Back to Faculty Directory
Photo of Gilbert, Robert

bob_gilbert@mail.utexas.edu
512-232-3688
Office Location: ECJ 4.200

Robert Gilbert

Department Chair & Professor

Cockrell Family Chair of Departmental Leadership #3, Nasser I. Al-Rashid Chair in Civil Engineering

Area(s) of Expertise
Geotechnical Engineering

Educational Qualifications
Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993
M.S., Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988
B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987

About
Robert Gilbert joined UT Austin as a faculty member in 1993 and holds the Brunswick-Abernathy Regents Professorship in Soil Dynamics and Geotechnical Engineering. He has established himself as an expert in assessing and managing risk, consulting on a variety of high-profile projects, including flood protection in New Orleans, the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, nuclear waste disposal in Nevada and offshore oil and gas facilities around the world. 

He was awarded the Outstanding Civilian Service Award from the United States Army Corps of Engineers for his service on the American Society of Civil Engineers’ External Review Panel in the forensic analysis of the levee failures in Hurricane Katrina. In 2011, Gilbert received the Norman Medal, the highest award given by ASCE for a journal paper, and in 2016, he received the E.B. Burwell Award for his work with the National Science Foundation on the 2014 landslide in Oso, Washington. 

Technical Interests

  • Performance reliability and risk management for geotechnical and geoenvironmental systems
  • Waste containment
  • Site remediation
  • Slope stability
  • Offshore foundations