Edward C. Clukey earned his master's and bachelor's degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and his doctorate from Cornell University. He is a registered professional engineer in California and Texas, a member of the Society of Underwater Technology and a Fellow in the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) and a Diplomate (retired) in ASCE for both Geotechnical and Ocean Engineering.

For the past 45 years, Dr. Clukey has focused on offshore geotechnical engineering for the development of oil and gas reserves. His research at Cornell and in the early part of his professional career addressed problems on wave-seafloor interaction. He was Geotechnical Advisor at BP America (1998-2015) and worked on deepwater foundations, geotechnical aspects of pipelines and risers, as well as geotechnical problems related to earthquake and arctic engineering.  Previously, he helped initiate the marine geotechnical program for the U. S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park California (1976-78). Prior to his BP experience he worked for McClelland Engineers (1983-1985) and Exxon Production Research (1985-1998). During his time with Exxon, he was involved as a technical analyst during the Exxon Valdez litigation (1994-1995). He won an award for preparing the technical basis for the best cross examination during the trial.

Since 1991 he has been actively involved with the development of suction caisson technology for deepwater applications. This work resulted in over ten publications on the topic and the installation of over hundreds of suction caissons throughout the world for BP. He chaired the API task group which developed industry guidelines for geotechnical aspects of conductors, risers and pipelines (2007-2019), now currently in both in API and ISO design documents. Throughout his career he has championed the use of centrifuge model testing and advanced numerical models to address complex offshore geotechnical technical issues. He managed ten centrifuge programs for problems related to ice gouging of the seafloor, suction caisson technology, piles capacity in Angolan soils, conductor and SCR fatigue, and the seismic response of steel jacket structures and subsea manifolds. Since his retirement from BP he formed his own company (GeoMaxEd), become an active committee member in ASCE’s COPRI division developing a standard practice for renewable energy as well as a member of the ASCE Geo-Institute developing guidelines for the risk and reliability of geotechnical structures and foundations. He was an invited lecturer at MIT from 2016 to 2019. Dr. Clukey is the author of 55 technical publications and his experience covers many regions of the world. He was selected and gave the distinguished fifth McClelland lecture in August 2022.

During the past few years, he has become interested in the science behind climate change and has investigated the potential risks that will impact society regarding policy decisions on this issue. He has compiled a presentation that summarizes the impact of human activity on global warming and climate change, potential outcomes regarding policy decisions and costs for the proposed solutions. He has given this presentation to over 100 individual and several professional societies including C-CORE, SUT and the ASCE leadership committee. Recently he has been invited by the ASCE Energy Division to submit a paper summarizing his views on climate change.