On February 26th the Minnesota Geotechnical Institute, Geo-Institute chapter (MGI-GI) and the American Society of Civil Engineers, Minnesota section (ASCE-MN) jointly presented the Geo-Banquet, held in conjunction with Geo-Congress 2020, at the locally acclaimed McNamara Alumni Center on the University of Minnesota campus. The highlight of the Geo-Banquet was the keynote lecture presented by Prof. Lyesse Laloui, PI of the BIOGEOS project, entitled “Tailor-made soil properties by bio-geo-chemical means”. The lecture focused on the use of microorganisms in the subsurface for bio-cementation purposes, often presented as the “next big thing” in geotechnical engineering. As such, the lecture dwelled on the multi-physical and complex phenomena involved, from micro-structural inspections, mechanical testing, to numerical modelling, and finally through real-world pilot applications.
Source: Soil Mechanics Laboratory