Duffield Hall at sunset.
Woman taking a photo of a mumified bird
Students walking along Ho Plaza
Two students walking on Engineering Quad towards Duffield
Two students working on a autonomous plane

Greg McLaskey

Associate Professor
Civil Engineering

Biography

Greg McLaskey received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 2011. He was then awarded a USGS Mendenhall Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2011 and worked as a Research Civil Engineer for the Earthquake Science Center at the USGS in Menlo Park, California from 2011 until he joined the faculty of Cornell Engineering’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Fall of 2014. The American Geophysical Union presented McLaskey with the 2014 Keeiti Aki Young Scientist Award. The Aki Award is given to just one young scientist in the field of seismology each year to recognize his or her accomplishments within three years of receiving a Ph.D.
McLaskey also came to Cornell for his undergraduate education partly because when he visited campus he heard about the pumpkin some intrepid students had managed to impale on top of McGraw Tower. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering in 2005.

Research Interests

Greg’s research uses seismic waves to study the mechanics of friction, earthquakes, fracture, impact and other processes that generate sounds and vibrations in solids. Greg also specializes in piezoelectric sensors which are used to detect very high frequency but small amplitude vibrations in solid materials such as rock, metals, concrete, and plastic. These vibrations can be used for structural health monitoring or for detecting damage in buildings, bridges, and other civil infrastructure. Greg spent three years working at the USGS Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, California where he used these types of measurements to better understand the physics and mechanics of earthquake initiation and dynamic rupture. Greg’s specific research topics include large-scale rock mechanics testing, seismology, the method of acoustic emission, and other nondestructive testing techniques.

Teaching Interests

McLaskey’s teaching focus is on undergraduate structural mechanics, modeling, and behavior, as well as signal processing, time series analysis, and sensor technology at the graduate level.

Service Interests

McLaskey is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the Seismological Society of America and is a reviewer for several academic journals.

Selected Publications

  • McLaskey, G C., B D. Kilgore, N M Beeler.  2015. “Slip-pulse rupture behavior on a 2 m granite fault.”  Geophysical Research Letters 42(17): 7039-7045.
  • McLaskey, G C., D A. Lockner, B D. Kilgore, N M Beeler.  2015. “A Robust Calibration Technique for Acoustic Emission Systems Based on Momentum Transfer from a Ball Drop.”  Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 105 (1): 257-271.
  • McLaskey, Gregory C., D. A. Lockner.  2014. “Preslip and cascade processes initiating laboratory stick-slip.”  Journal of Geophysical Research.
  • McLaskey, Gregory C., A. M. Thomas, S. D. Glaser, R. M. Nadeau.  2012. “Fault healing promotes high frequency earthquakes in laboratory experiments and on natural faults.”  Nature 491: 101-104.
  • McLaskey, Gregory C., S. D. Glaser.  2012. “Acoustic emission sensor calibration for absolute source measurements.”  Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation 31 (2): 157-168.

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Keiiti Aki Young Scientist Award (American Geophysical Union) 2014
  • USGS Mendenhall Post-Doctoral Fellowship 2011
  • UC Berkeley Nanoscience Fellowship 2009
  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow 2006

Education

  • B. Sc. (Civil Engineering), Cornell University, 2005
  • M. Sc. (Civil Engineering: Structural Engineering, Mechanics, and Materials), University of California, Berkeley, 2006
  • Ph D (Civil Engineering: Civil Systems), University of California, Berkeley, 2011

Websites