Congratulations to Professor Kenichi Soga on his appointment to the Donald H. McLaughlin Chair of Mineral Engineering.
This is a major honor and a well-deserved recognition of Professor Soga's eminence in the field of GeoSystems Engineering.
Professor Soga has established himself as a world leader in geomechanics and subsurface sensing through his high impact research using leading-edge computational techniques and the application of Distributed Fiber-Optic Sensing (DFOS).
His work with DFOS is leading the field and has resulted in a number of cross-disciplinary projects to develop embedded monitoring systems for infrastructure systems, particularly in the subsurface.
Professor Soga's research has found its way into practice, both through the establishment of patents (on sensing technologies and associated methodologies), policy (including the integration of DFOS into piling specifications of the Institution of Civil Engineers and projects by Crossrail and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), and implementation (DFOS is now built into, or is being built into, tunnels at CERN, sewer tunnel in Singapore, the L-Tunnel in New York City, and locations in San Francisco adjacent to major construction sites).
In the past three years since coming to Berkeley, Professor Soga has published more than 60 papers in leading geomechanics journals, and has given more than 15 invited lectures, including 3 high-profile named lectures.