Achievement

EIGER trainee Tiffany Adams received the first place award in the United States Society on Dams (USSD) 2010 Scholarship competition for her research on "The Stability of Levees with Deep Mixed Shear Walls." Ms. Adams' research identified multiple failure modes for levees supported on shear panels constructed by the deep mixing method of blending cement stabilizers into soft clay soils, such as exist in the Mississippi River Delta, and it quantified the transition states between failure modes to enable improvements in design procedures. The interdisciplinary nature of Ms. Adams' work, which concerns mitigating the consequences of levee failure through evacuation of the vulnerable population of aging families, was cited as helping to distinguish her work from that of the other finalists.