University of California at Berkeley (short course lead and instructor)

Dimitrios Zekkos is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a licensed Professional Engineer in California and Greece.  Dr. Zekkos has nearly 20 years of experience on integrating field characterization and monitoring data to characterize the response of infrastructure and geo-systems, with a particular emphasis on natural hazards and environmental stressors such as climate change. He has been using integrated approaches that leverage satellites, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and in situ data collected using wired and wireless sensors. He has deployed in disaster-affected areas following the occurrence natural hazards events in Japan, New Zealand, Nepal, Greece and USA. He has published more than 150 scientific publications and his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the World Bank, the USGS, the Michigan Department of Transportation, and private organizations. His work has been recognized by ASCE through several awards including the Middlebrooks Award, Collingwood Prize and Casagrande Award by ASCE, as well as the Shamsher Prakash Research Award and the Outstanding Innovator Award by the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE).  He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the ISSMGE International Journal of Geoengineering Case Histories. He can be reached at: zekkos@berkeley.edu 

University of California at Berkeley (instructor)

Kenichi Soga is the Donald H. McLaughlin Professor in Mineral Engineering and a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He obtained his BEng and MEng from Kyoto University in Japan and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He was Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Cambridge before joining UC Berkeley in 2016. He has published more than 450 journal and conference papers and is the co-author of "Fundamentals of Soil Behavior, 3rd edition" with Professor James K Mitchell. His current research activities are Infrastructure sensing and modeling, Performance based design and maintenance of underground structures, Energy geotechnics, and Geomechanics. He is a Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). He is the recipient of several awards including George Stephenson Medal and Telford Gold Medal from ICE and Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from ASCE. He is the chair of Technical Committee TC105 "Geotechnics from Micro to Macro" of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering and is the chair of ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division’s Emerging Technologies Committee. He is a Bakar Fellow of UC Berkeley, promoting commercialization of smart infrastructure technologies.

University of California at Berkeley (instructor)

Dr. Robert Kayen is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Adjunct Faculty, and Executive Committee Member of the Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure. He is a retired Senior Scientist from the United States Geological Survey, where he worked for four decades. Dr. Kayen has been a registered professional civil engineer since 1989. He is the President of 'Geosystems Engineering International', an earthquake and geomatics engineering services and consulting company providing engineering project and peer review. He has served as a geotechnical Expert for the US Department of  Justice. Kayen has published over 400 Journal-, Conference-, and Technical-Reports in the fields of geotechnical earthquake engineering, LIDAR, InSAR, Structure-From-Motion, engineering geophysics, and marine geotechnics. He is one of the founders and long-time steering committee member of the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance organization, participating in over thirty extreme-event studies.  Kayen has received honors including the Thomas Middlebrooks Award from ASCE, Commendation Award from the United States Department of Justice Environmental Division, and the NASA-Ames Honor Award.  He is the current Vice-Chairman of the Marine Engineering Geology Commission of IAEG. He was the editor of a multi-volume U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper Series on "Earthquake Hazards of the Pacific Northwest Coastal and Marine Regions". Kayen can be reached at: kayen@berkeley.edu.

WSP USA (instructor) 

Ken has nearly 40 years of experience in earth science and geological engineering, having worked on a wide variety of public and private projects in the United States and abroad.  He is a Certified Engineering Geologist in California and Oregon as well as a Professional Engineer in California.  For all projects large and small he builds a clear approach from an understanding of the geology conditions for each project with attention to how the conditions influence the engineering of a project.  His projects address issues involving hydrogeology, landslides and debris flows, groundwater quality, neotectonics.  Specific projects where he has had a lead role in the Bay Area include: the design and construction of the Central Subway in San Francisco, California High Speed Rail program, BART to Silicon Valley Phase II, The BART Berkeley Hills Tunnel and water conveyance systems across the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.  In addition, he has worked on the Lower Meramec Tunnel in St. Louis, MO, the Enbridge Line 5 tunnel in Michigan, the South Mountain Freeway in Phoenix AZ, and The Istanbul Straits Tunnel Connecting Europe and Asia beneath the Bosporus, among others.  Specific technical areas he has developed from his work include tunnel and deep excavation design and construction, construction dewatering, seismic hazard delineation and analysis, instrumentation and monitoring of ground and structures, slope stability analysis and mitigation. He has published dozens of technical publications, most recently as co-editor of The Geology of San Francisco, California – Association of Engineering Geologists Special Publication No. 30 in December of 2019.  He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Geophysical Union, Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists, and the Underground Construction Association of SME.

Ken has a B.S. in Earth Science from U.C. Santa Cruz,

M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the U.C. Berkeley