CEE Update Faculty Retirement: Harry Stewart

On December 31, 2019 Associate Professor Harry Stewart retired after 34 years of teaching and research in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Instrumental in research of geotechnical engineering, Stewart, focused on soil structure interaction, instrumentation of constructed facilities, soil dynamics and earthquake engineering, the cyclic behavior of soils under both laboratory and field conditions, blasting effects on structures, and railroad track performance.

Stewart was responsible for developing design recommendations for the support of shallow excavations for utility construction, the development of improved retain/ replace methodologies for cast iron piping, and design approaches for thermal loadings on plastic piping for gas and water utilities.

He directed several research projects focusing on full-scale field testing of foundations and pipelines and was responsible for developing improved methods to analyze and design high pressure pipelines. Stewart had a major role in designing and constructing the full-scale testing facility for buried pipelines in the high-bay area of the Bovay Laboratory complex, which in years past was called the George Winter Lab. This new testing facility contributed greatly to CEE’s partnership with other universities in the Large-Scale Lifelines Testing Facility that was part of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) project while it existed in the years 2004-2014.

Stewart was the Director of Civil Infrastructure Laboratories for the School for nearly 20 years and Director of the Takeo Mogami Geotechnical Laboratory for 28 years.

He enjoyed working with his colleague Professor Tom O’Rourke, collaborating with him on many projects and participating side by side on the NEES projects. Much of Stewart’s time throughout his career was spent in the Lab providing instruction to students and working closely with lab managers Tim Bond and Jim Strait.

Stewart has been a principal investigator on a wide variety of research contracts and grants, and is the author and co-author of over 120 technical papers and reports, and a principal author of professional manuals of practice for the American Petroleum Institute and American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association.

With many memberships and recognitions bestowed upon him over his lifetime, including his receipt of the 2002 Trevithick Prize from the Institute of Civil Engineers, UK, and the NASA/JPL Rover Science Team Award, Stewart is a registered Professional Engineer in New York.

Stewart plans to stay in the Ithaca area to relax, sit back and enjoy life intertwined with a game of golf every now and then.