BRIGHT SPARK LECTURE AWARD - YPWRI 2021
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Thanh Nguyen, Dr. Manuel Neves, and Dr. Fernanda Bessa Ferreira have been selected as the recipients of the ISSMGE Bright Spark Lecture award. They have given their Bright Spark Lectures at the International Young Professionals Workshop on Road-Rail Infrastructure in November 2021. The workshop was hosted by the Transport Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney. It was co-hosted by the Australian Research Council (ARC) funded Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Advanced Technologies in Rail Track Infrastructure (ITTC-Rail), Australian Geomechanics Society, and the technical committee TC202: Transportation Geotechnics of ISSMGE. The workshop was held both in person in Sydney, Australia and online as a hybrid conference. Biographies of the Bright Spark Awardees are below.
Dr. Thanh Nguyen
Researcher, University of Technology Sydney
Australian Geomechanics Society
Dr Nguyen is currently taking the strategic research fellowship at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He has a rigorous and well industry-academia balanced background in Soft Soil, Soil Stabilization and Transportation Geotechnics achieved through various key industry and research projects across different countries including Vietnam, Japan (Saitama University), Singapore (NTU) and Australia (UOW and UTS). His burning desire is to enhance sustainable and eco-friendly approaches, e.g., biodegradable materials for geotechnical purposes. He is also an expert in subgrade soil failures (i.e., internal erosion, instability, fluidization and mud pumping) under transport conditions (railways and highways). His significant research has been acknowledged through a number reputable Awards and Recognitions such as the 2017 AGS Research Award and 2021 Robert Quigley Awards.
Dr. Manuel Neves
Senior Geotechnical Engineer, Golder Associates
Australian Geomechanics Society
Manuel is a Chartered Senior Geotechnical Engineer at Golder Associates with over 10 years experience gained through university studies up to PhD level in Portugal and engineering practice in a variety of countries across Europe and Australasia. In his career to date, he has predominantly been involved in the delivery of major transportation/infrastructure projects, which included North East Link (Australia), Mordialloc Bypass (Australia), Central Rail Link (New Zealand), High Speed 2 (the UK) and the Edinburgh to Glasgow Railway Improvement Programme (the UK). It is in the road-rail space that he has made his contributions to the overall body of knowledge, making use of this structural engineering background to develop different approaches to reuse and incorporate existing foundations into new rail infrastructure and establish new soil-structure interaction design methodologies to protect coastal road infrastructure against liquefaction-induced lateral spread damage.
Dr. Fernanda Bessa Ferreira
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Porto (FEUP)
Sociedade Portuguesa de Geotecnia
Dr. Fernanda Ferreira is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP) since 2019. She completed a Masters in Civil Engineering at FEUP in 2010 and then obtained a PhD from the same University in 2016. From 2016-2018, she was a Research Associate at the Centre for Geomechanics and Railway Engineering of the University of Wollongong Australia. Her main areas of interest and expertise include: 1) the reinforcement and stabilisation of earthen structures using geosynthetics; (2) the use of artificial inclusions for enhanced stability of ballasted rail tracks; and (3) the use of recycled construction and demolition wastes in Civil Engineering applications. She is the author of over 50 scientific publications and Editorial Board Member of 3 prestigious International Journals. She has been the recipient of several awards, such as the IGS Students Award granted by the International Geosynthetics Society, an Honorable Mention from the Portuguese Geotechnical Society, and most recently the Bright Spark Lecture Award of the ISSMGE.
