The 9th UC Berkeley Geotechnical Engineering Research Symposium (GeoSymposium) was held on November 14, 2025, bringing together 136 registered participants at Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall on the campus of University of California, Berkeley. The annual event highlighted innovative research by graduate students while fostering dialogue between academia and industry on pressing challenges in geotechnical engineering.
This year’s symposium featured five keynote research presentations by Ph.D. students in the GeoSystems Engineering Program, covering a broad range of topics related to hazard analysis, soil behavior, uncertainty quantification, and data-driven methods.
- Mirna Kassem presented work on regional simulations of three-dimensional rainfall-induced landslides, applied to a watershed in Utuado, Puerto Rico.
- Satuk Bugrahan Sari discussed engineering assessment of the dynamic behavior of gravelly soils.
- Parker Blunts shared lessons learned from multiscale subsurface characterization in the Nepal Himalayas.
- Bofei Xu introduced a deep-learning framework to identify the timing of liquefaction triggering from surface ground motion records.
- Micaela Largent explored capturing uncertainty in geotechnical modeling for quantitative risk calculations.
A major highlight of the symposium was the industry panel discussion, centered on the theme “Analyzing Risk in Geotechnical Engineering.” Panelists included Norman Abrahamson (UC Berkeley), Victor Romero (Delve Underground), Thaleia Travasarou (Fugro), Julien Waeber (Exponent), and Jennie Watson-Lamprey (CODA SEISMIC). The panel offered insights into how risk is evaluated and managed in professional practice, bridging research advances with real-world applications.
In addition to the talks, the symposium featured a poster session with 29 posters, showcasing the breadth of ongoing student research within the GeoSystems Engineering Program. The session provided extensive opportunities for discussion, feedback, and networking among students, faculty, and industry professionals.
Below is a list of poster presentations from the Soga Research Group:
- Temitope Adebanjo — Automating Tunnel Boring Process by Coupling Evolution Algorithms with Artificial Neural Network
- Shih-Hung Chiu — Monitoring Segmented Pipeline System Crossing Seismic Fault using Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS)
- Chuao Dong — Real-time Roadway Activity Visualization from Distributed Acoustic Sensing Data
- Tianyu Han — Vulnerability and Resilience of the Caldecott Tunnel and Berkeley Hills Tunnel
- Maksymilian Jasiak — Pipeline Monitoring at Fault Crossing with Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS)
- Gyubeom Shin — PDE-Constrained Optimization for Thermal Integrity Profiling (TIP) Using Fiber Optic Temperature Sensing
- Yanglan Wang — Modeling and Optimization of Traffic Evacuation
- Yan Wu — New Generation Brillouin Optical Time-Domain Reflectometer Development
- Yaobin Yang — A Matrix-Free Discontinuous Galerkin FEM Solver for Cosserat Rods
