Director, GeoCARE Lab
Dr. Nitin Tiwari
Assistant Professor and Director, GeoCARE Lab
Dr. Nitin Tiwari is an Assistant Professor of Geotechnical Engineering in the School of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructural Engineering at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His research focuses on advancing interdisciplinary approaches essential for the future of sustainable and resilient infrastructure. Dr. Tiwari develops innovative strategies to enhance soil and ground conditions by leveraging natural substances and engineered composites, optimizing their strengths to boost infrastructure performance while minimizing environmental impacts.
MS Students
Suvechha Dhakal
M.S. student
Suvechha is an M.S. student conducting thesis research in the Geo-CARE Lab, where she explores the potential of biopolymers to enhance soil properties with the goal of developing soil as a printable material for advanced 3D printing applications. Her work aligns with cutting-edge efforts in Mars mission housing, which is being developed through 3D-printed habitats made from Martian materials, inflatable structures. This research contributes to sustainable construction solutions on Earth and supports visionary extraterrestrial habitat development using local resources
Subin Rimal
M.S. student
Subin is an M.S. student in the Geo-CARE Lab, currently focused on post-wildfire debris flow assessment. His research aims to develop a multiple temporal analysis framework for evaluating debris flow hazards following wildfire events. Additionally, he is working on designing physics-informed neural networks to better understand and model the mechanics of debris flows, integrating advanced machine learning with geotechnical process insights to enhance predictive capability and hazard assessment..
Bijay Nepal
M.S. student
Bijay is an M.S. student conducting thesis research in the Geo-CARE Lab, focusing on the effects of freezing on cemented soil mechanics. His work aims to understand how freeze–thaw cycles impact soil strength, deformation, and durability by investigating the processes of bond breakage between soil particles during these cycles. This research contributes to advancing resilient geotechnical materials for cold region infrastructure under climate change challenges.
Nur Sazzad Hossain
M.S. student
Sazzad is an M.S. student in the Geo-CARE Lab, where his research focuses on developing integrated frameworks for the extraction of critical minerals from geothermal brines—advancing efforts that directly support clean energy and resource sustainability. He is also involved in investigating strategies for CO₂ sequestration within geothermal systems to help mitigate emissions and enhance renewable resource utilization, contributing to the lab’s mission of sustainable energy and materials innovation.
Internship Students
Nihal Jayadeep
Intern
Nihal is an intern in the Geo-CARE Lab; he is developing a physics-informed neural network to enhance the back-calculation process in Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) analysis. His project focuses on incorporating material viscoelastic behavior to improve the accuracy of pavement strength predictions, contributing to more reliable assessments of pavement performance and durability.
Ragha Ramoju
Intern
Ragha is an intern in the Geo-CARE Lab, focusing on applying the Light Weight Deflectometer (LWD) for pavement analysis. His research involves using physics-informed neural networks to improve the backcalculation process for LWD data, with a focus on integrating material viscoelastic behavior. This approach aims to enhance the accuracy of strength assessments and advance predictive modeling for pavement systems.