News

We had our second Geo Graduate Student Seminar of the year, with John Sadek leading the presentation on courses to take for the Spring semester. John gave them the lowdown on both geo and non-geo courses, giving the Masters students a chance to prepare, and may even explore new topics that interest them. You'll notice too that everyone got their fancy new GeoSystems sweaters, just in time as temperatures drop! Whether on the streets or in the ...

Students from civil engineering classes CE 112 (Water and Wastewater Systems Design and Operation) and CE 280 (Rock Mechanics), led by Professor Kenichi Soga, visited the Pardee Dam, one of California’s major water infrastructure sites. The field trip connected students' classroom lessons with real-world applications. See the full article. ...

Guadalupe Mendoza and Nicklas Schmidt-Bailey have been awarded scholarships by the Deep Foundation Institute (DFI)! They both joined the UC Berkeley Geosystems graduate program this fall. The DFI, through their Educational Trust, award annually many scholarships to undergraduate and graduate students. More information on these scholarships, as well as deadlines for applying for next year can be found here. Congratulations Guadalupe and Nick ...

The GeoEngineering Graduate Student Society (GeoBears) held the first seminar for the new Masters cohort today, where we introduced the team for 2025-2026, primed the new students on what to expect for the coming year, useful resources for succeeding at Berkeley, and other events for the coming year.  Welcome to the new group of GeoBears! ...

The eighth annual UC Berkeley Geotechnical Engineering Research Symposium was held on November 22, 2024, at the Banatao Auditorium in Sutardja Dai Hall. The symposium showcased current research works in the GeoSystems Engineering group at UC Berkeley and bridged academic and industry communities.   The keynote speakers for the event were four Ph.D. and one postdoc researchers in the GeoSystems Engineering program. They p ...

The UC Berkeley Geosystems program of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering published its 2024 booklet with this year's Geosystems graduate student resumes. Participation in the booklet was optional among graduating PhD and Masters students. The booklet is one of the initiatives of the Geosystems program to better link its graduate students with the industry, and specifically its corporate partners. To join the Geosystems ...

Prof. Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos was a guest at The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast (TGEP) hosted by Jared Green and supported by the Engineering Management Institute.  Prof. Athanasopoulos-Zekkos covered several topics, including the critical issues surrounding the liquefaction of gravelly soils and the importance of equity in earthquake resilience as well as what inspired her to become a geotechnical engineer! You can listen at ...

The seventh annual UC Berkeley Geotechnical Engineering Research Symposium was held on November 17, 2023, at the Banatao Auditorium in Sutardja Dai Hall. The symposium showcased current research works in the GeoSystems Engineering group at UC Berkeley and bridged academic and industry communities.   The keynote speakers for the event were five Ph.D. researchers in the GeoSystems Engineering program. They presented their resea ...

PhD student Weibing Gong completed his doctoral thesis in August and has already joined the Faculty of the Geosciences, Geological and Petroleum Engineering Department at Missouri Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor. Weibing's thesis was on "A Numerical Model for Regional-Scale Back-Calculation and Prediction of Earthquake-Induced Landslides" under the supervision of Professor Dimitrios Zekkos and Prof. Marin Clark from the Univ ...

The sixth annual UC Berkeley Geotechnical Engineering Research Symposium was held on November 18, 2022, at the Banatao Auditorium in Sutardja Dai Hall. The symposium showcased current research works in the GeoSystems Engineering group at UC Berkeley and bridged academic and industry communities.   The keynote speakers for the event were four Ph.D. and postdoctoral researchers in the GeoSystems Engineering program. They presented their ...

Early on Friday, September 30, 2022, the GeoSystems Master students in CE 281 Engineering Geology left for the Sierra Nevada Foothills. The first stop of the trip was Auburn Dam. The students were able to see the foundation for Auburn Dam, which was never built and learned about the surrounding geology. The second stop of the trip was another dam, Spaulding Dam. PG&E hosted the class and took the students to the spillway of the dam in order t ...

The 6th annual Geotechnical Engineering Research Symposium will be held on Friday, November 18, 2022, from 1-5 pm at the Banatao Auditorium in Sutardja Dai Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus. The symposium highlights the research conducted by current Ph.D. students and Research Associates at UC Berkeley in the GeoSystems Group through spotlight presentations and poster presentations. To register, please follow this link: Register Here & ...

The GeoSystems Master Students enrolled in CE 281 Engineering Geology travelled with the CE 112 Water and Wastewater Systems Design and Operations students to Pardee Dam and Camanche Dam. The students were joined by Clifford Chan of EBMUD who explained the operation of Pardee Dam and Camanche Dam. Pardee Dam is a cold water dam and provides most of the drinking water to the Bay Area. The students were taken on a tour of the inside of Pard ...

With a month into the term, the GeoSystems Master students who are enrolled in CE 281 Engineering Geology took their first field trip of the semester. The class visited a total of six different sites to learn about geology and its role in engineering. The first stop of the trip was at Treasure Island where the students learned about the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and how there were two seismograph stations a mile apart, one on rock and the ot ...

The Geosystems program had a Welcome to the Term Potluck on September 16, 2022. It was an excellent time for GeoSystems members to gather together and have some fantastic homemade foods. We are looking forward to many more memories to come in the rest of the semester!   ...

Brittany Russo, a PhD student in the Geosystems program advised by Prof. Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos, was one of the selected finalists for the USSD scholarships awarded every year during the Annual USSD conference. Brittany got the second place scholarship following the presentation of her work on "Non-invasive levee health monitoring using data fusion and machine learning for infrastructure resiliency against climate change" during thi ...

Geosystems graduate students Emma O'Hara (MS student) and Drew Gomberg (PhD student) both received the 2022 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (OGSI) Award for their exemplary work as teaching assistants in the Fall semester.  These UC Berkeley Campus Awards are highly competitive and recognize students who show exemplary pedagogical excellence and create an inclusive learning environment that promotes critical thinking. Congratul ...

The UC Berkeley Geosystems program of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering published a booklet with this year's geotechnical engineering graduate student resumes.  Participation to the booklet was optional among graduating Masters students, and nearly 30 of them are included in it. This is the first time that the program is putting together such a booklet.  The booklet is one of the new initiative ...

The 5th annual UC Berkeley Geotechnical Engineering Symposium was held on November 12, 2021, at the Banatao Auditorium in Sutardja Dai Hall. The annual symposium was organized by the GeoEngineering Graduate Student Association at UC Berkeley and hosted by Brittany Russo, a Ph.D. student working with Professor Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos. There were 143 registered participants for the event across academia and industry, making it the largest i ...

The 5th annual Geotechnical Engineering Research Symposium will be held on Friday, November 12, 2021 from 1-5 pm in Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall.  The symposium highlights the research conducted by current PhD students and Research Associates at UC Berkeley in the GeoSystems Group through spotlight presentations and poster presentations. To register, please follow this link: Register Here Registration deadline is November 7 ...

Students from the graduate class of Geosystems Program taking the CE281 "Engineering Geology" course enjoyed a beautiful autumn weekend studying the active Tahoe-Sierra Fault Zone, Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA, below.  The three-day camping-field trip was led by Professor Robert Kayen.  The class visited a number of normal faults that distribute strain across the boundary separating the Sierra Nevada Moun ...

Two of our incoming Geosystems MS students, Meera Kota and Ethan Ross, have been awarded scholarships from the Deep Foundations Institute's Educational Trust. Meera received the 2021 Francis Gularte Scholarship and Ethan received the 2021 DFI Education Trust General Scholarship.  Congratulations Meera and Ethan!!!  More information can be found here. ...