Emir José Macari

Emir José Macari

Dr. Emir José Macari is Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of New Orleans since January 2015. Prior to this, he was Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the California Smart Grid Center at the California State University, Sacramento. He joined Sac State in 2006 after being Dean of Science, Mathematics, and Technology at The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College (UTB/TSC). Prior to this, Dr. Macari was the Chairman and Bingham C. Stewart Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Louisiana State University (LSU) from 1999 to 2001. In 2001 and 2002, Dr. Macari was on loan to the National Science Foundation (NSF) where he was the Director of the Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST). Before joining LSU, Dr. Macari was Associate Professor of Geosystems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and Associate Professor and Director of the Civil Infrastructure Research Center at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. He has authored and co-authored more than 80 technical papers and received research grants as PI or Co-PI in excess of $3 million.

In 1992, Dr. Macari was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship by President George H. W. Bush. In 1994, he contributed to the drafting of President Clinton’s science policy document “Science in the National Interest”. He is the recipient of numerous national and international honors for his contributions to science and engineering education and research. This year, Dr. Macari was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering of Mexico and has served as a liaison between the Mexican and U.S. Academies of Engineering. Dr. Macari was the President of the advisory committee to the Institute of Ecology of Mexico and has testified to the government oversight committee on funding and direction of ecological research in Mexico. Dr. Macari was also chosen as one of 5 LSU’s Highest Academic Achievement honorees that was presented by a joint session of the Louisiana Congress on June 16, 2004.

Dr. Macari received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1989 where he worked on a NASA-sponsored project dealing with the Mechanical Behavior of Granular Materials at Low Effective Stress States and Under Reduced Gravity Environments. His research is in the areas of Computational and Experimental Geomechanics. Dr. Macari is a big believer in the power of Mentorship in Academia.

In the past, Dr. Macari has served on the Board of Advisors of the Society for the Advancement of Latinos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO), Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), and Celebra La Ciencia. In addition, he serves as an advisor to the Center for Hemispherical Cooperation in Science and Engineering and Applied Science (Cohemis). Dr. Macari is a member of Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society), the Strategic Planning Committee and the International Committee, the Engineering Mechanics Properties Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and President George W. Bush’s Taskforce on the under-representation of Latinos in the Federal Workforce. He is the associate editor of the International Journal on Natural Hazards and Infrastructure and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (ASCE-GeoInstitute).