Dr. Shamsher Prakash, Distinguished Alumni and ex-President IITR Alumni Association of North America, is a nationally and internationally recognized geotechnical engineer with outstanding record of teaching, research and professional services. His professional career which started at Roorkee in India continued to grow in the United States when he went there in 1978. He initiated research on (1) displacement based design of rigid walls under seismic loading and liquefaction of sands with fines at Roorkee (1962-1978). All along, he has vigorously worked for the development of geotechnical engineering and soil dynamics since the beginning of his academic career. He chaired five international conferences in geotechnical earthquake engineering and soil dynamics and another five on case histories in geotechnical engineering.

He is member of more than ten professional societies and fellow of (i) American Society of Civil Engineers, (ii) Institution of Civil Engineers, London, and he has been admitted Honorary Fellow of Indian Society of Earthquake Technology and Indian Geotechnical Society for his contribution in Soil Dynamics. His technical committee participation includes, soil dynamics committee of ASCE, ASTM D-18, ACI-351, TC-4 on soil dynamics.

He has co-authored (1) Soil Dynamics (2) Machine Foundation (3) Pile Foundations and (4) Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics and about 300 papers in professional journals and conferences: http://campus.umr.edu/geotech/people/faculty/prakash.html He is President of Shamsher Prakash Foundation who have two annual “Shamsher Prakash Awards,” one for Excellence in Research and the other for Practice of Geotechnical Engineering. Dr. Prakash contributed to this aspect of life by providing a dynamic leadership as a ‘Yoga Teacher’ and authored two books on Yoga and Pranayam: http://www.yoga10.org/

In recognition his academic and professional achievements, the Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest Romania, conferred the degree of ‘Doctor, Honorius Causa to Dr. Prakash in 2003, and University of Illinois (UIUC), have recognized him as Distinguished Alumni of Civil Engineering in 2004.

Dr Prakash was born on January 3, 1933 in India. His early education was in Punjab. He earned his bachelor's degree in engineering from Roorkee University as well as an M.S. and PHD. in Civil engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.