Unsaturated and Environmental Poromechanics and Geotechnics Lab

Let us micro-engineer!

The use of micro-organisms in the soil engineering, construction technology, and subsurface engineering and many other disciplines of relevance is a new approach to address old problems of concern. Finding green and eco-friendly solutions for old engineering challenges has led engineers to resort to microorganisms such as bacteria to build bridges between the soil grains, to modify fluid flow and transport, as well as storage characteristics  of porous media, to restore material properties and in one word to seek to replace high CO2 foot print construction materials such as cement with tiny workers which can build in-place and in situ. 

Build clean, build green and build effective in the absence of resources!   From earth to outer space!

There has been even attempts to make bio-bricks with the aid of bacteria which are cable to urease human urine for extraterrestrial settlements or other planets surface stabilization (see the following works in the literature, and online notes this link, this one, and this). But back to the earth surface, the use of this tiny entities in soil improvement,  building repair and  much more seems promising.

Our contributions!

In our lab, we have had four major contributions in this regard, so far, which are 

1. The use of microbial calcite precipitation (MICP) to improve the soil mechanical characteristics for various soil types, to let the engineers use soils at first glance improper for engineering usage.

2. The use of MICP to improve desert soil mechanical strength to withstand wind and mitigate wind erosion susceptibility of desert soils/aeolian deposits.

3.  Elucidating the  fundamental hydro-mechanical, physical and chemical characteristics of improved soils such as their water retention characteristics, you may see this publication as well as see this presentation.

4. We have tried to always think of the involved bio-geo-chemical reactions to make them even more effective, efficient, and cleaner as much as possible.

Our research addresses the following UN Sustainable Development Goals:

1. Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production 

        and

2.  Goal 13: Climate action

     through development of green technologies, less CO2 footprint, and  cleaner and eco-friendly solutions. It keeps goings; updates are underway!

Lab members

Co-Directors: Prof. Ghassem Habibagahi   and   me

The focus of the lab is on porous media characterization, biological soil stabilization as well as unsaturated soil mechanics

Lab members

Current members

Alireza Daman Shokouh

The list needs update, we have had new members and some who have left for other universities! New graduate students will join soon.

Past lab members

Mohammad Hemayati  (PhD Researcher, NTNU, Norway)

Rasoul Mirghaffari (Graduate student, Oxford Polytechic, currently known as Oxford Brookes University, UK)

S. Fazli Ghiyasabadi (Postoctoral researcher, Universität Bremen, Germany)

Behrooz Daneshian  (currently PhD student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, USA)

Sassan Moravej (currently PhD student at The University of Queensland, Australia)

Rahim Saffari (currently PhD student at UNSW, Australia)

Mohammad Esmaeel Rahbari  (currently PhD student at Università degli studi di Palermo, Italy)

Kasra Kamrannezhad (in search of positions on data science and AI)

The list continues, researches and researchers will be added later on

The page is under construction!

The cover photo is from Wikipedia and is presenting a naturally made landscape which is in fact a wonderful example of microbially-engineered places in the world! Stromatolites