UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Bahman Sheikh, a doctoral student in civil engineering at Penn State, recently was awarded a scholarship by the International Association of Foundation Drilling (ADSC-IAFD). The scholarship, which focuses on geotechnical engineering, is intended to stimulate the involvement of highly qualified engineers within the industry.
The $3,000 scholarship is awarded by the ADSC-IAFD Mid-Atlantic Chapter and is meant to aid in research on foundation designs, drilled shafts, and anchored earth retention systems.
In addition to the funding, the scholarship also includes a travel grant to the ADSC Annual Meeting, which will be held Feb. 5-8 in Nassau, Bahamas, where scholarship recipients will be formally introduced to the general assembly.
“The honor of being selected as a recipient of the ADSC award is more important to me than money, however, the funding is always appreciated,” Sheikh said. “This kind of award contributes to my education, as I wish to pursue a career in civil engineering as an academic research member.”
Sheikh’s research is focused on the numerical modeling of mobility and impact forces of rapid flow-like landslides. The complexity of his research has allowed him to utilize different subprojects where he mostly uses numerical models to investigate aspects of geotechnical engineering, such as the failure mechanism and ultimate pullout capacity of vertical anchors in sand for structures under lateral loading of winds or ocean waves and the numerical modeling of impact forces from water waves on geotextile tube breakwater structures.
Sheikh received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Mashhad, Iran, and his master’s degree in civil engineering from the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. He plans to graduate from Penn State in 2019.
“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my adviser, Dr. Tong Qiu, and my Ph.D. committee member and department head, Dr. Patrick J. Fox, for their great support during my Ph.D. study,” Sheikh said.