Sanish Bhochhibhoya: Getting hammered for a good cause

On the right, a person stands and swings a hammer. On the left, a person sits by a laptop. A third person watches on from the background. — Sanish Bhochhibhoya verifies field recordings on the field laptop during testing in Alaska. Photo courtesy of Sanish Bhochhibhoya.

This piece was written in the spring of 2025 by GRAD 5144 (Communicating Science) student Heather Winslow as part of an assignment to interview a classmate and write a news story about their research.

Watching the buildings of his home country fall, and staying underground for months after, led this researcher to a rare engineering program found only on the east coast of the United States. Now, Sanish Bhochhibhoya and the research group are finding out how to locate pipelines underground while also bringing new meaning to the term “getting hammered” in college.

Bhochhibhoya grew up just 20 kilometers away from the capital city of Nepal in a small town called Banepa. After the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in 2015, Bhochhibhoya witnessed the collapse of many buildings, including historical ones. He and his family were forced to stay in the basement of their home for several months. He soon became interested in how soil behaves during earthquakes and how it impacts infrastructure stability, realizing “how scary and important [the] ground beneath a building is.”

After completing his undergraduate degree in the capital city of Nepal, he pursued his master’s degree at Virginia Tech — one of the only programs that offered earthquake engineering research in their geotechnical program on the East Coast of the United States. However, his research evolved and changed from his original mission, and he graduated with his master’s in 2023 in geotechnical engineering.

A numbered illustration of dirt under buildings. From left to right: 1) Start drilling along planned route 2) Look-ahead detects obstacle on planned route 3) Driller chooses new route 4) Look-ahead checks route, finds new obstacles 5) Look-ahead builds map of subsurface for future reuse — The motivation behind Sanish Bhochhibhoya’s current project addresses a major challenge of digging underground: avoiding utility damage. Illustration by Joseph Vantassel.

Now in the geotechnical engineering Ph.D. program at Virginia Tech, Bhochhibhoya works in the field and through computer simulations to obtain data through sensors in drill bits. These measuring devices work like hammers that can send waves under the ground like an X-ray. They can then produce image results revealing the locations of pipelines — and have even leveraged artificial intelligence-based predictive models to assist with retaining data.

His research values are all about sticking to plans and deadlines and keeping his research as unbiased as possible. This is why he and his colleagues get results from multiple tests to validate their results from the research.

Sanish stands to the right of his advisor. Both are wearing suits and lanyards that say "geotechnical frontiers." — Sanish Bhochhibhoya (right) poses with his advisor, Joseph Vantassel. Photo courtesy of Sanish Bhochhibhoya.

His research involves collaboration with a diverse group, structural engineers in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, mining engineers in the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering, geophysicists at the Colorado School of Mines, and electrical engineers at Brigham Young University.

“[It’s] new people merging ideas for a good cause and creating objectives. Sometimes, if you don’t get the results you want, it can feel frustrating. But it’s mostly happy,” he says.

Sanish stands second to the left in a line of four people. All four people are wearing orange puffer jackets while standing in a tunnel — Sanish Bhochhibhoya observes the Permafrost Tunnel in Alaska with his research colleagues. Photo courtesy of Sanish Bhochhibhoya.

Bhochhibhoya is the president of the Geotechnical Student Organization at Virginia Tech and leads the activities and conference organization for his department. He also mentors undergraduates and teaches them how to write research papers. Bhochhibhoya emphasizes the importance of having a good mentor and how it has made this program less difficult than he thought it would be.

Sanish stands behind a podium on the left, mid-speaking. There is a curtain behind him. — Sanish Bhochhibhoya gives a talk about his research on correcting waveforms for seismic imaging at the Geotechnical Frontiers conference in 2025. Photo courtesy of Sanish Bhochhibhoya.

Although his research has evolved from his original mission of earthquake engineering, he finds his work extremely interesting, he says. Upon graduation, he hopes to obtain a faculty position at a research-focused university.

Bhochhibhoya experiences the loneliness of not having physical familial support but says he stays connected by calling his family and his pet Labrador, Fuchhe, in Nepal every two days. He also keeps busy by cooking and watching his favorite team — Chelsea — struggle in soccer.

Or, as he is quick to add, “The real football.”