It was an honor to receive 2018 Young Engineer Award for Professional Achievement. ASCE St. Louis Newsletter covered the professional and academic background of me as the award winner. The reference for the following article is the newsletter issue of October 2018. Sincerely, -Siavash Zamiran

The Young Engineer Award recognizes professional contributions of younger members to the Society and to the St. Louis Section and is presented annually to a Member of the St. Louis Section of ASCE who is judged to have attained significant professional achievement, and who is less than 35 years of age. This year’s Professional Recognition Award goes to Dr. Siavash Zamiran.

Dr. Zamiran earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 2009 from Azad University, followed by a Master’s of Science in Civil-Geotechnical in 2012. He then went on to earn his PhD in Engineering Science – Civil/Geotechnical Engineering from SIU-Carbondale in 2017.

Since 2017, Dr. Zamiran has worked with Marino Engineering Associates, where he performs stability analyses of reinforced slopes and retaining walls, subsidence investigations, and computational structural analysis of high-pressure natural gas and petroleum pipelines affected by ground subsidence. He is also teaching as an adjunct professor at SIU-Edwardsville.

Academically, Dr. Zamiran has worked as a Research Assistant and collaborative researcher at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and Edwardsville and Azad University, with research topics including Seismic investigation of cantilever retaining walls, investigation of deep foundations in swelling weathered rock, subsidence investigation of Illinois coal mines, investigation of the behavior of soil nail walls in seismic and static conditions and liquefaction studying of monopile foundation in wind turbines.

Dr. Zamiran has been active with ASCE including: Key Contacts; committee member with Geo-Institute Rock Mechanics Committee, Deep Foundations Committee, and Geophysical Committee; head of judges at ASCE Mid-Continent Student Conference, Geo Wall Competition, and founder and former president of SIUE Geo-Institute Graduate Student Organization where he was the instructor of 4 free public workshops in geotechnical engineering.
Other highlights include:

• Author and co/author of more than 30 conference and journal articles, one book, and reviewer of more than five journals.
• Notable awards received: International Association of Foundation Drilling Award, GeoConfluence Research Scholarship, and Itasca Education Partnership Award.
• Upon his graduation with a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, he was awarded the Outstanding Graduate Student award

Note published in ASCE St. Louis Newsletter - September 2018:
"​Brandi Jones and Siavash Zamiran had the opportunity to represent our Section and gather with other Younger Members from around the nation at the annual Younger Member Leadership Symposium in August 2018. The Symposium, held at the ASCE Headquarters, provides Younger Members with a great opportunity to network and to grow both personally and professionally. We developed personal visions, dove into project management tactics, and discussed communication styles – all of which encouraged new perspectives on life in and out of the workplace and hone in on further developing our leadership skills. We hope to explore some of the discussion points over the next year with our YMs while focusing on growth of our members. "

“YMLS is a bridge which connects young engineers with common enthusiasm and areas of interest and provides an opportunity for sharing their ideas, knowledge and expertise with each other.” – Siavash

​Geo-Institute Chapter Leaders Summit was held last summer on 15th July 2016 at Colorado Convention Center, Denver, Colorado. The purpose of this summit was to engage chapter leaders, get alignment between chapter leaders and board on strategic and operational direction, and strengthen strategy to bring better quality content directly to Geo-Institute chapters.
Siavash Zamiran has participated in the summit as the representative of St. Louis Geo-Institute and SIU Geo-Institute and enrolled in summit activities to increase partnership between St. Louis and SIU chapters with the national organization and other regional chapters. 

From June 26 to 29, 2016, the 50th US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium was held in Houston, Texas with several attendees from academia and industry. The areas of concentration in the conference were including petroleum engineering, civil engineering, geology and geophysics, mining engineering, and underground construction.
 
It was my honor to be the chair of two different sessions including “Civil Engineering” and “Underground Storage and Structures”. Moreover, as a member of ASCE Rock Mechanics Committee, I have been active in the committee meeting and agenda.

A total number of 650 papers were presented in the symposium including “Modeling of Swelling Rocks for Group Pier Foundation Applications” presented by me, Siavash Zamiran.  In this investigation, the behavior of a pier group system is studied based on the swelling pressure of expansive claystone layers through a series of computational three-dimensional numerical analyses. This paper is now available in Researchgate (in the following link) and Academia databases for interested audiences.

Link to the paper: Modeling of Swelling Rocks for Group Pier Foundation Applications