EDUCATION

Executive Summary

Dr. Victor N. Kaliakin is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Delaware, and a member of the Geotechnical research group. Before joining the University of Delaware in 1990, he was a Member of Technical Staff in the Solid Mechanics Division at Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, CA (1987-1989), Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Arizona (1986-1987), Assistant Research Engineer at the Engineering Computer Corporation in Sacramento, CA (1981-1983), and a staff engineer at the Engineering Decision Analysis Company, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (1979-1980).

Dr. Kaliakin earned his bachelor (1978) and PhD (1985) degrees from the University of California, Davis. His master degree (1979) was earned from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Kaliakin performs research in computational geomechanics, the development and implementation of constitutive models for cohesive soils, and the development of robust constitutive models for polymeric reinforcement. Recent research efforts include the numerical simulation of instrumented field structures, the development of robust mixed and penalty finite elements for two-field problems, the modeling of silt-clay “transition” soils, unsaturated soils, and thermo-hydro-mechanical response of saturated cohesive soils, and gravelly soils at low confinement pressures.

Dr. Kaliakin has authored two textbooks (Approximate Solution Techniques, Numerical Modeling and Finite Element Methods, New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 2002 and Soil Mechanics: Calculations, Principles, and Methods, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2017) as well as numerous chapters in edited books, refereed journal papers, and papers appearing in conference proceedings.

Since his first language was Russian, Dr. Kaliakin has been active in sundry activities with Russian speaking countries, held in the USA and abroad. These include the first and second U.S.A.-Russia Geotechnical Engineering Symposia (2012 and 2018), and the first and second Kazakhstan – USA Geotechnical Engineering Workshops (2015 and 2018).

Dr. Kaliakin is member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a charter member of the Engineering Mechanics Institute (ASCE), member of the Geo-Institute (ASCE), the American Academy of Mechanics, the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, and the Kazakhstan Geotechnical Society (KGS).

Research Areas

• Geotechnical