Sheng C. Dai, Ph.D., P.E., earned his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 2013, worked as an ORISE postdoc at the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the US Department of Energy during 2013-2015, and returned to Georgia Tech as a faculty member in 2015. He is currently the Georgia Mining Association Early Career Professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a faculty member in the Ocean Science and Engineering, and holds a courtesy appointment at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Dr. Dai's group addresses resilience, sustainability, and adaptability in energy and the natural environment through studying energy geotechnics and nature inspired engineering. His research and teaching have been recognized with the USUCGER Early Career Researcher Award (2025) and the NSF CAREER Award (2020), and he was inducted into the Research Leadership Academy (2025) and the Emerging Leaders Program (2024) at Georgia Tech.
He serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth and Geomechanics for Energy and Environment, on the Pressure Core Advisory Board for the U.S. Geological Survey, the GOM2 Marine Test Technical Advisory Committee for UT/DOE, the National Gas Hydrate Program for NETL, and as the Task Force Leader of TC308 Energy Geotechnics for the ISSMGE. He is a co-founder of the Nexus Geostructural Research Institute (NGRI).
The Subsurface Processes Laboratory led by Dr. Dai studies the fundamentals of subsurface geomechanics and nature inspired engineering, with applications spanning a wide range of energy geotechnics topics, including gas hydrate, geothermal energy, geological carbon sequestration, nuclear waste disposal, compressed air energy storage, and waste-to-fuels technologies.
2013, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
2011, MSCE, Georgia Institute of Technology
2008, MS, Tongji University
2005, BS, Tongji University
Dr. Dai teaches several undergraduate and graduate level courses. He created the Nature-Inspired Engineering course at Georgia Tech to cultivate an engineering design mindset that draws inspiration from nature. Main courses he teaches include: CEE3020 Civil Engineering Materials; CEE3400 Intro to Geotechnical Engineering; CEE4803 Nature Inspired Engineering; CEE6402 Soil Mechanics; CEE6442 Dynamic Analysis in Geotechnical Engineering; and CEE8090 Geo Seminar.
2026 US-Africa Frontiers, NAS
2025 Research Leadership Academy, EVPR/Georgia Tech
2025 Early Career Researcher Award, USUCGER
2025 COIS Honor Roll, CTL/Georgia Tech
2024 Emerging Leaders Program (ELP), EVPR/Georgia Tech
2023 Interdisciplinary Research Award, CEE/Georgia Tech
2023 Woodruff Academic Leadership Fellows, ME/Georgia Tech
2022 CMMI’s Game Changer Academies (CGCA), NSF
2022 Jim Pope CREATE-X Faculty Fellowship, Georgia Tech
2021 Certificate of Appreciation, Association of Environmental Engineers and Scientists
2021 Appreciation Award, Journal of Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment
2020 CAREER Award, NSF
2017 Spotlight of Research, featured in Fire in the Ice Newsletter, NETL/DoE
2014 ORISE Fellowship, DoE
2013 ORISE Fellowship, DoE
2017 Bill Schutz Junior Faculty Teaching Award, CEE/Georgia Tech
2016 Class of 1969 Teaching Fellows, Georgia Tech
2013 George F. Sowers Distinguished Graduate Student Award, Geosystems/Georgia Tech
1. Li, G., Ding, Y., Zhang, H., & Dai, S. (2025). Impacts of particle size distribution on the permeability of hydrate-bearing sediments using a DEM-PNM approach. Computers and Geotechnics, 184, 107314.
2. Cui, L. Y., Zhou, C., & Dai, S. (2025). Unified models for water permeability in hydrate-bearing sandy soil considering pore morphology evolution. Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment, 100717.
3. Wang, P., Zhu, B., Wang, L., Sun, C., Wang, Y., & Dai, S. C. (2025). Enhanced Gas Production via Gas-Driven Fractures during Hydrate Dissociation: Insights from Visualized Experiments. Energy & Fuels.
4. Ikbarieh, A., & Dai, S. C. (2025). Compressibility and permeability of particulated non-recyclable municipal solid waste. Waste Management, 201, 114809.
5. Joo, H. W., Dai, S., & Kwon, T. H. (2025). Suppression of surface charge and its effect on sedimentation and fabric of kaolinite clay. Géotechnique Letters, 15(2), 104-109.
6. Ikbarieh, A., Jin, W., Zhao, Y., Saha, N., Klinger, J. L., Xia, Y., & Dai, S. (2025). Machine Learning Assisted Cross-Scale Hopper Design for Flowing Biomass Granular Materials. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 13(16), 5838-5851.
7. Pourakbar, M., Zhao, Y., Cortes, D. D., & Dai, S. (2025). Small-strain thermo-mechanical performance of lunar mare and highlands regolith simulants under Earth's atmospheric pressure and in vacuum. Icarus, 429, 116405.
8. Li, Z., Zhang, Z., Dai, S., Liu, Z., & Ning, F. (2025). Machine learning-based nuclear magnetic resonance measurements of hydraulic properties in hydrate-bearing sediments. Ocean Engineering, 315, 119795.
9. Zhao, Y., & Dai, S. (2024). Micro-structural and micro-mechanical characterization of rock-boring angelwing clams. Acta Biomaterialia, 190, 423-434.
10. Tepecik, I., Zhao, Y., Seol, Y., Garcia, A., Waite, W. F., & Dai, S. (2024). Hydraulic properties of sediments from the GC955 gas hydrate reservoir in the Gulf of Mexico. Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment, 37, 100522.
Faculty members Sheng Dai and Jennifer Kaiser have been selected for appointments to endowed positions within the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
In a breakthrough study, a cross-disciplinary team of Georgia Tech researchers discovered a previously unknown class of bacterial proteins that play a crucial role in the formation and stability of methane clathrates, which trap methane gas, preventing it from escaping and bubbling up into the atmosphere.
