J. David Frost

"Learning from failures is critical to advancing understanding and solutions."

J. David Frost completed his PhD in Civil Engineering Geotechnics at Purdue University in 1989 under the mentorship of Dr. Jean-Lou Chameau and Dr. Jerry Leonards.

He began his academic career at Purdue that same year before moving to the Georgia Institute of Technology where he remains. David is a registered Professional Engineer in Indiana and Alberta, Canada. As a graduate student in 1984, he married Jody Farmer, a scientist and author, and they have two daughters: Alexandra, an orthotics/prosthetics clinician, born in Lafayette; and Anna, an architect, born in Atlanta.

Throughout his research and teaching career, David has studied natural and man-made disasters and their impacts on infrastructure at multiple scales using digital data collection systems. He is chair of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association, a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored organization that responds to disasters worldwide.

For 35 years, David has served on or led NSF-supported post-disaster study teams following disasters in the United States, Turkey, India, China, Chile, and Japan. He studied the World Trade Center complex following the 9/11 attacks and participated in the National Institute of Standards and Technology response to the Champlain Towers collapse in Miami.

David has also served as a major professor for almost 50 PhD students who have graduated and has an additional 10 candidates in progress. Almost 50 percent of those who have graduated are in academic positions. During his career, David has held several administrative roles ranging from Geosystems Group Coordinator, Founding Director of the Georgia Tech Regional Engineering Program, Founding Director of the Georgia Tech Savannah Campus and as a Vice Provost of Georgia Tech.

Although enjoying these administrative roles and responsibilities, David returned to full time teaching and research 12 years ago and while the focus of his efforts remained the same, a new element that he has embraced is bringing innovation and entrepreneurship into his activities while serving as Co-Principal Investigator and a Research Thrust Director for the NSF Engineering Research Center on Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics.

His personal research contributions have resulted in over 10 patent applications and the creation of a start-up company that has licensed some of the bio-inspired technologies. In addition, Frost is co-founder of two other software companies that focus on digital data collection technologies.