Vernon R. Schaefer earned his Ph.D. in civil engineering from Virginia Tech in 1987. He is the James M. Hoover Chair in Geotechnical Engineering for the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at Iowa State University. He has been a Professor at Iowa State University since 2003. Prior to that, he served as the Head of the civil and environmental engineering department at South Dakota State University. Schaefer was part of the team that helped to develop GeoTechTools, a web-based information and guidance system for geoconstruction technologies.