Engineering Seismology Man power
Dr. V R Balasubramaniam
Scientist-V & Head of Department
Dr.V.R.Balasubramaniam is a geophysicist, with a M.Sc (Tech) degree from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam and Ph.D. from IIT Bombay, Mumbai. His area of specialisation is application of surface and borehole geophysical techniques based on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Seismic Methods and Electrical Methods, for solving environmental and engineering problems in various civil, mining and hydel projects. He Joined NIRM as Scientist-I, in 1996, in Engineering Geophysics Dept (EGP) ever since its inception and he worked in more than 60 industry sponsored geophysical projects as lead and co-investigator, and as co-investigator in two S&T research projects including the international cooperation programme with Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), Norway in development and application of Step Frequency GPR in India. He has been instrumental in timely completion of the projects by way of aiding engineering design, planning, maintenance and troubleshooting of problems in mining, civil and hydroelectric projects. He is currently Scientist-V and Head of the Environmental and Exploration Geophysics Department (EEGD), and he is working on application of geophysical techniques for evaluation and impact assessment of environmental problems due to natural and manmade hazards like landslides, safety and stability of underground structures and seismic hazard. He is now leading a research work on seismic monitoring for assessment of seismic hazard in old mining areas. He has authored 5 peer-reviewed international publications (IEEE, EAGE and Elsevier) and 15 publications in national and international conferences. He currently holds membership of professional geoscientific bodies viz. AEG, SEG, ISRM, IEEE, IGU, ISEG, MGMI and SSA. He has immensely contributed to quality documentation of procedures and certification of NIRM services based on ISO standards
Dr. Divyalakshmi K. S.
Scientist-III
She holds M.Sc (2006) in Geology, M.Phil (2007) in Geology and P.hD (2015) in Geology from University of Madras. Dr. Divyalakshmi K. S was Junior Research fellow in University of Madras. She completed her PhD in Tsunami Threat Assessment by Numerical Modelling and GIS. After joining NIRM in 2008 she concentrated in application of Remote Sensing & GIS for the geological investigations mainly active fault studies for critical civil structures. She is having 11 papers/abstracts in her credit. She presented papers in international (China) and national conferences.
Dr. Vikalp Kumar
Scientist-III
Specialization: Microseismic data acquisition, processing and Interpretation Research Interest: Application of Microseismics for tunnel, dam, hydrocarbon reservoir and mine monitoring.
Brief Research Activity: Presently I am working on stability monitoring of powerhouse of Tala hydropower project and Tapovan Vishnugad hydropower project using microseismic monitoring technique. The powerhouse of THP has suffered rock engineering problems mainly the failure of Rockbolts. Microseismic monitoring at TVHPP is an attempt to correlate the micro-crack locations, probable failure zone of rock mass at different locations of powerhouse and stability of the powerhouse.