Research

Dr. Askari's current research focuses on 

1. Environmental and Engineering Geophysics,

2.  Fracture Dynamics and its Induced Seismicity, 

3. Characterization of Heat and Fluid Transport in Porous Media.

The three unique aspects of Dr. Askari's research are (1) diversification, which enables him to secure external funding from various resources, (2) the integration of laboratory measurements, numerical analysis, and field data to better characterize the subsurface, and (3) interdisciplinarity, resulting in several inter departmental and institutional collaborations.  

He has founded a Physical Modeling Laboratory (PML) at the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences at Michigan Tech (GMES). PML is equipped with state-of-the-art 1) acoustic velocity measurement, 2) low permeability measurement, 3) ultrasonic measurement, and 4) high-speed imaging systems. His team members have also access the Earth Explores Computer (EEC) Laboratory at GMES. The EEC lab has has three Linux and seven Windows operating based computers. In addition, Superior, Michigan Tech’s high-performance computing cluster, is accessible through the EEC lab. Various computational applications are available on EEC lab's machines including Seismic Unix (seismic data processing), Vista (seismic data processing), OpendTect (seismic data interpretation), Geopsy (surface wave analysis), SurfSeis (surface wave analysis),Seismic Programs in Seismology (data analysis and modeling), SOFI2D/3D (seismic modeling), Photron FASTCAM Viewer (image processing), and MATLAB( programming).

 Dr. Askari's team has inter-institutional collaborations with several institutions, such as the Energy Geosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Department of Physics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California, and Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada.