COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Dr. Billy L. Edge, holder of the W. H. Bauer Professorship in Dredging Engineering and head of the Coastal and Ocean Engineering Program at Texas A&M University, has been appointed to a committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) tasked with studying the performance of New Orleans’s hurricane protection system during Hurricane Katrina. As part of the ASCE external review panel, Edge will help provide credible answers to the fundamental questions concerning the performance of the hurricane protection system in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The study is expected to take eight months. Edge, a professor in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering in Texas A&M’s Dwight Look College of Engineering, has also recently begun his term as president of the Board of Governors of ASCE’s Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI). COPRI was established in 2000 to "advance and disseminate scientific and engineering knowledge to its diverse membership engaged in sustainable development and the protection of coasts, oceans, ports, waterways and wetlands." A renowned expert in coastal engineering, Edge is also a researcher in the Civil Engineering Division of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and director of TEES’s Haynes Coastal Engineering Laboratory. TEES is the engineering research agency of Texas and a member of The Texas A&M University System. Before joining the Texas A&M Engineering faculty, Edge was on the civil engineering faculty at Clemson University and worked in the private sector, spending 10 years at Cubit Engineering Limited. He also provided consulting services at Edge & Associates Inc. in the areas of port, harbor and coastal engineering. He has published more than 100 articles in referred journals and conference proceedings from his research in the areas of coastal engineering, dredging technology, storm surge and hurricanes, coastal zone management and water quality modeling. Edge has served on the Marine Board of the National Academy of Engineering and is one of the three civilian members of the Coastal Engineering Research Board of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Through his efforts in dissemination of research to the practicing engineer and expanding the role of the engineer in the solution of interdisciplinary problems, Edge has provided extensive leadership to the coastal engineering profession. One of his most significant contributions has been publishing the Proceedings of the International Conferences on Coastal Engineering. He served as editor to this collection from 1976 to 2000. The collection is the primary source of coastal engineering literature worldwide. Edge has been the recipient of numerous awards for his work including the 1998 ASCE John G. Moffatt-Frank E. Nichol Harbor and Coastal Engineering Award; the 1997 ASCE International Coastal Engineering Award; the 1983 ASCE Arthur M. Wellington Prize; the 1993 Morrough P. O’Brien Award from the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association; and the 1980 Engineering News Record Marksman of the Year Award. Edge holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
