Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award
Richard D. Woods

With his pioneering research in soil dynamics, earthquake engineering and dynamic soil-structure interaction, geotechnical engineer Richard D. Woods has greatly influenced the way machine and building foundation systems are designed and constructed today.

Additionally, his work in the area of the Spectral Analysis of Surface Waves has provided a revolutionary way to non-destructively characterize the properties and distribution of in-situ geomaterials for site investigations.

A member of the College of Engineering faculty since 1967, Woods co-authored the textbook “Vibrations of Soils and Foundations” (Prentice-Hall 1970), which is widely used by design professionals and educators and has been translated into Japanese, Chinese and Romanian. Fortune 500 companies and governments have retained him to work on critical projects in the United States and overseas. In the early 1990s, he established a geotechnical earthquake engineering program and laboratory in Yerevan, Armenia, following the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

In addition to serving as chair and associate chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Woods has made outstanding contributions to Michigan’s Military Officers Education Committee, Undergraduate Scholarship Committee, University Classified Research Review Panel and Senate Assembly.
Woods received the College of Engineering’s Teaching Excellence Award and has taught two unique courses offered by the college, “Soil and Site Investigation” and “Soil Dynamics,” as well as having taught numerous other courses.

He was co-founder of the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the driving force behind the United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Engineering Research, as well as the Environmental and Engineering Geophysics Society. Woods is a Fellow of the ASCE and recently was chosen vice president for North America of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering.

Woods received the ASCE’s prestigious Collingwood Prize and Karl Terzaghi Lecture Award. He was named Michigan’s Civil Engineer of the Year in 1985 and 1995 and recently received the Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award from the College of Engineering at Notre Dame and the U-M College of Engineering’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Award for Outstanding Accomplishment.