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Marolo Alfaro smiling for the camera.

Dr. Marolo Alfaro honoured by Canadian Geotechnical Society

December 14, 2022 — 

Dr. Marolo Alfaro has been honoured with the 2022 Roger JE Brown Award in recognition of outstanding contributions to permafrost science or engineering by the Canadian Geotechnical Society (CGS). Dr. Alfaro, a professor of civil engineering, accepted the award as the team leader during the Awards Gala Night at the 75th Annual Canadian Geotechnical Conference held in Calgary, Alberta in October of this year. The other members of the team are Dr. Earl Marvin de Guzman (former UM doctoral student), Mr. Aron Piamsalee (former UM master’s student), Dr. Lukas Arenson, and Dr. Guy Doré (both of the latter being adjunct professors and research collaborators).

This award was established in 1986 and honours Roger JE Brown (1931-1980), who was a renowned Canadian physical geographer and researcher in the field of permafrost. Dr. Brown spent his entire career, from 1953 with the Division of Building Research of National Research Council Canada. Among other things, he prepared the first map on the distribution of permafrost in Canada, published in 1967 and the first Canadian book on permafrost “Permafrost in Canada: Its Influence on Northern Development”, published in 1970.

Dr. Alfaro is doing incredible work in the field and has been previously recognized by the CGS with the Geosynthetics Award in 2019. This accolade was in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the application of geosynthetics in civil, geotechnical, and geo-environmental engineering. He has also been recently appointed as Chair of the Canadian Geotechnical Research Board for 2022-25 which he is very well suited for as the mandate of the board is to monitor, stimulate, and promote research in geotechnical and geoscience fields for the benefit of the profession and Canada.

On behalf of the Price Faculty of Engineering, we congratulate Dr. Alfaro for his outstanding work and research contributions. The Roger JE Brown Award is an honour in which Dr. Alfaro and his team truly deserve and the work that they do is incredibly valuable to the engineering community.

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