Patricia J. Culligan

Patricia J. Culligan is the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame and a professor of Civil Engineering. She is a former Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University, and also served on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She specializes in Geo-environmental Engineering, with an emphasis on water management and resources. Her most recent work is focused on issues related to urban sustainability.

Education Culligan studied Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds, graduating with a first class BSc (Hons). Following graduation, she worked for several years with consulting engineers C.H. Dobbie & Partners, now owned by Jacobs, before pursuing an M.Phil and PhD at the University of Cambridge under the advisory of Professor Andrew Schofield. Her graduate research involved heat and contaminant transport in soils. Her PhD work made use of centrifuge modeling to investigate the underground transport of pollutants. After receiving her PhD, Culligan undertook post-doctoral work at the University of Perth, Western Australia, following which she obtained a Diplome de Langue, Litterature et Civilization (avec Mention) from the Université d’Aix-Marseille III.

Academic career and research In 1994, Culligan started as an assistant professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In 2003, she joined the faculty of Columbia University's Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, first as an associate professor, then promoted to full professor in 2005. At Columbia, Culligan served as Vice Dean for Academic Affairs for the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, was the inaugural associate director of Columbia University's Data Science Institute, and also served as the Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics. Culligan was also a faculty member of Columbia University's Earth Institute. In January 2020, Culligan was appointed dean of Notre Dame College of Engineering, the first woman to hold this role. She joined the University of Notre Dame in August 2020, where she is also a Professor of Civil Engineering.

Culligan’s initial work involved geotechnical centrifuge modeling and she developed many of the scaling laws used for geotechnical centrifuge modeling of contaminant transport in soils.

Culligan served on the National Academies Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board from 2008 to 2013. From 2011 to 2014 she also served on the board of Governors of the ASCE’s Geo-Institute. From 2014 to 2016 she chaired the National Academies Standing Committee on Geological and Geotechnical Engineering.