Environmental and energy geotechnics

The Environmental and Energy Geotechnics group focuses on understanding the properties and behavior of geomaterials in the Earth’s subsurface, including minerals, soils, sediments, and sedimentary rocks. A unifying theme of our research is clay, which strongly controls solute transport, chemical reactivity, hydraulic behavior, and mechanical integrity in geomaterials such as bentonite barriers, clay liners, shale, sediments, and geologic faults. Our research is broadly organized around the interconnected domains of environment, energy, and materials.

Our work investigates clay across multiple length scales, from nanometers to kilometers, by integrating molecular simulations, multiphase flow modeling, and laboratory experiments. Through this multiscale approach, we seek to advance fundamental understanding of mineral microstructure, interfacial interactions, and transport dynamics, and how nanoscale processes govern the emergent macroscale behavior of geomaterials.

This knowledge enables us to address environmental challenges including municipal waste containment, contaminant sequestration, coastal protection, and underground engineering; geo-energy applications such as carbon geological storage, radioactive waste isolation, and geothermal energy; and the development of sustainable geomaterials including clay-based functional materials, geopolymers, and waste-derived materials, for resilient and sustainable engineering systems.