Rodrigo Salgado is the Charles Pankow Professor in Civil Engineering at Purdue. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, a J.D. (cum laude) from the Indiana University McKinney School of Law, and a B.S. (CE) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Prof. Salgado has worked in theoretical, experimental and computational geomechanics for nearly 30 years, and has authored 162 journal publications, 104 conference publications, 41 technical reports and a geotechnical engineering textbook.

Mônica Prezzi holds an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She followed that with a period of work in the industry, during which she worked on several large construction projects. Dr. Prezzi obtained a Master of Engineering degree from UFRGS in 1990, and both a Master of Science degree and a Ph.D. degree in civil engineering from Berkeley in 1995. After graduation, Dr. Prezzi stayed at Berkeley working as a Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2003, she joined Purdue University as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Prezzi was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 and then to Full Professor in 2011.