Welcome to the Jacques Group at the Virginia Tech Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Our research focuses on two broad areas: (i) robustness and resilience of infrastructure against extreme hazards, including blast, impact, and seismic events; (ii) development of new structural forms and innovative materials, validated through large-scale testing and analysis, for cost-effective risk mitigation and hardening.

The Principal Investigator, Eric Jacques, Ph.D., P.Eng., is an Assistant Professor in the Structural Engineering & Materials Group in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. He is also the Director of the Shock Tube Research Facility, equipped with a large-scale gas-detonation blast simulator, focused on the study of structural and non-structural components subject to extreme blast loads. This unique facility fosters collaborative high strain rate blast research in an on-campus environment tightly integrated with faculty from Virginia Tech and elsewhere in the country.