André Assis is Full Professor of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil. He graduated at the UnB (1980), worked as geotechnical engineer (till 1984) and got his PhD from the University of Alberta, Canada (1990). In 1996-1997, he spent his sabbatical leave at the Mackay School of Mines, Univ. of Nevada at Reno, USA, and in 2005-2006, he was visiting professor at the EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne), in Switzerland. His research interests and consulting are on tunnelling, rock mechanics and rock-fill dams. He has already supervised 40 MSc and fifteen PhD theses, and published around 180 papers in international and national journals, congresses and symposia. He was president of the International Tunnelling Association (ITA), from 2001 to 2004, and of the Brazilian Tunnelling Committee (1998-2002). Presently, he is an expert member of the ITA Executive Council and chairperson the ITA Committee on Education and Training, and consultant of the Sao Paulo Metro Co., hydroeletrectric projects in Brazil and Ecuador, and technical advisor of the Herrenknecht Co.