lelio H. Mejia, Ph.D.
Geosyntec Consultants, Inc.
Senior Principal
Dr. Lelio Mejia is a registered civil and geotechnical engineer with more than 40 years of experience in dam engineering, soil liquefaction, earthquake ground motions, soil-structure interaction, and soil improvement. He is a senior principal with Geosyntec Consultants and leads the firm’s western U.S. dams and levees practice. Lelio has directed the investigations and seismic stability evaluations of more than 25 large earth dams and has been involved in the design and construction of more than 20 major dam projects worldwide. He has served on multiple prestigious technical review boards and expert panels for U.S. federal and state agencies, water and power utilities, and other owners on various dam projects worldwide. Lelio currently serves as vice chair of the ICOLD Committee on Seismic Aspects of Dam Design and is past chair of the USSD Earthquakes Committee. He was a member of the National Academies Committee for the State of the Art and Practice in Earthquake Induced Soil Liquefaction Assessment, a secretarial appointee to the Advisory Committee on Structural Safety of Department of Veterans Affairs Facilities, and chair of the Governance Board of the National Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation. Lelio has been a lecturer of geotechnical earthquake engineering and a member of the editorial board for the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Glenn J. Rix, Ph.D., P.E.
Geosyntec Consultants, Inc.
Senior Consultant
Dr. Glenn J. Rix is a senior consultant geotechnical engineer based in Georgia with more than 35 years of experience focused on the areas of geotechnical earthquake engineering and engineering seismology. His practice includes seismic hazard and risk assessment and mitigation for civil infrastructure. Glenn joined the firm following a 24-year career as a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Since joining Geosyntec, Glenn has performed seismic hazard and risk analyses, liquefaction triggering evaluations, site response analyses, and seismic stability and deformation analyses for embankment and concrete dams, coal combustion residual (CCR) storage facilities, municipal and hazardous waste landfills, liquefied natural gas facilities, and highway bridges. He has also served as an external peer reviewer for seismic hazard analyses for nuclear power plants and provided litigation support for numerous cases related to the effects of blasting- and construction-induced ground vibrations on structures. Glenn is a leading authority on in-situ seismic methods and is a co-author of Surface Wave Methods for Near-Surface Site Characterization and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Manual on Subsurface Investigations.
Christie Hale, Ph.D.
Geosyntec Consultants, Inc.
Senior Seismic Hazard Analyst
Dr. Christie Hale has more than 10 years of experience as a seismic hazard analyst through work at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, and Geosyntec Consultants. At Geosyntec, Dr. Hale evaluates seismic hazards and assesses seismic safety for critical infrastructure projects including dams, mining and tailings facilities, landfills, hospitals, and pipelines. In the dams sector, her project portfolio includes developing site adjustment factors for hard rock dam sites in the Sierra Nevada region of California, serving as a seismic subject matter expert (SME) for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Part 12D periodic inspections and comprehensive assessments, and developing suites of ground motion time histories for use in dynamic analyses of dams and appurtenant structures. Dr. Hale specializes in understanding and explaining the results of seismic hazard assessments and was recently engaged by a client to examine the results of an updated seismic hazard assessment for a portfolio of more than 150 dams. Dr. Hale is also a key contributor to HAZ45, an open-source Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) computer program used by hazard analysts in California and around the world. Recognizing that seismic hazard assessment is a rapidly evolving field, Dr. Hale is continuously evaluating and implementing new models and capabilities to stay at the forefront of advances in research and practice.
Kate Darby, Ph.D., P.E.
Geosyntec Consultants, Inc.
Project Engineer
Dr. Kate Darby has more than 6 years of experience in dam safety, infrastructure, geotechnical, and geoenvironmental projects. Her doctoral graduate studies at the University of California, Davis involved evaluating limitations in cone penetrometer testing (CPT)-based liquefaction triggering correlations and evaluating the effects of microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) on the liquefaction resistance of clean sand. Dr. Darby has experience with conducting dam safety reviews, performing dam stability and nonlinear dynamic analyses, evaluating CPT-data and other field data, and conducting liquefaction triggering evaluations. She has experience with potential failure mode analysis (PFMA) and Level 2 Risk Analysis (L2RA) workshops. Her experience in dams comprises numerous projects, including DWR’s Southern Field Division Dams and Oroville Dam, multiple dams owned by PG&E, Southern California Edison, and South Feather Water and Power Agency, Waimea Dam in New Zealand, and Scotts Peak and Upper Yarra Dams in Australia. Dr. Darby’s teaching experience includes lectures at the University of California at Davis and Berkeley, and ASDSO Courses on Earthquake Engineering for Embankment Dams in subjects such as material characterization, liquefaction, and dam stability.
