The 44th Cooling Prize was held at the University of Glasgow on Tuesday 5th March in conjunction with the Scottish Geotechnical Group.
Christine Cooling described the history of the event which honours the work of her father, Leonard Cooling, in developing the UK geotechnical community. The competition, which is designed to encourage young engineers to write their first paper, attracted record entries this year, so that the judges had their work cut out choosing finalists and assessing the presentations on the night of the final.
The Cooling Prize 2013 was awarded to Frederick Levy for his paper and presentation on "The uplift capacity of transmission tower foundations". Frederick receives a cheque for £200 from Ground Engineering, a place at the International Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference in Paris and a cut glass decanter. The latter will be awarded at the BGA Annual Conference in June, where he will present his paper to the wider BGA membership.
The two other finalists, Martyn Willan and Piotr Kowalczyk, were highly commended for their presentations on "The geotechnical properties of Patagonian Tephra Tuff" and "A comparison between classical bearing capacity theory and a numerical approach for onshore wind turbine foundations" respectively.
All the finalists will receive a copy of Predictive Soil Mechanics while the runners up were also presented with a copy of "Rudolph Glossop and the Rise of Geotechnology", donated by Ron Williams.
Prof. David Muir Wood from Dundee University gave a fascinating lecture on "Rooting for sustainable performance" while the judges deliberated, so the audience enjoyed a full and rewarding evening.