Background
Dr. Emir José Macari is Dean of the College 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 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 serves as a liaison between the Mexican and U.S. Academies of Engineering. This past February, Dr. Macari was selected as the President of the advisory committee to the Institute of Ecology of Mexico and testified in April to the government oversight committee on funding and direction of ecological research in Mexico. Dr. Macari was also chosen as one of LSU's Highest Academic Achievement honorees and was presented to the Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives 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). He currently sits on the Board of Advisors for the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) 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 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).
Dr. Macari is Mexican-American and is married to Jill Kathleen (a Mathematician). They have three daughters, Anna Christina (13), Elizabeth (11), and Gabriella (8).
