Program will focus on theoretical advances and innovative applied research in rock mechanics and geomechanics
Jeff Burghardt is the chair of the 59th US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium of the American Rock Mechanics Association.
(Photo by Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Jeff Burghardt, an Earth scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), is the chair of the 59th US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium of the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA). The symposium will be held from June 8—11, 2025, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The annual ARMA symposium is the premier technical event for the international rock mechanics and geomechanics community. It typically includes over 700 technical presentations and over 1,100 attendees from across the globe. To have a technical presentation accepted, presenters must first submit a technical paper for peer review and approval. These papers are published in the meeting proceedings.
The symposium has seven tracks: Civil Engineering, Mining, Interdisciplinary, Petroleum Conventional, Petroleum Unconventional, Geothermal, and Storage and Sequestration. Last year, Burghardt was the track lead for Geothermal.
This year, Burghardt is chairing the technical committee and overseeing the seven track leads. The technical committee selects the number and topics of the sessions that make up each track and identifies session developers. The planning process began shortly after the 2024 ARMA symposium ended, lasting approximately a year.
“ARMA is an organization that I have personally benefited from immensely, and I am enjoying this opportunity to give back to this community,” said Burghardt. “This role has also given me some great opportunities to get to know new people in domains I previously hadn’t interacted with much, such as mining and civil engineering.”
ARMA is an engineering and scientific society that focuses on bringing together people across disciplines interested in rock mechanics and geomechanics. It provides sponsored symposia, publications, workshops, and training courses for members to expand the science of rock mechanics.
At PNNL since 2016, Burghardt’s expertise spans computational and experimental geomechanics and underground heat and mass transport. His work has applications to geothermal energy, geologic carbon storage, and nuclear nonproliferation. In 2024, Burghardt joined the Sanford Underground Research Facility Executive Committee for a two-year term. He serves as the field site leader for the Demonstration of Fracture Thermal Energy Storage project and the Center for Understanding Subsurface Signals and Permeability, an Energy Earthshot Research Center led by PNNL.
Published: May 22, 2025