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
The California Energy Commission has invested resources in finding innovative ways to monitor future offshore wind infrastructure and its impacts on the environment. A project led by LBNL is looking at if distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS), and in particular distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) can be used to both monitor the structural components of these turbines and detect cetaceans that may enter the perimeter of… Read More »Tracking Cetaceans with Fiber
On April 30th 2021, the Anura3D Research Community released the source code of their collectively developed Material Point Method (MPM) Software. The Anura3D MPM Research Community consists of a group of researchers and faculty from European and American universities, including UC Berkeley, and one independent institute that since 2014 jointly investigate the application of the MPM in geotechnics and soil-water-structure interaction problems. A Ph.D. candidate… Read More »Open-Source Release of Anura3D MPM Software
Peter and Joel from our group have been awarded the departmental Outstanding GSI Award for the academic year 2020-2021. Since joining our group in 2018, Peter has been a GSI for CE179 (Fall 2018) and CE273 (Spring 2019, Spring 2020). Meanwhile, Joel had the opportunity to GSI three different Geotechnical Engineering classes: CE175 (Spring 2020), CE270 (Fall 2020), and CE273 (Spring 2021). These are some… Read More »2020-2021 Civil & Environmental Engineering Outstanding GSI Award for Peter and Joel!
The Spring 2021 issue of Berkeley Engineer magazine features Professor Kenichi Soga’s pioneering work in the field of distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS). Read more, here.