John McCartney
John S. McCartney is a Professor in the Department of Structural Engineering at the University of California San Diego, specializing in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. He holds the Hal Sorenson Endowed Chair in the Jacobs School of Engineering and serves as the director of the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center which hosts the NHERI@UC San Diego Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table (LHPOST6). His research interests include unsaturated soil mechanics, geosynthetics engineering, and energy geotechnics. His research has been awarded the Shamsher Prakash Award from ASCE in 2025, the R.M. Quigley award from CGS in 2020, the Walter L. Huber Research Prize from ASCE in 2016, the Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award from ASCE in 2013, the J. James R. Croes medal from ASCE in 2012, the DFI Young Professor Award in 2012, the NSF Faculty Early Development (CAREER) Award in 2011, and the IGS and Young IGS Awards from the International Geosynthetics Society in 2018 and 2008, respectively. His teaching and mentoring efforts were recognized by the 2012 Shamsher Prakash Prize for Excellence in Teaching of Geotechnical Engineering and the 2018 Outstanding Faculty Advisor from ASCE Region 9. For his service on ASTM Committee D18 on Soil and Rock, he received the President’s Leadership Award in 2013 and the Richard S. Ladd D18 Standards Development Award in 2011. He is the chair of the ASCE GeoInstitute Committee on Unsaturated Soils. He is the co-Editor-in-Chief of Computers and Geotechnics, an associate editor of Canadian Geotechnical Journal, and serves on the editorial boards of ASTM Geotechnical Testing Journal (GTJ), Geosynthetics International, and Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment. He received BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2002 and a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007.