BRIGHT SPARKS LECTURES - 4th International Symposium on Machine Learning & Big Data in Geoscience at University College Cork, Ireland
The YMPG in collaboration with the Organising Committee for the 4th International Symposium on Machine Learning & Big Data in Geoscience at University College Cork, Ireland, would like to announce the winners of the Bright Spark Lecture Award to three distinguished young geotechnical engineers/academics: Zili Li, Brian Shiel, and Mingling Zhou. They were invited to give keynote lectures on 29 August - 1 September 2023.
Dr Zili Li, Senior Lecturer, University College Cork, Ireland
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "Image-based machine learning in geoengineering from rock sample to large-scale infrastructure"
Dr Brian Shiel, Associate Professor, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "Digital Underground Construction: Measurement and Monitoring"
Dr Mingliang Zhou, Associate Professor, Tongji University
Bright Spark Lecture Title: "AI-based back analysis of multiphysics processes in geotechnical practice"
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
Zili Li
Dr Zili Li graduated with a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering in 2015 from the University of Cambridge, UK. He has postdoctoral work experience in Colorado School of Mines, US and currently work as a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Geotechnical Engineering at University College Cork, Ireland. He worked as a visiting Professor / Scientist at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA in 2022-2023 during his sabbatical research leave. Since his employment at UCC in 2016, he has secured 2+ million Euro research grant as the PI, including prestigious SFI Frontiers for the Future Programme (612.8k Euro total budget) (top-tier independent research grant). He is the chair of ISMLG 2023 (the 4th International Symposium of Machine Learning and Big Data in Geoscience), 29th August to 1st September 2023, University College Cork, Ireland https://ismlg2023.com. In addition, Dr. Li leads the monitoring and assessment of world-class CERN tunnel projects (405k Euro) for Large Hardon Collider (LHC), funded by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) at Geneva Switzerland. He is also the Leader of Task Force Big Data Acquisition in TC309 Machine Learning & Big Data at International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE).
Brian Shiel
Dr Brian Sheil studied Civil Engineering for his undergraduate degree at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). He studied the behaviour of deep foundation systems for his PhD (also at NUIG), which involved a period as a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2014, Brian joined the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher in experimental geotechnics focused on industry-funded research projects and was subsequently promoted to departmental lecturer in geotechnical engineering in January 2017. In 2018, he was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow at Oxford and a Junior Research Fellowship at St Catherines College (Oxford). In January 2021, Brian was appointed to the position of Honorary Research Senior Lecturer at NUIG and in 2022, he was awarded the title of Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. He took up his current position as the Laing O'Rourke Associate Professor in Construction Engineering in September 2022. He recently received the Young Researcher Award 2022 from the Civil Engineering Research Association of Ireland. His research involves the development of new science and technology to optimise the efficiency, safety and sustainability of underground construction, and he teaches construction engineering in the Engineering department.
Mingliang Zhou
Mingliang is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Geotechnical engineering department at Tongji University, Shanghai, China. Mingliang obtained his BA (2010), MEng (2011), and Ph.D. degrees (2016) from the University of Cambridge, UK. His research interest is using advanced techniques to analyze multiphysics processes in geotechnical infrastructures. He has established a reputation for using computer vision and deep learning techniques to solve practical geotechnical problems. He has been awarded two national-level grants from China and led eight high-profile geotechnical consulting projects in China, Canada, Germany, Japan, and the UK. In addition, he has published more than 30 journal papers and served as guest editor and reviewer for several top-tier journals. Mingliang is passionate about organizing exciting events to deliver the latest technology and research frontier to the young member of the geotechnical community. Apart from his involvement in the YMPG of ISSMGE, he is also actively involved in other technical committee events and served as a corresponding member in TC222 and TC 309.
