Keynote Speakers
Professor James R. Rice is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics at Harvard University, where he is appointed jointly in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Rice received his B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Lehigh University in 1962. He went on to receive his M.S. and Ph.D in Applied Mechanics from Lehigh in 1963 and 1964, respectively. He served on the faculty of Brown University from 1965 to 1981 before joining Harvard University.
Throughout his career, Professor Rice's publications have proven influential in the areas of rock mechanics specifically and material deformation and failure in general. Professor Rice's research in recent years has focused upon mechanics related to earth and environmental problems. This work has included addressing fault zone processes, tsunami generation, and meltwater interactions with glacier dynamics and landslide processes. His earlier work focused on inelastic deformation and the fracture of materials. This included elastic-plastic crack propagation, path-independent integral methodologies, microscopic mechanisms of deformation and failure, and the development of finite element and spectral element methods for solid mechanics.
Professor Rice is a recipient of the Timoshenko Medal (1994), the Franklin Institute's Francis J. Clamer Medal (1996) and the Panetti-Ferrari International Prize for Applied Mechanics (2008). He has been further honored with the title of Fellow by many professional societies, including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Geophysical Union, the American Academy of Mechanics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has also been elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Member of the Académie des Sciences.
Kate Hadley Baker retired in 2010 from BP America in Houston, Texas. Her career has spanned many areas among the geoscience and engineering disciplines, including geotechnical, drilling, and reservoir engineering; geology; geophysics; and formation evaluation. Baker started her career at Exxon Production Research Company, working as a research geologist, becoming supervisory geologist in the Reservoir Description Section. She then moved from senior to district geologist positions in Exxon’s Offshore Division. After a stint in Exploration, she headed formation evaluation at Exxon Company USA and later supervised Exxon Corp.’s special core analysis and well testing. After serving in various managerial roles at BP and its predecessor companies, including running Amoco’s Greater Green River Basin tight gas operations, she became distinguished advisor and director of new well delivery in BP’s Upstream Technology Function, serving also during 2009–10 as Vann Fellow to Princeton University.
Among many professional volunteer positions, she chaired the US Continental Scientific Drilling Committee, was a member of the US National Academy’s Board on Earth Sciences, and served on Geoscience and Science and Technology Center proposal review panels with the US National Science Foundation. She chairs annual peer reviews for the US DOE Geothermal Technologies Program Office. She was SPE’s 2004 President and is the current SPE Foundation Treasurer, and one of two SPE representatives on the Board of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers. She is an SPE Honorary Member and a Fellow of the American Rock Mechanics Association as well as serving as the Secretary of its Board of Directors.
She earned a BS in geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then a PhD in Experimental Rock Mechanics under Professor Bill Brace. She is active in the Women’s Sailing Association at the Houston Yacht Club, and a member of the University of Arkansas Chemical Engineering Department’s Industrial and Professional Advisory Council.
Christopher Mark
Dr. Christopher Mark serves as the Principal Roof Control Specialist for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). In this capacity, he assists the Agency in the development of policy and practice directed at protecting coal miners from ground fall hazards. Prior to taking his current position with MSHA in 2010, he worked for 23 years as the leader of the ground control research program at the Pittsburgh Research Laboratory of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). He has made numerous contributions to mine safety that have been adopted into mining practice in the US and around the world, including the Analysis of Longwall Pillar Stability (ALPS), the Analysis of Retreat Mining Pillar Stability (ARMPS), and the Coal Mine Roof Rating (CMRR). Dr. Mark first entered the mining industry in 1976 as an underground coal miner. He holds a Ph. D. from Penn State, and has also worked as a consulting engineer. In the course of his activities he has studied ground conditions at more than 300 coal mines throughout the U.S. and abroad, and has authored more than 140 professional publications. He has received numerous awards in recognition of his contributions to mine safety, including the Society of Mining and Metallurgy (SME) 2014 Erskine Ramsay Medal Award and the Syd S. Peng Excellence in Ground Control Award.
Steven D. Glaser is a professor in the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, distinguished affiliate professor at the Technical University of Munich, and a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is a faculty director for CITRIS, the Center for Information Technology Research in Service to Society.
Glaser’s engineering training was at The University of Texas at Austin. He also has a B.A. in philosophy from Clark University, 1975. He completed the apprentice program of Local 77 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, following which Glaser worked eight years as a driller, including one year in Iraq.
Glaser was awarded the Basic Research Award, 1993, by the US National Committee for Rock Mechanics, and a Fulbright Fellowship in 2003.
Glaser has worked on many aspects of rock mechanics and rock physics, most often by applying principles from geophysics. He has pioneered nano-seismology, a quantitative alternative to acoustic emission, throughout his career. His rock mechanics work has encompassed the nature of friction, fracture propagation, and practical aspects of geothermal energy mining. In addition, Glaser currently operates the largest ecological wireless network in the world, monitoring forest hydrology of snow melt and water balance in the Sierra Nevada.