The U.S. Permafrost Association (USPA) is pleased to announce the USPA Technical Training Webinar Series. The webinars are offered on Zoom. Each webinar is 1 hour long, including a 50-min lecture and 10-min Q&A. Certificate of Professional Development Hours (PDH) will be provided to participants who request it after each webinar. The webinars are free for USPA members and all students. For non-USPA members who are not students, the registration fee is $20 for each webinar.
The USPA webinar series is sponsored by Arctic Foundations, Inc., Shannon & Wilson, PND Engineers, Inc., Geo-Watersheds Scientific, beadedstream, and Katherine Schexneider.

Registration and fees for each webinar:
• USPA members: FREE
• Non-USPA students: FREE
• Employees of USPA corporate members: FREE
• Non-USPA members (non-student): $20
• Instructors to volunteer their time
• Recorded webinar freely available to all USPA members
• Minimum number of participants: 10. Maximum number of participants: 200

Registration link: https://uspa.memberclicks.net/technicalwebinar2

Date and Time: Wednesday, November 15, 2023. 2:00 to 3:00pm ET (10:00 to 11:00am AKT)

Instructor: Dr. Ming Xiao, P.E., Professor of Civil Engineering, Pennsylvania State University

Content of Webinar: Drilling and sampling of permafrost; differences between subsurface exploration in permafrost regions and temperate regions; importance and basics of in-situ permafrost temperature measurements; visual classification of frozen soils (ASTM D4083); in-situ geophysical testing using multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), and distributed acoustic and temperature sensing (DAS, DTS); laboratory testing of frozen soils.
Brief Introduction of Instructor: Dr. Ming Xiao is a Professor of Civil Engineering (with specialty in geotechnical engineering) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Penn State. His current research focuses on permafrost degradation, permafrost coastal erosion, and their impacts on civil infrastructure and local communities in the Arctic. He is the President-Elect of the USPA and the Chair of USPA’s Permafrost Engineering Education Program (PEEP). He is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in the States of California (since 2007) and Ohio (since 2005).

Format: The webinar is offered on Zoom. The webinar is 1 hour long, including a 50-min lecture and 10-min Q&A. Certificate of Professional Development Hours (PDH) will be provided to participants who request it after each webinar. The webinars are free for USPA members. The webinars will be moderated. The seminars will be recorded and uploaded on the USPA website. Future participants can register and watch the webinar individually and receive PDH. Registration fee for non-USPA members to watch the recorded webinar is the same as in the live webinars.