Izzat M. Idriss is Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the University of California at Davis (UCD) and independent consulting geotechnical engineer.  His areas of teaching, research and practice are: geotechnical earthquake engineering; soil mechanics; earthfill and rockfill dam engineering; and numerical modeling.  

Professor Idriss has conducted comprehensive post-earthquake investigations of ten earthquakes since the 1964 Great Alaska earthquake.  He has developed or co-developed many of the currently used procedures for evaluating the behavior of soil sites and soil structures during earthquakes and has authored or co-authored some 300 technical papers and research reports on subjects related to geotechnical earthquake engineering.  He is a consultant on many projects in the USA and other countries and serves on several consulting or review boards for US and International companies and for State and US Federal Agencies.

Professor Idriss has received numerous awards and honors in the past 50 years.  These include election as a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 1989, an Honorary Member of the Japanese Geotechnical Society in 2005, a Distinguished Member of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2008, and an Honorary Member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) in 2012.  He also received the first H. Bolton Seed Medal from ASCE in 1995, the distinguished scholarly public service award from UCD in 1999, the 2010 Ralph Peck Award from ASCE, the George W. Housner Medal from EERI in 2018, and presented the 55^th Terzaghi Lecture in 2019.