Current Research Interests

Engineering and structural geology, New England geology

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Barry Voight has several degrees in both geology and civil engineering, with formal training at Notre Dame, Cornell and Columbia. His current technical interests are in volcanology, engineering geology and geotechnical engineering, and in disaster prevention. In volcanology, his work involves both research, and practical assignments involving monitoring and hazard management at active volcanoes in crisis mode. Research topics for Voight and his students have included field studies and modelling of reservoir and conduit processes, explosions and pyroclastic flows, surges and fallout, volcano seismicity, volcanic debris avalanches and debris flows, hazards evaluation and management, monitoring, and eruption forecasting. Crisis assignments and fieldwork have been carried out at volcanoes in the conterminous USA and Alaska, South America, Iceland, Russia (Kamchatka), Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Caribbean region, on behalf of local governments, the United Nations, US AID, and USGS. He is an adjunct Geologist with the US Geological Survey Volcano Hazards Program, and serves in a similar capacity as Senior Scientist with the British Geological Survey, for Montserrat. In engineering geology and geotechnics, his interests involve materials characterization, slope stability, landslide processes, failure forecasting, and forensic studies. Practical experience in the USA includes assignments with the USGS, US Bureau of Mines, US Army Corps of Engineers, and private organizations. Overseas assignments include work for the Government of France on a major unstable slope problem in the Alps, evaluating dam foundations and safety at all major hydroelectric projects in Ireland, work with an Austrian design team on a hydroelectric power/tunnel project in the Indian Himalayas, mapping landslides in Papua New Guinea, evaluating facility and pipeline risks in the Caucasus, and construction of a seaport facility in Somalia. Other experience in the geoenvironmental realm includes work on seismic hazard evaluation for nuclear power plants in the eastern USA, mine subsidence, and ruptured pipelines leading to environmental damage. He is a registered professional engineer and a registered professional geologist. In a previous incarnation, Voight studied faulting, folding and fracturing in the central and northern Appalachians and Rocky Mountains, mapped terra incognita along the mid-ocean plate boundary in Iceland, researched rock stress measurement, and mapped a proposed meteor impact site in the Canadian shield.