BRIGHT SPARKS LECTURE - 1ST GEOTECH ASIA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE (GEOTECH ASIA 2025), GOA, INDIA
The YMPG in collaboration with the Organising Committee for Geotech Asia International Conference (Geotech Asia 2025) in India would like to announce the winners of the Bright Spark Lecture Award to three distinguished young geotechnical engineers/academics listed below. They were invited to give keynote lectures on 7-10 October 2025.
Sumeet Kumar Sinha, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "Performance based design of axially loaded piles for Liquefaction Induced downdrag"
Suwan Hettiyahandi, PhD student, University of Technology Sydney
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "Utilization of Rubber Grids Made from Waste Conveyor Belts for Enhanced Ballasted Track Performance"
Chaidul Haque Chaudhuri, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "Pipeline Resilience under Traffic and Explosive Loads: Insights from Analytical and Numerical Studies"
The Bright Spark Lecture Award was established to promote young members of the ISSMGE to play a major role in various international and regional conferences. Recipients of this award are invited to give a keynote lecture at ISSMGE conferences. All Technical Committee conference organisers and Member Society conference organisers are encouraged to select Bright Spark Lecturers at their conferences. Details regarding the award can be found on the ISSMGE website: https://www.issmge.org/the-society/awards/bright-spark-lecture-award.
We invite everyone, especially young geotechnical engineers, to come and enjoy the lectures. We hope these lectures can inspire and motivate us further to excel in our beloved field, geotechnical engineering.
Winners Bio
Sumeet Kumar Sinha
Sumeet Kumar Sinha is an Assistant Professor in the Civil Engineering Department of IIT Delhi specializing in geotechnical engineering. He obtained his BTech (Civil Engg) from IIT Delhi, PhD from University of California Davis, and postdoc from University of California Berkeley. He has been honoured with numerous prestigious awards, including the ASCE Norman Medal 2025, recognizing his exceptional contributions to civil engineering. His research interests include understanding the complete response of geosystems (such as pile foundation, soil-anchor systems, geothermal energy, and geohazards) and making improvements in their design to make them more feasible, economical, resilient, and sustainable. A significant aspect of his work involves close collaboration with industry professionals, ensuring that academic research is effectively put into practice. He is actively involved in translating research outcomes into industry-ready products and solutions of practical problems through softwares, applications, patents, prototype development, outreach, and demonstrations. Along these lines, he has recently co-founded a startup "BrahmaSens", focusing on the development of sensing solutions including the distributed fiber optic sensing systems for measuring strain, temperature, and vibration for the health monitoring of civil infrastructures.
Suwan Hettiyahandi
Suwan Hettiyahandi is a final-year PhD candidate at the Transport Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He graduated with First Class Honors in Civil Engineering from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2021, where he also served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant before working with Sanken Constructions (Pvt) Ltd. and the Road Development Authority, Sri Lanka. His doctoral research investigates the use of recycled rubber energy-absorbing grids (REAG) to improve the performance and sustainability of heavy-haul rail tracks. Suwan has conducted extensive large-scale laboratory testing, field trials, and advanced finite element modelling (Abaqus) to evaluate ballast degradation, settlement reduction, and energy dissipation mechanisms. Suwan has published his findings in Transportation Geotechnics and the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering and presented at leading international conferences. Recognised for his innovative contributions, he has received multiple awards for research excellence. His long-term goal is to translate academic research into practical engineering solutions that deliver more resilient, cost-effective, and sustainable rail infrastructure worldwide.
Chaidul Haque Chaudhuri
Dr. Chaidul Haque Chaudhuri is an Assistant Professor at the School of Infrastructure, IIT Bhubaneswar. He received his Ph.D. from IIT Bombay in 2023, he proposed various analytical formulations for underground pipelines subjected to seismic and blast loading. His research, published in Geotechnique, ASCE, SDEE, and Scientific Reports, has received national and international recognition, including three consecutive Best Paper Awards from the Indian Geotechnical Society (2022-2024),two ASCE recognitions for top-downloaded and Editor's Choice articles, and a Best Paper Award from Springer Nature. Dr. Chaudhuri is a recipient of the prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Prime Minister's Early Career Research Grant (ANRF). He has introduced a new postgraduate course on Underground Infrastructure at IIT Bhubaneswar. Previously, he mentored IIT Bombay's team for the geotechnical deliverables in the global Seismic Design Competition in 2021 and 2023 (EERI, USA), where the team won the Charles RichterAward for the first time in India. He was the Institute Postgraduate Gold Medalist inM.Tech. and secured institute 2nd Rank in B.Tech., both from NIT Agartala. Dr.Chaudhuri is an active reviewer for several journals of ASCE, ICE, Springer, andElsevier, and currently leads multiple industrial and research projects as PI.
