News Story
Link Elected to National Academy of Construction
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Senior Research Engineer Ed Link was selected for membership in the National Academy of Construction (NAC) earlier this summer. He will be inducted Oct. 24 at the NAC Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.
The 2014 NAC class includes 28 new inductees selected from more than 250 industry leaders considered for the rigorous nomination and election process.
Link is being recognized by NAC for his leadership in the public engineering and academic sectors, where he brings world-class research to problems of national importance. He began his career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in 1968, starting as a research engineer in Vicksburg, Miss. Later, he served as senior executive and director of the Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab in Hanover, N.H., and culminated his 34-year USACE career in 2002 as director of R&D and chief scientific advisor in Washington, D.C.
Link then worked for three years for
Toffler Associates, where he conducted strategic futures studies for government and industry before joining the UM faculty. Following the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, he served as director of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force and performed the principal forensic analysis of the hurricane forces and the performance of the flood protection infrastructure of New Orleans. That work provided the technical foundation for the design and construction of the new $14.7 billion Storm Damage and Risk Reduction System now in place.
Link currently serves as U.S. representative to the five-member international advisory commission in the Netherlands for development of a systems approach to sustainable and climate-resistant water management infrastructure and practice. He received the ENR Award of Excellence in 2006 and both the Silver Order of the DeFleury Medal (2002) and Gold Order of the DeFleury Medal (2010) from the U.S. Army. He holds a bachelor’s degree in geological engineering from North Carolina State University, a master’s in civil engineering from Mississippi State University, and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from Penn State University.
In addition to serving as a CEE research professor, Link is also affiliated with UMD's Center of Excellence in Project Management. His research interests include flood risk assessment and analysis, water resources and natural disaster mitigation and policy.
Established in 1999, the NAC is a select organization made up of industry leaders whose present or past professional career demonstrates outstanding contribution to the effectiveness of the engineering and construction industry. In addition to being a personal honor, election to the Academy allows members to volunteer their expertise to a variety of organizations, governmental and nongovernmental, for the betterment of the industry as a whole.
Today, the NAC boasts more than 100 members from industry, owners, academia and government.
Published September 26, 2014
