News

Preliminary assessment of the GPR-based mapping tool 

The first preliminary assessment of the GPR-based mapping tool was conducted at two intersections on Van Buren Avenue, Oakland in December 2022 and January 2023 by CSI and GEO SEARCH. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a technology that can help to visualize underground objects without destructing the surface. The potential use of this technology was discussed and explored.

Celebrating Kenichi’s NAE Election

At our first in-person group meeting of the semester, we celebrated Professor Kenichi Soga’s election to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Congratulations again!

Collaboration with industry partners for UCB Course on Tunneling & Data Driven Methods

Together with industry collaborators, we successfully held the UC Berkeley Tunneling Course titled “Principles, Practices, and Recent Development Using Data-Driven Methods” on February 7 at 454 Conference Room, Richmond Field Station. This initiative was aimed at developing the UC Berkeley tunneling course program as well as providing a venue for both academics and the industry to gather and strengthen the tunneling community in the region.… Read More »Collaboration with industry partners for UCB Course on Tunneling & Data Driven Methods

Group Dinner (December 2022)

The SRG group dinner in Berkeley on Dec 09, 2022. We congratulate Yaobin and Kecheng who recently passed their qualifying exam. We also said goodbye to Yoko who will be leaving our group at the end of the month.

NSF Grant for Reducing Wildfire Risk in Northern California

$2.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been awarded to an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the UC campuses of Berkeley, Davis, and Santa Cruz. Led by Professor Kenichi Soga, this multi-campus team will be tackling the challenge of wildfire evacuation and risk mitigation from the various perspectives that span the range of the researchers’ areas of expertise: identification of entities most pertinent… Read More »NSF Grant for Reducing Wildfire Risk in Northern California

Article in GeoStrata’s December 2022/January 2023 issue

Ph.D. Candidate, Dayu Apoji, and Prof. Kenichi Soga recently wrote an article in ASCE GeoStrata magazine entitled “From sensing to machine learning in geoengineering – Building our own AI perspective”. The article discusses some sources of massive data that will come to the geoengineering industry and the importance of machine learning to exploit information and create new value from these data sets. The article also… Read More »Article in GeoStrata’s December 2022/January 2023 issue

Recently published work on imposition of the Neumann boundary conditions with Virtual Stress Boundary (VSB)

Dr. Yong Liang (Postdoctoral researcher), Joel Given (PhD student), and Prof. Kenichi Soga recently published a paper in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, entitled “The imposition of nonconforming Neumann boundary condition in the material point method without boundary representation” (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2022.115785). The Material Point Method (MPM) is a hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian numerical method. As a result, nonconforming boundary conditions are common. Previous MPM variations all… Read More »Recently published work on imposition of the Neumann boundary conditions with Virtual Stress Boundary (VSB)

The SRG in the 6th Annual GeoSymposium

The 6th GeoSystems Engineering Annual Research Symposium was held on Friday, November 18th, 2022. Ph.D. Candidate, Bodhinanda (Nanda) Chandra, of the Soga Research Group, presented his work in a keynote lecture. Nanda showed his research on MPM with the title: “Improving accuracy and efficiency in material point method (MPM) for both single and multi-phase continua”. Besides Nanda, another fourteen members of the Soga Research Group… Read More »The SRG in the 6th Annual GeoSymposium

Measuring Temperature with Fiber Optic Cables – the SRG’s recent work in Massachusetts

The SRG’s recent work in fiber optic installation and measurement is featured in an article posted by The Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET). Members of the SRG, Yaobin and Sumeet, attached a fiber optic cable to the pipes in each borehole to measure temperature. This measured data results in a more accurate understanding of the conductivity of the bedrock to help inform Eversource’s design (Eversource is a business &… Read More »Measuring Temperature with Fiber Optic Cables – the SRG’s recent work in Massachusetts

CE 112: Water & Wastewater Systems Design and Operation

As a new activity by the Center for Smart Infrastructure (CSI), Professor Kenichi Soga, Won-jun Cha, Shih-Hung Chiu, and East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) subject-matter experts, led by Clifford Chan (General Manager) and David Katzev, opened a new undergraduate course for Fall 2022: Water & Wastewater Systems Design and Operation (CE112). The course covers a variety of topics in the water industry, including design… Read More »CE 112: Water & Wastewater Systems Design and Operation