OBJECTIVE

A full-time civil engineer position providing the opportunity to contribute by utilizing skills, experience, training, and desires to learn and success

 

PROVEN QUALIFICATIONS

  • Strong project planning, management, coordination, and interpersonal communication skills (managed one large soil-structure interaction experiment project, supervised undergrads, and managed a geotechnical laboratory)
  • Strong analytical skills (independently conducted seismic soil-structure interaction analysis using three-dimensional finite element method)
  • Strong writing skills (published about 20 journal and conference papers)
  • Strong presentation skills (made technical presentations and worked as a teaching assistant)
  • Proficiencies in commonly used engineering software (SAP2000, Shake, OpenSees, GiD, Matlab, MathCad, Grapher, Cyclic, Florida Pier, Microsoft Office, etc.)
  • Excellent programming skills (used C/C++, FORTRAN, Java, JavaScript, Perl, and HTML to develop Internet-based Finite Element Software)
  • EIT pending (taken in April 2005. I am confident that I will pass)

 

COMPETENT AND VERSATILE EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

  • PhD Candidate in Geotechnical Engineering, University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Dissertation: Liquefaction-Induced Lateral Spreading and its Effects on Pile Foundations

  • M. Sc. in Geotechnical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Thesis: Evaluation of Instruments for measurement of suction in unsaturated soils.

  • B. Sc. in Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, China

Final year project: Preliminary Design of the San Sheng Gong Hydroelectric Power Plant

 

CORE COURSES TAKEN AT UCSD (GPA 3.86)

 

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

  • American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
  • Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI)

 

EXPERIENCE HIGHLIGHTS:

Peer Reviewer for Journal of Earthquake Engineering

Graduate Student Researcher

Department of Structural Engineering, University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

·        Experimental study of seismic soil-structure interaction

·        3D finite element study of seismic soil-structure interaction

·        Seismic site response analysis and liquefaction potential evaluation.

·        Study of the characteristics of vertical earthquake ground motions.

·        Implemented a hysteretic spring model with multi-yield surfaces into a foundation analysis program. Developed an interactive web site for remote execution of a simplified version of this program (http://geotechnic.ucsd.edu/footing/footing.html).

·        Implemented a 3D beam element into a finite element program, Cyclic.

·        Developed a program for site seismic response analysis considering incidence plane waves having an angle with the vertical in visco-elastic homogeneous half-space. An interactive web site has been developed for remote execution of this program (http://geotechnic.ucsd.edu/planeWave/planeWave.html).

·        Developed a program to analyze a single degree of freedom system in frequency domain (http://geotechnic.ucsd.edu/liangcai/research/frequencyDomainMethod.zip)

·        Developed a program to compute absolute acceleration response spectra. (http://geotechnic.ucsd.edu/liangcai/research/Spectra.zip)

Graduate Student Researcher:

School of Civil & Structural Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Project: Evaluation of Instruments for measurement of suction in unsaturated soils.

Geotechnical Engineer:

China Institute of Water Resources & Hydropower Research, Beijing, China

Project: Slope stability analysis for many of China’s large hydraulic engineering projects.

 

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

      Teaching assistant at University of California, San Diego

·        Fall 2003 – Structural Dynamics (http://geotechnic.ucsd.edu/se203/index.html).

·        Winter 2003 – Geotechnical Engineering (http://geotechnic.ucsd.edu/se181/index.html).

·        Winter 2002 – Soil-Structure Interaction (http://geotechnic.ucsd.edu/se243/index.html).

·        Spring 2000 – Foundation Engineering (http://geotechnic.ucsd.edu/footing/footing.html).

Teaching assistant at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

·        Sept. 1997 – May 1999, Soil & Rock Mechanics.

 

HONORS & AWARDS:

  • UCSD Research Assistantship
  • Nanyang Technological University Scholarship
  • Tsinghua University Excellent Undergraduate Student

 

REFERENCES:

·        Professor Ahmed Elgamal, Chair, Dept. of Structural Engineering, UC San Diego.

