Dimitrios Zekkos, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and founder of ARGO-E Group, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Zekkos has established a distinguished career defined by a sustained commitment to sustainability and resiliency of civil infrastructure. His work seamlessly bridges the gap between academic innovation and professional practice, leveraging a unique combination of experimental field monitoring, advanced sensing, and computational modeling. With an extensive and internationally recognized scientific record, Zekkos has reshaped how the engineering community approaches geotechnical and geoenvironmental challenges and infrastructure resiliency against natural hazards.
One of his most significant contributions lies in the research and practice of solid waste landfills. He has been a primary driver in characterizing the mechanical properties of solid waste, degradation processes, and emission characterization of municipal, hazardous, and construction waste landfills. By developing prototype experimental setups for both laboratory and field use, he generated foundational data on the behavior of solid waste under various conditions. Zekkos’ leadership in this sector is exemplified by his role as lead editor for the Manual of Practice in Geoenvironmental Engineering, the first such manual produced by the ASCE Geo-Institute. His research in this domain has been recognized with the most prestigious honors in the field, including the ASCE Middlebrooks Award, the ASCE Collingwood Prize, and the Arthur Casagrande Award.
Zekkos is also a pioneer in field data collection and data analysis through the integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and advanced robotic sensing. By deploying optical, LiDAR, infrared, and multispectral sensors, he has transformed postdisaster reconnaissance into high-fidelity, quantitative analysis of infrastructure response. His rapid response deployments following catastrophic events in the United States, Nepal, Japan, and Greece have provided critical data to improve community resiliency. Examples of this work were applied in the analysis of the 2020 Edenville Dam failure and the 2021 Highway 1 failure at Rat Creek. As of 2025, he is a co-principal investigator of the $15 million National Science Foundation Center on Land Surface Hazards.
Beyond his research, Zekkos has been a visionary leader in democratizing engineering knowledge. As a board member of the ISSMGE and chair of the Committee on Innovation and Development, he spearheaded the launch of an open-access online library featuring over 21,000+ publications. He also established the ISSMGE Virtual University, which became a vital global resource during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zekkos’ editorial leadership is equally significant; as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Geoengineering Case Histories, he promotes "diamond" open-access publishing to ensure that practical engineering insights are available to practitioners worldwide regardless of financial barriers.
Through his chairing of major international congresses and his extensive service within ASCE, Zekkos continues to advance the state of the art and practice in geotechnical engineering.
