BRIGHT SPARKS LECTURE - 9TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM FOR GEOTECHNICAL SAFETY AND RISK (ISGSR 2025), OSLO, NORWAY
The YMPG in collaboration with the Organising Committee for 9th International Symposium for Geotechnical Safety and Risk (ISGSR 2025) in Norway 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 24-27 August 2025.
Jinzhang Zhang, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "Machine learning-enhanced site characterization for tunnel risk assessment"
Pin Zhang, Presidential Young Professor, National University of Singapore
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "Physics-informed learning for geotechnical engineering: potential and challenges"
Thomas Vergote, Expert Engineer, the DEME Group.
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "Bridging between fundamental and applied research and engineering practice: some examples from soft soil reclamations and offshore monopile installation"
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
Jinzhang Zhang
Dr. Jinzhang Zhang is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University and Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. from Tongji University. After graduation, he spent two years as postdoctoral in Tongji University and received the highest honor for postdoctoral fellow in China, known as China Postdoctoral Innovation Talents Support Program (2022, 8/316,451). His research focuses on site characterization and safety assessment of tunnel and underground infrastructure using advanced techniques. He developed machine learning-based intelligent reconstruction algorithms for uncertain strata using limited CPT data. He has independently led 8 research projects ranging from national grants to industrial projects. His publications include over 30 peer-reviewed papers and one book as first author. He has been invited to give presentation at more than ten international level academic conferences, and served as guest editor, Young Editorial Board Member and reviewer for several top journals. His notable awards include the 1st place award in ISSMGE TC304/TC309 data analysis contest (2023), Oriental Talent Plan Youth Program (2023), Shanghai Pujiang Talent Program (2022), Shanghai Post-doctoral Excellence Program (2022), Winner of 2nd Shanghai Postdoctoral Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (2022), Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award of Tongji University (2022).
Pin Zhang
Dr. Pin ZHANG is a Presidential Young Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Before joining NUS, Dr ZHANG worked at the University of Cambridge as the Royal Society Newton International Fellow (2022-2024, only one in the civil engineering domain) and department teacher. He completed the Ph.D. from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in 2022, including one year at the University of Oxford as a visiting scholar. His research mainly focuses on data-driven solid and computational mechanics, digital twinning, tunnelling and coastal engineering.
New knowledge is demonstrated by publications in high-impact journals such as Géotechnique, JGGE and CMAME, and the total citations reach 2400+ with the h-index of 26. Two journal papers were recognized as Editors Choice by JEM-ASCE and FSCE, and six papers were recognized as the journal's top cited/downloaded. He is also the editor members of two international journals Georisk and Data-Centric Engineering.
Dr ZHANG was also the recipient of Early Career Award from Géotechnique, Ringo Yu Prize from The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (only one awardee), PolyU PhD thesis-Merit Award (only three awardees). He was selected as Stanford World's Top 2% Scientists (Single year) in 2023 and 2024.
Thomas Vergote
Thomas Vergote is an expert engineer in geotechnical engineering and data science a the DEME Group. Over the past 12 years he has specialized in the soil behaviour of soft sediments and its use as a sustainable building material. To create better predictive models and leverage all available data, he combines probabilistic approaches and machine learning with physics-based mechanics. Thomas was part of the team that built the land reclamation for Tuas Terminal Phase 1. In parallel, he pursued a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering at National University of Singapore on the long term behaviour of improved soft soils with a new soil mechanical model and data assimilation techniques.
Thomas is currently involved in multiple projects related to beneficial use of soft sediments, both as a structural element as for ecosystem restoration with nature-based solutions. He focuses on improved monitoring and linked models to enrich our understanding of the system. Next to this, Thomas is applying the same data science techniques to a wider set of predictions for dredging and offshore wind installations. In particular, he works on improved predictions for pile drivability for offshore monopiles. He published 5 journal articles and 17 conference papers and presentations on these topics.
