Project Grant 2624349

The National Science Foundation Office of Integrative Activities awarded Montana State University $299,827 under the EPSCOR Research Fellows program on January 1, 2027, to advance soil liquefaction assessment through multi-scale experimental investigation of pore pressure migration.

The project provides a fellowship to an assistant professor and graduate student training at Montana State University in collaboration with Professor Katerina Ziotopoulou at the University of California, Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling. The work combines geotechnical earthquake engineering, physical modeling, and experimental mechanics to improve understanding of earthquake-induced soil liquefaction and develop more reliable seismic hazard evaluation approaches. Current laboratory methods do not fully represent field-scale soil behavior because they do not explicitly account for pore pressure migration. The research team will conduct instrumented centrifuge experiments at the UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling to quantify pore pressure evolution, cyclic deformation, and soil response under realistic earthquake loading conditions, then integrate experimental observations with laboratory measurements to develop predictive relationships linking laboratory and deposit-scale liquefaction behavior. The work strengthens research infrastructure at Montana State University, establishes a centrifuge-informed geotechnical earthquake engineering research program, and contributes to STEM workforce development through graduate education and K–12 outreach.

Period of performance runs from January 1, 2027 through December 31, 2028. Place of performance is Davis, California.