Prof. Mahdi Karkush is the President of Iraqi Scientific Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, and Professor of Civil Engineering at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Baghdad, Iraq. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Geotechnical Engineering from University of Baghdad, Iraq in 2008. He pursued his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from University of Babylon, Iraq in 1995 and M.Sc. in Civil Structural Engineering from University of Babylon, Iraq in 1998. Prof. Karkush has authored over 65 technical publications including 50 peer reviewed journal papers. He has supervised over 20 Ph.D. and M.Sc. students. He is a member of the editorial board of several scientific journals. He is a Fellow of The Iraqi Engineers Association (IEA), International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), UK, and Fulbright scholar, USA.
Prof. Deepankar Choudhury is Institute Chair Professor of Civil Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India and Adjunct Professor ofAcademy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR) at CSIR laboratories, India. Prof. Choudharyreceived his Ph.D. in Civil Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering from IISc,India in 2002. He served as BOYSCAST Fellow at UC Berkeley USA, Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at TU Darmstadt Germany, JSPS Fellow at Kagoshima University Japan, and as Visiting Fellow/Professor at NUS Singapore, UoW Australia, INU South Korea. Prof. Choudhury has authored over 300 technicalpublications including over 160 peer reviewed journal papers. He has supervised 25 Ph.D. students. He isa Fellow of The National Academy of Sciences, India (FNASc), Fellow of Institutionof Engineers India (FIE), Indian Geotechnical Society (FIGS), Indian Society ofEarthquake Technology (FISET). His research contributions in the domain of geotechnical earthquake engineering, foundation engineering and computational geomechanics have been included in several text books, design manual, codes and implemented in field projects.
