CEE Alumnus Yilmaz Helps Secure Fugro Gift for LSU Engineering

December 9, 2009

Civil Engineering alumnus Recep Yilmaz, senior vice president of Fugro Consultants, Inc., facilitated a substantial gift from Fugro Consultants to the LSU Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE). Yilmaz, and the president of Fugro Consultants, Joseph Cibor, visited campus and presented CEE with the unrestricted gift of $20,000. An unrestricted gift benefits the Department because the money can be immediately directed by the department chair for areas where funding is most needed.

"LSU has long been a source of technical talent and leadership through top-flight academia and service," said Cibor. "Many of our employees received their education at LSU, and we are honored to recognize the institution's heritage and to invest in its future."

The gift from Fugro will enhance CEE's geotechnical research and education. A portion of the fund will be used for a nano-universal testing system to characterize mechanical properties of nanoparticles and clay-polymer aggregates in soils and coastal sediments. Results of this research will be useful for the understanding of coastal sediment stability and transport, which is important for sediment management for coastal Louisiana. This portion of the gift will be submitted to the Louisiana's Board of Regents for matching funds.

The Fugro fund will also be used to purchase additional equipment for the Geotechnical Teaching Laboratory so small groups of undergraduate students can share a test station. This will enhance learning by allowing instructors to design new experiments and will augment coursework with the hands-on experience of operating the machines. The undergraduate geotechnical laboratory course has seen a steady increment of enrollment over the past years, and the fund provides a timely solution to the congested laboratory space and availability of enough equipment to guarantee the high quality of education.

Recep Yilmaz a native of Turkey, received his Masters of Science degree from LSU in 1981 and has performed extensive research for the development and applications of quasistatic and piezometric cone penetration in Louisiana. Yilmaz was responsible for the supervision of in-situ testing, correlation of field and laboratory results and the computer software development for North Louisiana Salt Dome investigations. His work has also included research for the Division of Engineering Research, United States Department of Energy, and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. Yilmaz was inducted into the LSU Civil & Environmental Engineering Hall of Distinction in 2007. He began his career at Fugro Gulf, Inc. as a staff engineer in 1981 and quickly advanced to Supervisory Engineer. In 1984, he joined Fugro Geoscience, Inc. In 2006, Fugro Geoscience, Inc. merged with Fugro Consultants. It was then that Yilmaz was named Senior Vice President of the company.

Fugro Consultants has been a provider of geotechnical engineering services for more than 60 years. They have extensive drilling capabilities and one of the largest, in-house-owned equipment inventories in the nation. Fugro supports its clients in their search for natural resources and the production and transportation of those resources as one of the strongest geotechnical and materials engineering suppliers in the industry. They also operate one of the world's premier commercial soil testing laboratories. Fugro provides its clients with technical data and information in order to design, construct, and maintain installations, structures and infrastructure safely and efficiently.

For more information on how you, too, can make a difference and help transform lives, please contact the LSU College of Engineering Office of Development at 225/578-7373.

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Article by Keviana Young, LSU College of Engineering, 225-578-5704, mlavall@lsu.edu