Peter Hubbard
PhD Candidate
Office: 418 Davis Hall
Email: phubbard ‘at’ berkeley ‘dot’ edu
Peter is a third-year PhD student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at UC Berkeley and a member of the Soga Research Group. His research is focused on how advanced monitoring technologies can improve infrastructure resilience. Peter has worked on various projects in the geotechnical, structural, transportation and energy sectors of civil engineering. He has deployed technologies including distributed fiber-optic sensing, micro-electromechanical systems, wireless sensor networks, and remote sensing systems to assess different types of infrastructure. He has also been heavily involved with teaching, serving as the Graduate Student Instructor twice for Advanced Geotechnical Testing and Design (CE 273), the capstone course for GeoSystems master’s degree students, and once for Geosystems Engineering Design (CE 179).
Highlighted Research projects he is involved with include:
- Development of a conceptual framework for evaluating how emerging technologies can contribute to infrastructure resilience; An effort of the ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division’s Emerging Technology Committee
A conceptual resilience model that is part of an under-review paper on emerging technologies and infrastructure resilience
- Dynamic fiber-optic and MEMs sensing to detect structural damage to wind turbines; a collaboration with CITRIS, Enel and Optasense (see link)
An instrumented model wind turbine tower being tested at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER)
Dynamic strain time histories detected using fiber optic sensing on opposite sides of the tower during vibration
- Cone penetrometer installation of fiber-optic strain extensometer and vertical shear wave velocity sensor; A collaboration with ConeTec, ENGEO and Optasense (see link)
An aerial view of the instrumentation site at Treasure Island and research team
- Construction of SR-1, a “smart road” that can detect and quantify the movement of vehicles, people and even animals for informing autonomous vehicles; A collaboration with the UC Pavement Research Center and Optasense (see link)
Views of (A) before, (b) during and (c) after the construction of SR-1, located at the Richmond Field Station
An aerial vantage point of SR-1 during the installation of fiber optic cables for distributed acoustic sensing in an adjacent trench
A frequency band waterfall plot detailing the activities of paving sensed during road construction
Gia, the research pup running down SR-1 during an experiment
- Distributed strain sensing of water pipelines that cross active faults; A collaboration with the East Bay Municipal Utility District
A suspended pipe segment being monitored for strain to test the sensor attachment method at EBMUD’s Oakport storage facility
- Distributed strain sensing of retaining wall ground anchor load tests; A collaboration with CalTrans
Instrumented ground anchors at the I-405/110 interchange in Los Angeles before grouting
In addition, Peter is a team member on three active California Energy Commission projects including:
- Open Seismic Risk Assessment Tool (see link)
- Integrated Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing for Real-time Monitoring of Offshore Wind Turbine Gearbox and Tower Operation and Marine Animal Activities (see link)
- Time-Domain Reflectometry Methods to Monitor Natural Gas Storage Wells
Peter was awarded the Tor L. Brekke award for his contributions to the graduate student community in 2018-2019. He was awarded the H. Bolton Seed Fellowship for the 2018-2019 academic year, and the Jane Lewis Fellowship for the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 academic years. Peter is pursuing minors in electrical and systems engineering.
Prior to coming to Berkeley, Peter completed his bachelor’s (2017) and master’s (2018) degrees at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in Civil Engineering.
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-hubbard/