Geosymposium

The 10th Annual Geotechnical Research Symposium will be held on November 13th, from 1-5 pm at the Jarvis Auditorium at UC Berkeley. The event will highlight PhD and Postdoctoral research through keynote presentations and a poster session. This year's industry round table, titled "Scaling Geotechnical Innovation and Disruption: From Micro-Scale Mechanics to Field-Scale Implementation" will focus on bridging fundamental research and applications in practice.

This year's student keynote speakers are:

1. Will Zakka - Seismic Performance of Port Facilities During the 2013 and 2016 New Zealand Earthquakes
2. Yitong Yang - A Proposed ‘Smart’ Methodology for Methane Hotspot Detection and Emission Estimation at Municipal Solid Waste Landfills
3. Kurt Soncco Sinchi - Can AI Accelerate Seismic Site Response Simulations? Insights from Simplified Subsurface Models
4. Maksymilian Jasiak - Critical Infrastructure Monitoring with Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS)
5. Connor Geudeker - Modeling Dynamic Geotechnical Processes Using the Material Point Method

This year's industry panelists are:

1. Yogesh Prashar, M2 Consultants
2. Jason DeJong, UC Davis
3. Rayan Shamas, GZA GeoEnvironmental
4. Bahareh Heidarzadeh, ENGEO
5. James Gingery, Keller

Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with cutting-edge research, industry insights, and future directions in geotechnical engineering!

Register here. Prices increase after November 9!

The 2025 Geotechnical Engineering Research Symposium (GeoSymposium) wrapped up this week successfully. Research presentations were delivered by PhD students Satuk Bugrahan Sari, Mirna Kassem, Parker Blunts, Bofei Xu, and Micaela Largent. Networking opportunities occurred during the poster session featuring 29 posters of students' research. Insights were provided from our industry panelists Norman Abrahamson of UC Berkeley, Victor Romero of Delve Underground, Thaleia Travasarou of Fugro, Julien Waeber of Exponent, and Jennie Watson-Lamprey of CODA SEISMIC on this year's theme, "Analyzing Risk in Geotechnical Engineering." Finally, we capped off the event with a happy hour at La Val's generously sponsored by GEI and Geosyntec.

Thanks to all who came and made it a memorable afternoon and evening!

The 9th Annual Geotechnical Research Symposium will be held on November 14th, from 1-5 pm at Banatao Auditorium at UC Berkeley. The event will highlight PhD and Postdoctoral research through keynote presentations and a poster session. This year's industry round table, titled "Analyzing Risk in Geotechnical Engineering," will focus on the Risk Analysis in Geotechnical Engineering.

This year's keynote speakers are:

1. Mirna Kassem
2. Satuk Bugrahan Sari
3. Parker Blunts
4. Bofei Xu
5. Micaela Largent

Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with cutting-edge research, industry insights, and future directions in Geotechnical Engineering!

Register here. Prices increase after November 10!

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 presented their research findings and potential avenues for future projects. The presenters and the title of their presentation were:

Tianchen Xu - Distributed Strain Sensing for Pipeline Safety Against Fault and Landslide Movement

Yaobin Yang - Fiber-Optics Shape Sensing and Error Analysis with the Cosserat Theory of Rods

Youngseok Jo - A Next-Generation Multi-Scale approach for monitoring Landfill Surface Methane Emissions

Yuval Keissar - 3-D Kinematics in Rock Slope Stability

Joel Given - Advances in imposing Nonconforming Neumann Boundary Conditions in the Material Point Method

An industry panel followed a successful networking and poster presentation. Four prominent engineers from the industry, Kenneth A Johnson (WSP), Phillip Gregory (Hayley & Aldrich), Marcus Pacheco (Municon West Coast), and Maggie Parks (CGS), gave their insight on the topic of "Embracing the Future of Geosystems: Scaling Innovative Technologies."

The event was organized by the GeoEngineering Graduate Student Association at UC Berkeley and funded by the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly. The happy hour after the event was sponsored by GEI, Geosyntec, and SFGI. 

