ASCE has honored Stanford Gibson, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, with the 2024 Hans Albert Einstein Award for enthusiastically advancing the science of sedimentation and passionately promoting the education of present and future water resources engineers in sedimentation technology.
Gibson is a national sediment engineering expert for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the sediment specialist at the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC). He is the sedimentation lead on the HEC-RAS model development team. The HEC-RAS model is a world-renowned hydraulic and sediment transport analysis software having more than 100,000 users in over 200 countries. Gibson has spearheaded the development of one- and two-dimensional sediment transport models in HEC-RAS and added many innovations, including advances in bank erosion simulation, floodplain modeling, dam removal simulation, reservoir flushing technology, mud-flow and debris flow simulation, numerical techniques, and visualization of morphologic changes.
He has also contributed significantly to the Hydraulic Design Toolbox in HEC-RAS by adding a set of sediment and river mechanics calculators to help engineers performing screening-level analysis for cost-effective project management. Gibson has applied the sediment transport model to more than 25 rivers across the morphologic taxonomy. Although he is not an academic, he has been the lead author on over 70 articles, including 17 journal papers. Governmental agencies have turned to him to model critical and controversial sediment systems around the world, such as the dam removal on the Snake River and reservoir sedimentation on the Mekong River.
Gibson received the Hydrology, Hydraulics and Coastal Practitioner of the Year Award from USACE in 2017, the Employee of the Year award from HEC and Institute of Water Resources in 2018, and the Researcher of the Year Award from USACE Flood and Coastal R&D Program in 2020.
The Hans Albert Einstein Award is given to a member who has made a significant contribution to the engineering profession in the area of erosion control, sedimentation, and/or waterway development either in teaching, research, planning, design, or management.
