College of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Takes Research Findings to 2 Illinois Campuses

Assistant Professor, Dr. Shahrzad Roshankhah, from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, recently shared her geo-energy research at both Northwestern University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Roshankhah presented her research at Northwestern’s and UIUC’s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering on March 8 and10, respectively.

Titled “Tailoring the Fracture Network Evolution and Response of Civil, Energy, and Environmental Geosystems,” Roshankhah’s back-to-back seminar presentations focused on geomaterials’ multi-scale behavior under coupled hydraulic and mechanical excitations.

“I am interested in understanding the coupled physical processes responsible for the overall response of geosystems founded in structured rock masses,” said Roshankhah.

Her presentations highlighted a series of laboratory experiments designed to understand the behavior of hydraulic fractures in a rock mass while interacting with the rock’s pre-existing natural fractures, fluid, and boundary conditions using state-of-the-art imaging techniques and numerical simulations.

Dr. Roshankhah has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah since August 2021. Before joining the U, she was a research scientist at Caltech and a lecturer at California State University, Long Beach. Shahrzad has over six years of industry experience in civil and technical engineering and is a holder of a Professional Engineering License from the State of Utah. She received her PhD degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology.