CITRIS PI Kenichi Soga, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, has been named the founding director of the Center for Smart Infrastructure, a collaboration with the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) that will apply cutting-edge technology to tackle infrastructure challenges caused by climate change, aging systems and natural hazards.
Soga received CITRIS Seed Awards in 2018 and 2019, for work on vehicle detection technology and policy interventions for disaster risk reduction, respectively. He also co-founded two CITRIS Foundry startups: FOSense, a health monitoring company in the spring 2020 cohort, and WUI GO!, a spring 2021 venture that aims to commercialize a disaster preparedness tool.
Photo credit: Adam Lau for Berkeley Engineering. Kenichi Soga and EBMUD representatives at the new Center for Smart Infrastructure.