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Gregory McLaskey

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Associate Professor

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Greg McLaskey
Greg McLaskey
Graduate Field Affiliations
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Geological Sciences

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 in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University in the Fall of 2014. The American Geophysical Union presented McLaskey with the 2014 Keiiti 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 and received his B.S. in civil engineering in 2005.

Research Interests

Greg’s research uses seismic waves, sensors, and signal analysis to study the mechanics of earthquakes, fracture, friction, 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 teaches courses on sensors for the built and natural environment as well as time series analysis and signal processing.

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.

Select Publications

  • McLaskey, G. C. (2019) Earthquake Initiation from Laboratory Observations and Implications for Foreshocks, Journal of Geophysical Research 124

  • Kammer, D. S., McLaskey, G. C. Abercrombie, R. E., Ampuero, J.-P., Cattania, C., Cocco, M., Dal Zilio, L., Dresen, G., Gabriel, A.-A., Ke, C.-Y., Marone, C., Selvadurai, P. A., and Tinti, E. (2024) Earthquake energy dissipation in a fracture mechanics framework, Nature Communications, 15:4736

  • 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., 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.

Google Scholar

Select Awards and Honors

  • NSF CAREER award – EAR-Geophysics 2019
  • Cornell Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, Cornell University 2018
  • 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