ASCE has honored Heather M. Brooks, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, with the 2023 CAN-AM Civil Engineering Amity Award for her very active participation in ASCE technical committees, including the Cold Regions Engineering Division and the Canadian Permafrost Association.
Brooks epitomizes the friendship and cooperation between Canada and the United States in cold regions engineering, having shown a hardy technical leadership in the area. As part of her doctorate (Laval University), she developed a methodology to quantitatively assess the risks to embankment-supported infrastructure on permafrost. She wrote several papers on the topic and her work has attracted much attention in the scientific community. At the 11th International Conference on Permafrost (ICOP), 2016 in Potsdam, Germany, she received the award for best paper presented by a young researcher.
Prior to her Ph.D., Brooks worked as an engineer with Golder Associates and with Duane Miller Associates in the state of Alaska. She is now a geotechnical & Arctic engineer at BGC Engineering Inc., in Calgary. She has conducted field geotechnical explorations in rural and Arctic environments and designed foundations for buildings and other structures in frozen or thawed ground conditions.
Brooks has been very actively involved in several North American and international committees. Among other involvement, she has been committed to the Canadian Permafrost Association and several ASCE technical committees, and more specifically to the Cold Regions Engineering Division.
The CAN-AM Civil Engineering Amity Award is given to a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers or of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers for either a specific instance that has had a continuing benefit in understanding and goodwill, or a career of exemplary professional activity that has contributed to the amity of the United States and Canada.
