Austin Hoyle Email & Phone Number

Hello all. I am a graduate researcher at the Colorado School of Mines in the Mechanical Engineering department, working under Dr. Mike Mooney. My research interests include the overlap of geophysics and engineering. My current research involves studying and modeling the interaction between shallow surface soils and a bio-inspired earthworm robot that tunnels through the ground. My path to this point:In my early adult life I spent 3.5 years as an airborne infantry man with the US Army, most of which in Alaska, and 9 months in eastern Afghanistan in support of Operation Freedom Sentinel. After the military I obtained my BS in Geology at the University of Maryland where I performed research writing code that models gravitational fields of asteroids, and also conducted field geophysics in lunar and Martian analog environments to better inform future space missions. In August of 2023, I begin attending the Colorado School of Mines as a graduate student. In the summer of 2024, I completed my MS in Applied Mathematics. My thesis for this degree involved writing a machine learning algorithm to detect earthquake signals in urban deployed fiber optic seismic data. After this I began the long road to my PhD in the Mechanical Engineering Department where I am working on the project described above. My expected graduation is May of 20017 or 2018.