Geosynthetic Institute

David Frost

President

Email: david.frost@ce.gatech.edu

Dr. J. David Frost is the Higginbotham Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering and a Regents’ Entrepreneur at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained BA and BAI degrees in Mathematics and Engineering Science from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and MS and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. Throughout his research and teaching career, David has studied natural and man-made disasters and their impacts on infrastructure at multiple scales using imaging and information systems. He has worked in industry in Ireland and Canada on infrastructure projects. His research involves the development of digital data collection systems for studying infrastructure materials and problems. He has graduated almost 50 PhD students, published more than 230 refereed journal and conference papers and has given more than 100 invited lectures worldwide. For 30 years, he has served on or led NSF supported post-disaster study teams following disasters in US, Turkey, India, China, Chile and Japan as well as at the World Trade Center complex following the 9/11 attacks. From 2015 to 2025, he was the subsurface engineering research Thrust Leader for the NSF Engineering Research Center on Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics. He has organized numerous workshops/conferences on the applications of spatial analysis tools to study damage patterns from disasters. He is a regular invited participant in conferences and workshops on disaster prediction, assessment, response and mitigation. Frost has been recognized for his teaching and research, including receiving the ASCE Technical Council on Forensic Engineering Outstanding Paper Award, an NSF National Young Investigator Award, the ASCE Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, the ASTM International Hogentogler Award and the ASCE Seed Medal. He is a registered professional engineer in the US and Canada and a Fellow of ASCE. Frost has assumed the role of President of the Geosynthetic Institute in conjunction with its relocation from Philadelphia to Atlanta.