Robert Kayen

Senior Scientist, U. S. Geological Survey
Office | 417 Davis Hall |
rkayen@berkeley.edu | |
Phone |
(510) 316-3596 |
Office Hours:
Wednesday, 4-5 pm., 417 Davis Hall, UC Berkeley.
CE70 – ‘Engineering Geology’ (3 units)
CE174 – ‘Engineering Geomatics’ (3 units)
L&S70c – ‘Living on the Edge: Understanding Uncertainty, Hazard, and Risk’ (3 units)
CE281 – ‘Graduate Program Engineering Geology’ (Graduate, 4 units)
Biography
At the University of California, Berkeley, I teach in the Geosystems Program in Civil and Environmental Engineering and I am a Senior Research Scientist at the United States Geological Survey, Pacific Science Center, Menlo Park, CA. I previously taught in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCLA and was a Visiting Professor at Kobe National University, Kobe, Japan.
My research interests are in the fields of earthquake geotechnical engineering, Terrestrial Laser Scanning-LIDAR, Structure-From-Motion geomatics, engineering geophysics, marine-geotechnics, and marine methane hydrate stability. I am one of the founders and a long-time steering committee member of the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance activity (www.geerassociation.org). I am the editor of a multi-volume U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper Series on ‘Earthquake Hazards of the Pacific Northwest Coastal and Marine Regions’.
Many years ago, I was a serious Yosemite rock climber, ski mountaineer, and runner when cartilage was plentiful and joints were young.
Education
University of California, Berkeley, California, Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, 1993.
Dissertation Title: Accelerogram-energy approach for prediction of earthquake-induced ground liquefaction
Graduate Advisor: James K. Mitchell
University of California, Berkeley, California, M.S. in Civil Engineering, 1989.
California State University, East Bay, California, M.S. in Geology, 1988
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, B.S.C.E. Double Major Civil Engineering & Geology, 1981.