About

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Marc Ballouz was born in 1965 in Beirut Lebanon.  He obtained his high school degree from the French Jesuit school of Notre Dame de Jamhour.  Despite the ongoing civil war at that time he pursued his higher education and got his Bachelor degree in Civil Engineering from the American University of Beirut AUB, Lebanon in 1987.  He worked for his dad Joseph Ballouz, who is a well know engineer and contractor for two years, then moved to the USA to pursue his graduate studies and obtained there his MS & PhD degrees in geotechnical engineering from Texas A&M University in 1994 with a 4.0 GPA.

He worked as a consultant in Houston Texas for 2 years before returning to Lebanon to start his own company, the Institute for Geotechnics & Materials, IGM in 1997.  IGM was founded as a reference problem solver of geotechnical engineering challanges, covering services from Lab testing to large scale construction projects.  IGM quickly grew and is now International with offices in 5 different countries with more than 200 employees, and a large fleet of specialized equipment for geotechnical contracting.  This allowed him to explore his capabilities in innovative Design/Build solutions in Geotechnical engineering.  He is one of the rare engineers who are at ease in both: solving differential equations and driving a large drill rig.  He is considered an international expert in Foundation engineering particularly deep foundations in difficult soil conditions for special structures such as bridges, high-rise buildings, wind turbines, and other.

In Parallel to his entrepreneurial ventures, Dr. Ballouz enjoyed teaching soil mechanics and foundation engineering courses at the Lebanese American University (LAU), Notre Dame University (NDU), and the Lebanese University (UL), in Lebanon for more than 10 years.  Dr. Ballouz stays up to date attending conferences regularly, presenting his work, and continues to publish technical papers about deep foundations, landslides, and some interesting articles about general geotechnics.  He is frequently invited to give lectures and seminars at renowned universities in the USA, Lebanon, and other countries,  about Lessons Learned in geotechnical engineering.

Alongside his career, Dr. Ballouz has been very active with ISSMGE as the Vice Chair of the Innovation & Development Committee (IDC), then for 2 years (2011 – 2013) he led the PRC (Public Relations Committee) of ISSMGE. In a relatively short period of time, PRC accomplished major achievements in promoting Geotechnical Engineering worldwide. During the 18th Int’l conference on Soil Mechanics & Geotechnical Engineering in Paris, in September 2013, Dr. Ballouz received the ISSMGE Outstanding Public Relations Award. Dr. Ballouz is presently one of the 12 Board Members of ISSMGE, that has about 30,000 geotechnical engineers under its wings.

Dr. Ballouz spends most of his time in Austin Texas where he resides with his family, but travels a lot to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe as part of his work management.  He is fluent in 3 languages (English, French, and Arabic), and enjoys outdoor sports and activities (skiing, hunting, hiking, etc…).