Background

My studies in Civil Engineering started in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Concepción, Chile. In the first years the formation was mainly focused on Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry (Profs. René Letelier, Miguel Llarena, Hermann Alder, Stanley Bruce, Paul Minning, Luis Braga, Mario Suwalsky and many others). Then, in Civil Engineering the formation was intensive in Structural Engineering (Profs. Peter Dechent, Jorge Crempien, Sergio Villafañe and others) followed by Hydraulics (Profs. Andrés López, José Vargas, Andrea Nardini, Alberto Duyvestein and others), Transport and Highways (Profs. Alejandro Tudela and Tomás Echaveguren), Geotechnics (Prof. Arturo Gutiérrez) and Construction (Prof. César León). My degree project was titled: Estimation of the longitudinal dispersion coefficient DL for rivers with mild bed slopes, applied to the Bío Bío River, which I finished in 1997. Previously, in 1996 I worked as a final year student in the Ministry of Public Works MOP, in the Highway Division and afterwards in the Port Division in the city of Coyhaique (Patagonia). In the Port Division I took part in preliminary designs of Candelario Mancilla and Ventisquero Chico access ramps in the O'Higgins Lake and in the Paloma Lake timber jetty. Just before graduating I was working in the Engineering Consulting GVS on the geometric design of roads for the towns of Los Alamos, Cerro Alto and Tres Pinos, in the Arauco province.

Once graduated I started working in Arcadis Geotécnica, in Providencia, then called Geotécnica Consultores, where I worked with brilliant engineers (Edgar Bard, Sergio Barrera, Cecilia Riveros, Ramón Verdugo, José Campaña, Fernando Vielma, Luis Valenzuela, Ricardo Nicolau and many others). There I mainly took part in mining projects: Radomiro Tomic project of heap leach, geomechanical assessment of granular materials and geomembranes interphases by means of direct shear and punching tests; Escondida Phase 3.5, geotechnical study for the expansion project, slope stability analyses; El Indio and El Tambo mines, studies of closure and abandonment, hydrology and surface runoff of del Medio and Malo Rivers basins, diversion and discharge channels, El Indio, Pastos Largos and El Tambo tailings dams, heap leach and conceptual hydrologic models; Los Pelambres extension, slope stability analyses and measurement of quantity of materials for the starting wall, drain channel, cut-off trench and discharging piping Cuncumén River; JRI Monturaqui consulting, settlement estimation for tank deposit; Minera Quellaveco geotechnical characterization of tailings, analysis and interpretation of static and dynamics triaxial tests, permeability tests, index properties, etc.; Minera Quellaveco tailings basic engineering; report of sampling and tests required;  and Urban reclamation of the Bío Bío River North Bank in Concepción, evaluation of the liquefaction potential and dynamic compaction study.

I realised that I needed to specialise in Geotechnics, due to that I applied and was accepted in the Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering at the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, where I pursued 11 courses: Advanced Soil Mechanics, Soil Dynamics, Finite Elements (Prof. Fernando Rodríguez), Rock Mechanics (Prof. Michel van Sint Jan), Foundation Engineering, Environmental Geotechnics (Prof. Jorge Troncoso), Computation applied to Structural Engineering (Prof. Ernesto Cruz), Structural Design of Pavements (Prof. Guillermo Thenoux), Coastal Engineering (Prof. Luis Estellé), Groundwater (Prof. José Muñoz) and Experimental Analysis of Structures (Prof. Carl Lüders).

My master's thesis title was "Experimental analysis of the bearing capacity of shallow foundations on sandy soil". The thesis was part of Prof. Rodríguez research project FONDECYT N°1990116 New constitutive model for sands and its application to problems in the engineering practice. I finished my thesis in 2000, afterwards I worked one year in Universidad Austral, Valdivia. In Universidad Austral I lectured Solid Mechanics, Statics, Structural Analysis, Structural Design of Pavements and Soil Dynamics. As a consultant I prepared reports of Soil Mechanics for the boat parking of ASENAV, slope failures causes in the construction of the Plaza de los Ríos shopping centre and foundation design of the Isaflor shopping centre.

In 2002 I was employed as a research assistant in the Civil Engineering Research Group by the Department of Engineering Science which is part of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division at the University of Oxford, in the UK. There I worked on the research project of Foundations for offshore wind turbines under the supervision of Professor Guy Houlsby and Dr. Byron Byrne. This project was funded by BERR (ex DTI) and EPSRC. I became a graduate member of Keble College. The first days of January 2007 I submitted my DPhil thesis Model testing of foundations for offshore wind turbines. 

Since August 2007 I am a full time academic staff in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción UCSC. Initially I lectured Mechanics, Solid Mechanics and Soil Mechanics. Lately I have been lecturing Geotechnics, Foundation Engineering and the optional and graduate courses of Soil Dynamics, Foundation Dynamics and Experimental Soil Mechanics, additionally Pre-project and Degree Project. I was responsable for the only exclusive (in Chile) Master programme in Geotechnical Engineering MIG from 2009 to 2015. Now Geotechnical Engineering is within the master programme in Civil Engineering (mic.ucsc.cl) and the doctorate programme in Engineering (di.ucsc.cl). 

I was part of the conception, proposal and opening of the first (in Chile) academic programme in Engineering Geology in 2011, resulting in the first graduated students in Engineering Geology in Chile from 2017 onwards. Since 2008 I am the editor of the scientific and technical open access publication in Civil Engineering Obras y Proyectos, which was in 2011 incorporated in the scientific database SciELO www.scielo.cl/oyp. From April 2010 until 2021 I worked in the Laboratory of GeoMaterials (now dicat) where lectures and research activities were carried out. 

At the end of 2013 I was elected vicepresident of IGS Chile the Chilean chapter of the International Society of Geosynthetics, later on in March 2015 I became president of IGS Chile. At the end of 2015 I was elected officer of the Chilean Society of Geotechnics SOCHIGE, becoming vicepresident for the 2016-2017 period. Then, I was re-elected as a member of SOCHIGE directory for the 2018-2019 period. SOCHIGE is part of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering.

Reclamation project of the Bío Bío River North Bank, view from Chepe Hill a couple of days after the 2010 earthquake