New and Updates
Gabe Louw completes his thesis on groundwater evolution in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand
April 2025
Schreyer Honors Thesis student Gabe successfully completed his thesis, a culmination of work that started with a trip to New Zealand in 2023. To study evolving groundwater conditions in Hawke’s Bay, Gabe used direct push crosshole data collected during our trip, and created a groundwater flow model in FEFLOW to model sea level rise impacts on groundwater in the region. Congratulations, Gabe!
Kaleigh presents at the Millennium Cafe - Rising Waters: Understanding Evolving Flood Risk in Pennsylvania
April 2025
Aavash presents at GeoFrontiers in Louisville
March 2025
Aavash traveled to Louisville, KY to present his ongoing work on partial saturation effects on earthquake-induced liquefaction hazard in Napier, New Zealand.
Kaleigh receives the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Younger Member Award
February 2025
Photo credit: Poornima Tomy/Penn State
Irene presents at Anura3D Workshop in Barcelona
January 2025
Irene traveled to Barcelona, Spain to the Anura3D Workshop. While there, she help deliver the hands-on training session and also presented her work on numerical modeling of levees using finite element and material point methods.
Yost Research Group celebrates the end of the semester
December 2024
Kaleigh presents at AGU24 in Washington, DC
December 2024
Kaleigh traveled to AGU24 where she had an oral presentation discussing our ongoing levee characterization project in Forty Fort, PA and also represented the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute during a poster presentation session.
Kaleigh elected to serve 4-year term on USUCGER Board
December 2024
Kaleigh will serve as a junior board member to the United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER) beginning in 2025.
Photo credit: Poornima Tomy/Penn State
Kaleigh interviewed on Growing Impact podcast
November 2024
Kaleigh was interviewed on the Growing Impact podcast, discussing an ongoing project supported by Penn State’s Institute of Energy and the Environment. The project aims to create model-driven visualizations to help communicate flood hazard to decision-makers and communities.
Rachel Kaintz presents her work on levee infrastructure and flood hazards
November 2024
The Yost Research Group was excited to support WISER/MURE/FURP undergraduate researcher Rachel during the culminating presentation of her research internship. During her time with the group, Rachel performed a detailed literature review documenting flood history in Forty Fort, PA and create a geodatabase containing critical levee characteristics for each levee in the Susquehanna River Basin.
Penn State team awarded funding to study flood resilience in rural levee communities in PA
September 2024
A multidisciplinary team of faculty, practitioners, and local PA communities was awarded a $74,996 planning grant to better understand challenges to flood resilience across the Commonwealth. The Yost Research Group will explore ways to reduce the cost of levee characterization for seepage and stability analyses using state-of-the-art geophysical and geospatial technologies.
Penn State Climate Science REU student Anika Reja presents at symposium
August 2024
Congratulations to Penn State Climate Science REU student Anika Reja for a successful summer studying evolving flood hazards in the Susquehanna River Basin!
Dr. Andrew Stolte of University of Auckland visits Penn State
June 2024
As part of our ongoing collaboration with the University of Auckland to study evolving earthquake hazards, Dr. Andrew Stolte visited Penn State and presented on advances in geotechnical site characterization.
Yost Research Group spends a week collecting field data in northeastern PA
May 2024
In collaboration with NHERI RAPID, the Yost Research Group and several other PSU students and faculty spent a week collecting geospatial, geophysical, and geotechnical data on a levee system in northeastern PA as a part of the CLIMA project.
Yost Research Group work presented at EERI 2024 Annual Meeting
April 2024
Kaleigh attended the 2024 EERI annual meeting and presented a poster and at a special session on the ongoing project studying hydroclimatic change and liquefaction hazard in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. Special thanks to Aavash for his leadership in preparing the poster!
Kaleigh organizes session on climate change and geohazards at GeoCongress 2024 in Vancouver
February 2024
Kaleigh traveled to Vancouver for GeoCongress and chaired a session entitled “Changing Climate, Changing GeoChallenges.”
New paper published in Earthquake Spectra
January 2024
This article presents a combined laboratory and numerical cone penetration test (CPT) database for use in improving existing and creating new procedures to correct for multiple thin-layer effects. An accompanying Jupyter notebook was developed to facilitate data usage.
Kaleigh to serve as co-chair of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute Public Policy and Advocacy Committee
December 2023
The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) Public Policy and Advocacy (PPA) Committee seeks to take proactive leadership for earthquake engineering and seismic safety legislation by working with like-minded organizations to raise awareness and to generate momentum within EERI in engaging with local government and developing relationships with our lawmakers to improve earthquake resilience. Kaleigh is excited to take on this new role!
Penn State team wins NSF CLIMA grant to study maladaptive levee networks
September 2023
A team of four Penn State faculty (Alfonso Mejia, Cibin Raj, Kaleigh Yost, and Daniel Brent) were awarded a $757,974 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a methodology to design climate-resilient levee infrastructure in Pennsylvania that supports floodplain communities in an equitable way.
Trip to Auckland and Napier New Zealand
November 2023
Penn State faculty (Kaleigh, Alfonso, Cibin), PhD student Aavash, and undergraduate students Elena and Gabe traveled to New Zealand over Thanksgiving break to host the US-New Zealand Workshop on Interconnected Hazards, and to collect field data to support our study on climate change and liquefaction hazard in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.
Yost Research Group to host workshop on interconnected hazards in collaboration with the University of Auckland
November 2023
Climate change is driving more frequent and severe hydroclimatic events that overlap with and exacerbate existing hazards. The workshop aims to engage multi-disciplinary researchers and practitioners in conversation about the future of interconnected hazards research.
PhD student Aavash Ghimire honored as University Graduate Fellow
October 2023
114 students across the Penn State graduate school were awarded prestigious fellowships and celebrated at a reception at the Bryce Jordan Center. Congratulations, Aavash!
Yost Research Group welcomes new PhD student
August 2023
Aavash Ghimire joins the lab!
Kaleigh visits University of Texas San Antonio and University of Washington on NHERI travel grants
July 2023
Kaleigh attended the NHERI ECO Summer Institute for early career researchers at UTSA as well as the NHERI RAPID Intensive Training Workshop at UW.
Kaleigh presents work on climate and earthquake hazards at 2023 Natural Hazards Workshop
July 2023
Yost Research Group wins grant in collaboration with University of Auckland
June 2023
Penn State Global grant funding was awarded to PIs Dr. Kaleigh Yost (PSU) and Dr. Andrew Stolte (University of Auckland) to study the linkage of climate change and seismic hazard in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.
New Paper Published in Computers and Geotechnics
March 2023
This article discusses the complexities of numerical modeling of cone penetration tests in homogenous and highly interlayered soil profiles. It was a collaboration with researchers at Virginia Tech and Deltares as a part of the IIE fellowship program.
Kaleigh Yost joins the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at Penn State
January 2023