Please join COPRI in congratulating Jane McKee Smith, Ph.D.,P.E., D.CE, NAE, Dist.M.ASCE as the recipient of the 2022 International Coastal Engineering Award.
The award is given annually to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of coastal engineering in the manner of engineering design, teaching, professional leadership, construction, research, planning, or a combination thereof.
Dr. Smith is recognized “for her outstanding career in coastal engineering research crucial for understanding hurricanes and storm surge and for her leadership in making coastal communities around the world safer.”
Dr. Smith is an Emeritus Senior Research Scientist at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a Research Professor at the University of Florida. Her research focus is on coastal hydrodynamics, including nearshore waves and currents, wave-current interaction, shallow-water wave processes, and storm surge. Her projects include theoretical and numerical studies as well laboratory and field experimentation. She is a Board-Certified Diplomate in coastal engineering through the Academy of Coastal, Ocean, Port and Navigation Engineers (ACOPNE).
One of her most significant contributions to the profession has been her work with predicting storm waves and ocean surges. This is a complicated physical problem incorporating physics, mathematics, and engineering to provide adequate predictive and analytical analyses. Her early research in this arena was with coastal hydrodynamics, including nearshore waves and currents, three-dimensional structure of nearshore currents, wave-current interaction, wave generation, and shallow-water wave transformation. Much of this involved large multi-institutional laboratory and well-known national, field campaigns. Her work in this area has been critical to a much better understanding of these physics.
In 2001 and 2005, she served on the organizing committee for the very successful International Conference on Ocean Waves that was organized under COPRI. She served as Secretary of the Coastal Engineering Research Council from 2001-2012 where she served as the editor of the biannual 3500 to 4000 page Proceedings of the International Conference on Coastal Engineering that is the world standard reference for this subject. In 2012, she was chosen to be Chair of the Council until she retired in 2021. Her work on and support for the Coastal Engineering Research Council was exemplary. She has also served on the COPRI Board of Governors and the Technical Region Board of Governors.
The award will be presented at the International Conference on Coastal Engineering in Sydney, Australia 4-9 December, 2022.