Dr. Puppala delivered the prestigious 6th Proctor Honor Lecture at the 21st International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ICSMGE), organized in Vienna, Austria, from June 14 -19, 2026. The Proctor Honor Lecture, selected by the Technical Committee on Transportation Geotechnics – TC202 of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), commemorates the significant contributions of the late Ralph Roscoe Proctor and his contributions to the field of Transportation Geotechnics.
Dr. Puppala’s presentation, titled “Transportation Geotechnical Asset Management: Role of Novel Materials, Robust Designs, Innovative Technologies and Tools”, focused on how the Geotech field must evolve to handle infrastructure resilience in a rapidly changing global environment. Some of the technologies covered will play a valuable role in proactive transportation infrastructure asset management, enabling timely rehabilitations by combining advancements in remote sensing (satellites and UAVs) and robotic platform ground vehicles to rapidly provide smart, proactive assessments of infrastructure health conditions and their management.
