Academy of Distinguished Alumni
Carl L. Monismith MSCE, P.E., N.A.E.
Inducted to the Academy of Distinguished Alumni on
Carl L. Monismith received both his B.S. (1950) and M.S. (1954) degrees in Civil (Transportation) Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds an honorary Doctorate of Engineering from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Berkeley since 1951. During the period 1974-1979, he served as Department Chair and prior to that he served as Chair of the Division of Transportation Engineering, which at the time included Geotechnical Engineering and Construction Engineering and Management. Currently he is the Robert Horonjeff Professor of Civil Engineering, Emeritus and Director Emeritus of Berkeley’s Pavement Research Center of the Institute of Transportation Studies.
Professor Monismith’s teaching and research career has primarily been in the area of pavement engineering. He has published extensively on asphalt pavement technology and in the areas of pavement design and rehabilitation as well as pavement management. Long involved in the activities of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), he served as Chairman of the Pavement Design Section and as a member of the Committee on Flexible Pavement Design, the Long Term Pavement Performance Committee, and numerous National Cooperative Research Program (NCHRP) panels. His involvement in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has included: President of the San Francisco Section, member of the Committee on Curricula and Accreditation, and member the Education Division Executive Committee. He has also served as President of the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists (AAPT).
His contributions to the profession have been recognized by a number of awards, including TRB's K. B. Woods Award, First Distinguished Lectureship Award, and Roy W. Crum Distinguished Service Award. He was inducted into both the National Asphalt Pavement Association’s (NAPA) Hall of Fame and the Roll of Honor of the Asphalt Institute. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), an Honorary Member of ASCE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). In 2012, the ASCE Geo-Institute established the Carl L. Monismith Lecture in Pavement Engineering, to be given annually to an individual who has made outstanding research contributions in pavement engineering. He is a Registered Civil Engineer in California.