Ellen M. Rathje is an American

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

and

geotechnical engineer Geotechnical engineering, also known as geotechnics, is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. It uses the principles of soil mechanics and rock mechanics to solve its engineering problems. ...

. Her research focuses on the response of

earth structure An earth structure is a building or other structure made largely from soil. Since soil is a widely available material, it has been used in construction since prehistory. It may be combined with other materials, compressed and/or baked to add ...

s to

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

s. She works in the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

as Janet S. Cockrell Centennial Chair in Engineering in the Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. She is also the 2024 president of the

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) is a leading technical society in dissemination of earthquake risk and earthquake engineering research both in the U.S. and globally. EERI members include researchers, geologists, geotechnical ...

Education and career

After a childhood interest in

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the journ ...

, Rathje changed her focus to engineering in her senior year of high school, and became interested in earthquakes after the

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake On October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m. Pacific Time Zone, PST, the Loma Prieta earthquake occurred at the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz Cou ...

in her freshman year as a university student. She majored in civil engineering at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, graduating in 1993. She continued her studies at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, where she received a master's degree in civil engineering in 1994 and completed her Ph.D. in 1997. She joined the University of Texas as an assistant professor of civil engineering in 1998. From 2004 to 2009 she was associate professor and J. Neils Thompson Centennial Teaching Fellow there. She was promoted to full professor and given the Warren S. Bellows Centennial Professorship in 2009, and in 2018 she was given the Janet S. Cockrell Centennial Chair in Engineering. In 2018 she was co-chair of the Geotechnical Extreme Event Reconnaissance Association, and she was elected as president of the

for the 2024 term.

Research

Rathje's research focuses on the response to

s of

s such as roads,

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, aqua ...

landfill A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was ...

disposal sites, and

reclaimed land Land reclamation, often known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new land from oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamatio ...

. This work includes the analysis of earthquake-triggered

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, rockslips or rockslides, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, mudflows, shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows. Landslides ...

s and

soil liquefaction Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses Shear strength (soil), strength and stiffness in response to an applied Shear stress, stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other s ...

through case histories and data obtained through

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

and site visits. She has also led the DesignSafe project for storage, data analysis, and

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz/vis or info viz/vis) is the practice of designing and creating Graphics, graphic or visual Representation (arts), representations of a large amount of complex quantitative and qualitative data and i ...

of natural hazards in

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and pri ...

engineering, published research connecting

oil extraction Petroleum is a fossil fuel that can be drawn from beneath the Earth's surface. Reservoirs of petroleum are formed through the mixture of plants, algae, and sediments in shallow seas under high pressure. Petroleum is mostly recovered from oil ...

with increased earthquake activity, and developed

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

models to predict earthquake hazards.

Recognition

Rathje received the 2006

(EERI) Shah Family Innovation Prize, and the 2018 William B. Joyner Lecture Award of EERI and the

Seismological Society of America The Seismological Society of America (SSA) is an international Learned society, scientific society devoted to the advancement of seismology and the understanding of earthquakes for the benefit of society. Founded in 1906, the society has members ...

. The

American Society of Civil Engineers The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is a tax-exempt professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, it is the oldest national engineering soci ...

(ASCE) gave Rathje their

Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize The Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (Huber Award) is the highest level mid-career research award in all areas of civil engineering. The award is annually given to individuals with notable achievements and contributions in research with resp ...

in 2010, and their 2022 Ralph B. Peck Award, "for for advancements to seismic site response analysis through case histories, development of case histories to inform regional seismic assessments, and leadership promoting the electronic publishing of case history data". She was named a Fellow of ASCE in 2016. She was named to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

in 2025, "for contributions to seismic slope assessment and site response analysis and the development of cyberinfrastructure for natural hazards engineering".

References

External links

Home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rathje, Ellen Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American civil engineers American women engineers Women civil engineers Geotechnical engineers Cornell University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Texas at Austin faculty Fellows of the American Society of Civil Engineers Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Earthquake engineering