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 research findings and potential avenues for future projects. The presenters and the title of their presentation were:

Brittany Russo - Non-invasive Multi-sensor Approach for Levee Health Maintenance Practices using Machine Learning

Xinyi Qian - DEM Analysis of Density Effect on Arching in Shallow Trapdoors

Hasitha Wijesuriya - Characterizing Naturally Deposited Sands using X-Ray Computed Tomography

Jhih-Rou Huang - AI-Based Techniques for Ground Failure Detection/Monitoring and Mobility Assessment

Jaewon Saw - Monitoring Capabilities of Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing for Hydraulic Fracturing 

An industry panel followed a successful networking and poster presentation. Six prominent engineers from the industry, Tom Pennington (Brown and Caldwell), Chris Conkle (Geosyntec), Justin Lianides (Mott MacDonald), Jeramy Decker (Kiewit), Dave Ritzman (PG&E), and Phoebe Cheng (BART), gave their insight on the topic of "Project Management in the World of GeoEngineering."

The event was organized by the GeoEngineering Graduate Student Association at UC Berkeley and funded by the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly. The happy hour after the event was sponsored by COSMOS. 

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 research findings and potential avenues for future projects. The presenters and the title of their presentation were:

Camilo Pinilla-Ramos, a Ph.D. candidate working with Professor Robert Kayen and Professor Norman Abrahamson, on "Broad-band evaluation of the San Francisco Bay Area velocity model through 3D seismological simulations."

Weibing Gong, a Ph.D. candidate working with Professor Dimitrios Zekkos and Professor Marin Clark, on "Regional-scale back-calculation and prediction of co-seismic landslides."

Bodhinanda Chandra, a Ph.D. candidate working with Professor Kenichi Soga, on "Improving accuracy and efficiency in material point method (MPM) for both single and multi-phase continua."

Kil-Wan Ko, a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Robert Kayen, on "Energy-Based Method for Prediction of Excess Pore Water Pressure in Liquefiable Soil."

An industry panel followed a successful networking and poster presentation. Three prominent engineers from the industry, Eric Bao from One Concern, Clifford Chan from EBMUD, and Shah Vahdani from Applied Geodynamics, gave their insight on the topic of "Climate Impact on Infrastructure Resiliency."

The event was organized by the GeoEngineering Graduate Student Association at UC Berkeley and funded by the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly. The happy hour after the event was sponsored by the San Francisco Geotechnical Institute (SFGI).

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 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 in-person GeoSymposium.

The keynote speakers for the event were five Ph.D. and postdoctoral researchers in the GeoSystems group at UC Berkeley. They presented on a wide range of topics showing the diversity in research in GeoSystems. The presenters and the title of their presentation were:

• Franklin Olaya, a Ph.D. candidate working with Professor John Bray,    on "Strain Potential Relationships for Liquefied Soil Using a Laboratory Test Database"

• Dayu Apoji, a Ph.D. candidate working with Professor Kenichi Soga, on "Machine Learning for EPBM Tunneling"

• Jongchan Kim, a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos and Professor Dimitrios Zekkos, on "Cyclic Simple Shear Response of Well-Graded Sandy Gravel in Constant Volume Conditions: Liquefaction at Port of Wellington, New Zealand"

• Peng Tan, a Ph.D. candidate working with Professor Nick Sitar, on "Parallelized Level-Set Discrete Modeling of Naturally Deposited Fabric of Sand"

• Peter Hubbard, a Ph.D. candidate working with Professor Kenichi Soga and co-advised by Professor James Rector, on "Towards Near Surface Tomography using Distributed Acoustic Sensing"

Successful networking and poster event were followed by an industry panel. Three prominent engineers from the industry, Uri Eliahu from ENGEO, Pawan Kumar from Arup, and Mike George from BGC Engineering, gave their insight on the topic of "Big Data collection, management, and visualization in Geotechnical Engineering." 

The event was followed up by a successful tour of the new joint lab, the GeoSystems Sensing and Analytics Lab (GeoSAL), showcasing the new field equipment deployment center and our different field equipment capabilities.

The event ended with a social hour at LaVal's Pizzeria in Berkeley which was sponsored by the San Francisco Geotechnical Institute (SFGI) allowing for a continued networking session between UC Berkeley students and industry.

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, 2021, at 11:59 PST