Inventor Profiles

Research area The Geomechanics and Damage Group (GeoD) studies both fundamental and applied topics in damage mechanics, nondestructive evaluation, geomechanics and geophysics.

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What excites you about your work? 

“Mentoring graduate students and postdocs and the things they’re working on, which are often wildly different ideas from what I’m working on, is exciting. I’m always of the mindset that I could have been just as happy in a thousand different disciplines, and it’s chance and luck that I enjoy this one, but exploring a lot of different areas of research, and all of the pathways each of the students and postdocs take to get there, is interesting to me.”

What do you hope to achieve? 

“I’d like to explore several new areas: One is the application of data science and remote sensing in geological engineering and infrastructure problems. We’ve gotten really good at being able to collect data over the past few decades, but we haven’t been able to fully harness all of the information yet. I’m trying to use some of these techniques in understanding how heat is extracted in enhanced geothermal systems, as well as how damage develops in infrastructure. I spent seven years in industry before I came back to academia, and the entrepreneurial spirit stuck with me. Hopefully, we can move the needle a bit with some of our research and produce some measurable impact on energy and infrastructure issues rapidly through technology transfer and startup generation.”

Jesse’s industrial experience and enthusiasm for education and research are inspiring. His background and research interests in improving infrastructure and energy generation through sensing and data analysis have near-term commercial applicability, which we are excited to help translate into real-world impact.

– Justin Anderson, WARF, Senior Intellectual Property Manager