News

The Soga Research Group members in our weekly (hybrid) group meeting in September 2021. Some of us are joining online too as can be seen on the screen. We say goodbye to Shyamini who will be leaving our group soon.

Students are having fun (also learning) during the CE170A Infrastructure Sensing and Modeling class, taught by Professor Kenichi Soga, Professor Dimitrios Zekkos, Professor Robert Kayen, Dr. Bingyu Zhao, and Renjie Wu as GSI.  Three aluminum model bridges are designed, built and tested for the class. Various sensing technologies are applied during test: Linear Variable Differential Transformer (LVDT) for displacement measurement, Wireless Tilt Meters for tilting… Read More »Bridge Crush! Infrastructure Sensing and Modeling

Berkeley GeoSystems family for 2021-2022

PhD Candidate Peter Hubbard will present SRG’s smart water pipeline monitoring solution for large-diameter high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes crossing geohazards at the Plastic Pipes International conference in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on 6-8 September 2021. The solution is based on distributed strain sensing (DSS) and includes a fiber-optic analyzer that was completely developed within SRG. The full monitoring solution includes the SRG Brillouin-based DSS analyzer, a… Read More »SRG Researcher to present smart pipeline solution in Amsterdam

As the state of California is reopening since the mid-June, our group had an in-person lunch gathering recently at Tilden Regional Park after 18 months of lockdown period. During the lunch event, the SRG also celebrates the graduation of Ezra and Millard. We also welcomed Ryota, a new visiting researcher from Hiroshima University, and said goodbye to Hiroshi and Miguel who will be leaving our… Read More »Group outings at Tilden Regional Park

Our group participated on Technical e-Forum on Machine Learning and Big Data Analysis on Tunneling and Tunnel Mechanics. This forum was held on Thursday, July 1, 2021, by International Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) Technical Committee 309, China Civil Engineering Society – Engineering Risk and Insurance Research Branch, and Tongji University. The forum comprised of 10 talks from 11 speakers: China (mainland 6, Hongkong… Read More »Technical e-Forum on Machine Learning and Big Data Analysis on Tunneling and Tunnel Mechanics

Dr. Millard McElwee has recently graduated from our group with a Ph.D. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering. His dissertation, entitled “Towards resilience with simulations for accessing recovery of critical infrastructure systems from natural hazard damage”, is supervised by Prof. Kenichi Soga. Millard came to Berkeley as an MEng student in Civil Engineering Systems in 2015 and started his Ph.D. in 2016 right after earning… Read More »Congratulations, Millard!

A new technical report is recently completed by the Soga Research Group highlighting the socio-technological challenges faced by California communities in wildfire evacuations. In this interdisciplinary effort, a team formed by researchers in wildfire simulations, communication process modeling, and traffic simulations, worked closely with community partners to identify and reconstruct realistic evacuation scenarios for the two case study areas in Bolinas and Paradise, CA. A… Read More »New report on wildfire evacuations for Paradise and Bolinas, CA

Our research on the application of AI and ML for tunneling is highlighted by Sixense Group. In brief, Dayu Apoji, a Ph.D. researcher in our group, is trying to build “a brain” for tunnel boring machines (TBM) using machine learning algorithms so that this giant machine can make perception from enormous tunneling data (both from the machine sensors and ground instruments) and assist TBM operators… Read More »Our research on ML for Tunneling is highlighted by Sixense Group

A team from the Soga Research Group led by Ph.D. candidate Peter Hubbard is working with a team from Malcolm Drilling led by Peter Faust to assess the performance of working platforms in San Francisco when subject to large loads from drilling rigs using distributed fiber optic sensors (DFOS). A working platform is a layer of material that is placed on top of the existing… Read More »SRG researchers take on working platform design using DFOS