Stein Sture served as Vice Chancellor for Research (2005-2015), Interim Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (2009-2010), Interim Dean (2005–2006) and Dean of the Graduate School (2007-2009) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also holds the position of the Huber and Helen Croft Endowed Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. He has been a faculty member at CU Boulder since 1980. He also served as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering and Applied Science (2002-2005), chair of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering for nearly six years (1990-1991; 1993-1998).
Between 1976 and 1980, he was on the faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He received his education in public schools in Oslo, Norway, a degree in engineering mechanics at the Schous Institute of Technology, Oslo (1970), and BS (1971), MS (1973) and PhD (1976) degrees at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His fields of expertise are in the areas of experimental and analytical modeling in solid mechanics, geomechanics, structural mechanics, computational geotechnics, and geotechnical engineering. He has advised and graduated 35 PhD and 47 MS thesis students. He has authored or co-authored 320 peer reviewed publications and 90 research reports. Between 1985 and 1986, he was a visiting professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, and the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, where he is Jenkin Fellow in Engineering Sciences.
Dr. Sture’s scholarly contributions are mainly in the areas of constitutive modeling of cementitious composites and geomaterials; nonlinear analysis of soil-structure interaction systems including earthquake-induced soil liquefaction mechanisms; modeling of bifurcation instabilities and localized deformations in single phase as well as fluid saturated porous media; development of explicit and implicit integration techniques for elastic-plastic pressure sensitive materials; large deformation analysis; and, fracture mechanics related to weakly cemented materials. Dr. Sture has presented many plenary or keynote lectures at national and international conferences, and a large number of invited lectures. He has served as a consultant to numerous public and private organizations including Exxon Production Research Co., Shell Oil Development Co., Federal Aviation Administration, Lockheed-Martin Corp., Structural Reliability Technology, Inc., URS, United Nations Development Program, among others.
He has served as editor of three major journals, including editor in chief of ASCE’s Journal of Engineering Mechanics (1993-2002), and editor of the International Journal of Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics (John Wiley & Sons; 2004-2012) He has served as organizer and general chair of seven major national and international scientific and engineering conferences. He served as elected member of the U.S. National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (1997-2005). He is an elected Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers; elected Fellow of the Engineering Mechanics Institute, and elected Fellow of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics. He currently serves on NASA’s Human Exploration Committee, and NASA’s Subcommittee on Research.