Alumna Tammy Hebeler won international praise this month for her career and her contributions to the engineering profession.
The Shamsher Prakash Foundation selected Hebeler, M.S. 1999, for its 2014 Prize for Excellence in the Practice of Geotechnical Engineering, an honor reserved for promising young engineers under age 45 who have made significant independent contributions to geotechnical engineering and who show the promise of continued excellence.
“I’ve been very fortunate over the years to have been recognized several times for my professional efforts, but I would put this at the top,” said Hebeler, a senior engineer at Geosyntec Consultants, one of the top geotechnical and geo-environmental consulting firms in the world.
Hebeler said she went through a range of emotions from excitement to shock when she found out about the award, but mostly she’s humbled by the recognition.
“The [judging] panel consists of members from around the world. My selection by an international pool of judges is probably most significant to me,” Hebeler said.
Hebeler’s graduate-studies adviser, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor David Frost, nominated her for the award with the support of several of Hebeler’s Geosyntec colleagues.
“She is bringing significant credit and recognition to her employer as a result of her professional endeavors, including the project engineering and management she is performing, the mentoring she is now providing to early career engineers and the impact of her professional service activities,” Frost wrote in his nomination.
“The excellence she demonstrates in all aspects of her professional life as well as the balance she achieves between professional commitments and her personal life is remarkable and worthy of recognition.”
Hebeler’s current work focuses primarily on Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia. She’s one of the program managers for a multimillion dollar environmental services contract to provide civil engineering, site investigation, remediation, water quality compliance, pollution prevention and community relations for the base.
In her 15 years with Geosyntec, she has worked on a wide variety of large geotechnical, waste management and remediation projects.
The Prakash prize is the latest in a string of accolades for Hebeler, including the American Society of Civil Engineers Georgia Section naming her its 2006 Young Civil Engineer of the Year and the Georgia Engineering Alliance giving her its Young Engineer of the Year award in 2007.