GeoMod consulting engineers is a small enterprise offering services in the field of advanced numerical modelling applied to geomechanical problems.

GeoMod is working closely with two institutes of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), namely the Soil Mechanics Laboratory (LMS) leaded by Prof. L. Vulliet and the Laboratory for Structural and Continuum Mechanics (LSC) in association with Prof. Th. Zimmermann. Working mainly with the finite element package Z-Soil 3D, we often collaborate with the code supervisors: Prof. Th. Zimmermann and Dr. A. Truty (Cracow University, Poland). GeoMod also has strong links with one geotechnical SME (De Cérenville Géotechnique SA) located in the Lausanne area.

In the past year, GeoMod has been involved in :

- private construction projects such as the optimisation of different retaining systems for deep excavations in soft soils, the prediction of settlements associated with tunnelling works in urban areas, the verification of anchored retaining walls, the calculation of pile foundations, ...

- natural hazards evaluation projects for governmental offices, such as the 3D- coupled-nonlinear finite element modelling of the behaviour of a large landslide located in the Swiss Alps, in order to evaluate different techniques to slow it down

GeoMod is continuously trying to expand its expertise in cutting-edge numerical methods. In particular we daily apply advanced constitutive models present in our codes (currently Z_Soil and Gefdyn) and push forward introducing new ones. GeoMod is keen in improving his knowledge of unsaturated soils, in particular in order to apply it in the future on landslide studies.

Stéphane Commend was born in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1971. He graduated from the EPFL in 1994 in civil engineering and started to work in the Z-Soil development team until 2001 (C++ and Java programming). Between 1997 and 2001 Stéphane worked in the field of stabilized finite elements in geomechanics with Prof. Th. Zimmermann. During this time, he spent one academic year at Stanford University in the team of Prof. T.J.R. Hughes. In 2001, he defended his PhD thesis work on this subject. He then worked for one year in a geotechnical company and in 2002 he co-founded the GeoMod company (formerly known as ComSA consulting engineers) with Françoise Geiser.

Françoise Geiser was born in 1972. She graduated from the EPFL in 1995 in civil engineering. In 1999, she defended her thesis under the supervision of Prof. L. Vulliet at the EPFL on "the behaviour of an unsaturated sandy silt: experimental aspects and constitutive modelling". She then worked for one year as a postdoctoral research engineer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney on the thermo-chemical coupling in unsaturated soils. In 2000, she started working as a geotechnical consulting engineer in Lausanne and co-founded GeoMod in 2002.