  Tel: (858) 822-5212, Email: elgamal@ucsd.edu

·        Professor Scott Ashford, Dept. of Structural Engineering, UC San Diego.

            Tel: (858) 822-0431, Email: sashford@ucsd.edu

·        Professor J. Enrique Luco, Dept. of Structural Engineering, UC San Diego.

            Tel: (858) 534-4338, Email: jeluco@ucsd.edu

 

PUBLICATIONS:

1.        “Characteristics of earthquake ground motions: An Overview,” Journal of Earthquake Engineering, Sept. 2004, Vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 663-697.

 

2.        “Factors affecting the filter paper method for total and matric suction measurements,” ASTM Geotechnical Testing Journal, Sept. 2002, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 321-332.

 

3.        “A three-dimensional finite element study to obtain p-y curves for sand,” Proceedings of the 17th Engineering Mechanics Conference (EM 2004) of the American Society of Civil Engineers, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, June 13-16, 2004, Paper No. 261.

 

4.        “Spectra for Vertical Earthquake Ground Motion,” Proceedings of the 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, August 1-6, 2004, Paper No. 2309.

 

5.        “Real-time Measurement of Liquefied Soil Shear Profiles With Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG),” Proceeding of the 23rd Int. Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC XXIII), Rosen Plaza Hotel, Orlando, Florida, USA,  January 31 - February 3, 2005.

 

6.        “Computational Modeling of nonlinear soil-structure interaction on parallel computers,” Proceedings of the 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, August 1-6, 2004, Paper No. 530.

 

7.        “Three-dimensional finite element analysis of dynamic pile behavior in liquefied ground,” Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering (11th ICSDEE) & The 3rd International Conference on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering (3rd ICEGE), University of California, Berkeley, CA, pp. 144-148.

 

8.        “Nonlinear Seismic Response of a Bridge Site Subject to Spatially Varying Ground Motion,” Proceedings of the 16th Engineering Mechanics Conference (EM 2003) of the American Society of Civil Engineers, University of Washington, Seattle, July 16-18, 2003, Paper 408.

 

9.        “Dynamic soil properties, seismic downhole arrays and applications in practice,” State-of-the-art paper, 4th International Conference on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics, S. Prakash, Ed., San Diego, California, USA, March 26-31, 2001.

 

10.    “Rapid measurement of soil matric suction by Time-domain reflectometry,” Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Field Measurements in Geomechanics, Grand Hyatt, Singapore, Dec. 1-3, 1999.

 

11.    “Evaluation of instruments for measurements of suction in unsaturated soils,” Master thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Aug. 1999.

 

12.    “Soft rock creep and associated load on support,” Proceedings of the International Conference Hydropower’96, Beijing, China, pp851-857, 1996.

 

13.    “Residual shear strength of soft discontinuities in a dam project,” Journal of University of Science and Technology Beijing, Vol. 17, pp135-137, Oct. 1995. (in Chinese).

 

14.    Stability analysis and stabilization for slopes in Xiaolangdi Hydraulic Project, Internal Report, Dept. of Geotech. Engr., China Institute of Water Resources & Hydropower Research, 1997. (in Chinese)

 

15.    “Shear strength of discontinuities in Zipingpu Hydraulic Engineering Project, Internal Report, Dept. of Geotech. Engr., China Institute of Water Resources & Hydropower Research, 1995. (in Chinese)

 

16.    “Experimental study of the properties of the discontinuities at the Zipingpu Hydropower Plant site,” Journal of Rock Mechanics, No.1, 1996. (in Chinese)

 

17.    “Creep behavior of a mudstone with different water content under triaxial stress conditions,” Journal of Rock Mechanics, No.3, 1995. (in Chinese)

 

18.    “Current status of research on slope stability and the trends of its development,” Journal of Water Power, No.5, pp.15-17, 1994. (in Chinese)

 

19.    “The shear behavior of undisturbed and saturated discontinuities at the Lijiaxia Hydropower Plant,” Journal of Rock Mechanics, No.3, pp.39-44, 1994. (in Chinese)