Logo: University of Southern California

Caltech’s President Addresses Green Campus Initiatives

Noted civil engineer Jean-Lou Chameau delivers the inaugural lecture of the Astani Department’s new Dorman Distinguished Lecture series

April 25, 2008 —
L-R: Paul Jennings, Jean-Pierre Bardet, Jean-Lou Chameau, C. L. Max Nikias, Albert Dorman, Yannis Yortsos and Sonny Astani attended the inaugural lecture, held in the Ming Hsieh Board Room.

What can universities do to promote green initiatives and education for sustainability? 

podcast link
Featured guest speaker Jean-Lou Chameau, president of the California Institute of Technology and a noted civil engineer, weighed in on that question April 24 in the inaugural address of a new Viterbi School lecture series named in honor of civil engineer and USC alumnus Albert Dorman.

The new Dorman Distinguished Lecture Series is sponsored by the Viterbi School's Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.  Dorman, who attended the lecture, is an architect who received his master’s degree in civil engineering at USC.  He is founding chairman of AECOM Technology Corporation, a global company responsible for large-scale public works projects.

Dorman is the only person to become both a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE). He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the winner of the ASCE Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Leadership.

Dorman and other USC dignitaries, including USC Provost C. L. Max Nikias, Viterbi School Dean Yannis C. Yortsos, Sonny Astani Department Chair Jean-Pierre Bardet, and Los Angeles real estate developer Sonny Astani, for whom the department is named, attended Chameau’s talk.  The lecture drew a standing-room only crowd of faculty, students and administrators from the Viterbi School and other parts of campus to the Ming Hsieh Board Room on the fifth floor of Tutor Hall.
Jean-Lou Chameau, left, with Albert Dorman, for whom the lecture series is named.

Chameau’s technical interests include sustainable technology, environmental geotechnology, soil dynamics, earthquake engineering and soil liquefaction.

He currently serves on the board of directors for the MTS Systems Corporation, the Academic Research Council of Singapore, the Council on Competitiveness and l’Ecole Polytechnique.

Chameau has been the recipient of a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, an ASCE Arthur Casagrande Award, a Rodney Chipp Memorial Award from the Society of Women Engineers, and a Prix Nessim Habif award from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts-et-Métiers.