Researcher – Vyas

Ph.D. Student (3rd Year)

Piyush is a 3rd year doctoral student who conducts research focused on assessing the dynamic characteristics (shear modulus degradation and damping) of bio cemented sands. He performs resonant column tests on sand cemented by Microbial Induced Calcite Precipitation (MICP) and Enzyme Induced Calcite Precipitation (EICP) across a range of confinement and cementation levels. Piyush is also investigating the microscale alterations of bio cemented sands under various levels of confinement. The overarching goal is to establish a robust database of material properties for bio cemented sands that can be employed in the development of constitutive models and ground improvement design.

In addition, Piyush is actively engaged in the research community as he is a member of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Student Committee for the year 2022 - 2023. He has also mentored undergraduate students as part of the Summer Undergraduate Research Exprience (SURE; link) program and the Center for Research in Viterbi Engineering (CURVE; link)