J. David Rogers was born in Covina, CA in 1954 and raised in Los Angeles County. He received his B.S. in geology and geophysics from the California State Polytechnic University in 1976, M.S. in civil engineering in 1979 and Ph.D. in geological and geotechnical engineering in 1982, both from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at U.C. Berkeley between 1994-2001 before accepting the Hasselmann Chair in Geological Engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, where he directs their GIS and Digital Image Processing Laboratory. His research interests and projects are profiled on his website.
During graduate school Rogers worked on the post-failure assessment of the Teton Dam failure, and failures of side-hill tunnels in rock at Zion National Park and Glen Canyon Dam. In 1982 he joined Alan Kropp & Associates geotechnical consultants in Berkeley, becoming a professional engineer in 1983. In 1984 he formed Rogers/Pacific, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in geoforensic evaluation of natural hazards and failures of engineered systems, mostly for government entities. That same year he accepted a commission as a Naval Reserve intelligence officer, serving in a variety of reserve and active duty intelligence billets until the end of 2002, including an active duty billet as Tactics Intelligence Officer for Commander Patrol Wings Pacific between 1987-91. By 1994 his firm had offices in the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas and had gained respectability for pioneering research in seismic hazards evaluation through research contracts with the National Science Foundation, Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Geological Survey and California Department of Transportation, among others.
His 1992 article titled Reassessment of the St. Francis Dam Failure was recognized by the E.B. Burwell Award of the Geological Society of America and the Rock Mechanics Award of the National Research Council for 1994. He is also a recipient of the Distinguished Project Award of the American Public Works Association for his novel design of blind cliff reinforcement on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. In the fall of 1994 he began teaching at U.C. Berkeley in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning (GIS Laboratory). In 1996 he was named the R.H. Jahns Distinguished Lecturer in Engineering Geology by the Association of Engineering Geologists and Geological Society of America in recognition of his work in geoforensics. In 1999 he was named to Sigma Xi's College of Distinguished Lecturers. In July 2001 Dr. Rogers became the first Hasselmann Chair at the UMR. He is a registered civil engineer, geologist, engineering geologist and hydrogeologist in California. In November 2001 he prepared a protocol for mapping of underground caves in Afghanistan for the Marine Corps Warfighting Center. He has written more than 100 articles and reports, delivered over 170 professional society presentations and has supervised $1.4 million in research as a principal investigator.