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Jason Beunker: Profile of a rising research engineer \xa0 On this week\u2019s episode, Dan Zehner speaks with research engineer Jason Beunker.\xa0 Currently in year two of his PhD, Jason Beunker studies soil structure interaction and seismicity at UCLA\u2019s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. \xa0 Why academia? Like many PhD candidates in the field, Beunker returned to academia after working as a professional engineer. He discusses enjoying work for Seattle-based firm Shannon and Wilson and how his projects there actually inspired him to come back to school. He explains the value of applied engineering, logging hours in the field and interacting with knowledgeable clients. Field work gives your analyses more \u201cteeth,\u201d he says. And seeing his designs in action was a rewarding experience. \xa0 Early on, as a civil engineering undergraduate at the University of Illinois, it was just that hands-on nature of geotechnical engineering that appealed to him, he says. It was the right mix of math and science and being outside, getting his hands dirty. \xa0 He explains how, after eight years as a practicing engineer, he was encountering larger projects \u2014 with more complex problems and greater technical demands. He decided that, while he was still young, to enroll in a PhD program to build his knowledge in soil structure integration and soil response. \xa0 Research in soft soils. Beunker describes working with UCLA researcher Scott Brandenberg on a project examining shallow foundations on soft soil. (Brandenberg was a recent guest on DesignSafe Radio.) By replicating the response of ground failure and structure failure in these conditions, the work will function as a case history, a guide for future engineers looking at structural responses to earthquake shaking. \xa0 Beunker details his \u201csteep learning curve,\u201d as a hands-on researcher. Brandenberg, a noted expert in soil structures, performs his experiments on the large centrifuges at the UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling, a NHERI facility. New to centrifuge modelling, Beunker describes having to learn the nuts and bolts of centrifuge modelling with help from the support team at UC Davis. \u201cI learned how to model there,\u201d he says, thanks to the deep knowledge on the UC Davis team. \xa0 Host Dan Zehner was eager to learn about Beunker\u2019s experience as a new NHERI researcher. As NHERI\u2019s facility scheduling and operations coordinator, Zehner talked about providing new ways to \u201cflatten the learning curve\u201d for hazards engineers working at experimental faciities. \xa0 Data publishing. Beunker says that all the findings from the project will be posted to DesignSafe in a single Jupyter notebook. Currently he\u2019s working to make the raw data from the experiments usable for colleagues, \u201cdressed up and filtered,\u201d as he puts it. He explains how Jupyter enables embedding direct connections to data in reports, so users can filter and examine the information in various ways. We can look forward to hearing more Jason Beunker\u2019s adventures in geotechnical engineering in the coming years.