Christopher D.P. Baxter, Ph.D., P.E., M. ASCE
Professor
Department of Ocean Engineering
Department of Civil Engineering
Christopher Baxter is a joint Professor in the Departments of Ocean/Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Rhode Island and was Chairman of the Ocean Engineering Department from 2011-2017. He has been a member of the URI faculty since 2001 and is a registered professional engineer in Rhode Island. Dr. Baxter received his BS degree from Tufts University, his MS degree from Purdue University, and his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech. All three degrees are in Civil Engineering.
Dr. Baxter’s research expertise is in the areas marine geotechnics, fundamental soil behavior, and coastal resilience. He is primarily an experimentalist, and has focused much of his research on characterizing unique or difficult soils such as sensitive marine clays in Maine, gassy clays from the North Sea (at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute), weakly cemented sands in oil-bearing formations in the Caspian Sea, non-plastic silts in Rhode Island, and calcareous sands in Puerto Rico. With respect to coastal resilience, Dr. Baxter has been actively working on the development of fragility curves for artificial dunes reinforced with geosynthetic sand containers.
Dr. Baxter teaches courses to both civil and ocean engineering students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Most of these classes are related to geotechnical engineering, but he also teaches courses on professional practice, ocean measurements, and senior capstone design projects related to sea-level rise and coastal resiliency. Dr. Baxter’s service activities within URI have included being Chair of the Ocean Engineering Department since 2011 and preparing the Ocean Engineering Department’s self-study report for its successful 2012 ABET accreditation visit. Dr. Baxter is a member of the Geo-Institute’s Soil Properties and Modeling Committee and is a past-President of the Rhode Island section of the American Society of Civil Engineers.