Meet our centre leaders
Distinguished Professor Buddhima Indraratna
Centre Director
A world-leading researcher in Rail Geotechnics and Ground Improvement for Transport Infrastructure; A receiver of the 1st Ralph Proctor Lecture for Transport Geotechnology and 4th Louis Menard Lecture for Ground Improvement of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE); A receiver of the prestigious EH Davis Memorial Lecture Award of Australian Geomechanics Society; Recipient of Engineers Australia Transport Medal and the pinnacle award by the International Association for Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics, the Outstanding Contributions Medal; A Fellow of the prestigious Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE), as well as a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia (FIEAust), American Society of Civil Engineers (FASCE), and Geological Society of UK (FGS).
Prof Hadi Khabbaz
Deputy Centre Director
An active researcher of conducting research on railway substructure, remediation of problematic soils and ground improvement techniques; A committee member of Australian Geomechanics Society (AGS), Engineers Australia, Sydney Chapter.
Research theme leaders and co-leaders
Under the leadership of the Center Director Distinguished Prof. Buddhima Indraratna, the senior and young theme leaders/co-leaders have formed a tremendous synergy to train the next generations for the future transport infrastructure.
Transport infrastructure
Prof Cholachat Rujikiatkamjorn
Dr Cholachat is a Professor at the Transport Research Centre, School of Civil, and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineeering and Information Sciences, University of Technology Sydney. He received his B Eng (1st Class Honours) from the Khonkaen University, Thailand in 2000 with a Masters (M Eng) from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand in 2002. He obtained his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Wollongong in 2006. His key areas of expertise include ground improvement for transport infrastructure and soft soil engineering. He has published over 140 articles in international journals and conferences. While maintaining a strong focus on quality teaching, to date, he has secured over $2 millions in research funding, mostly from external sources.
Dr. Fatahi has worked as a consulting and site geotechnical and railway engineer and has completed doctorate studies in Soft Soil Geomechanics from the University of Wollongong in Australia. Behzad is currently a full-time Professor of Civil and Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Technology Sydney, and was previously a Geotechnical Engineer at Coffey Geotechnics Pty Ltd, Sydney Office. Behzad has worked significantly on design of structures and foundations against earthquakes and has been researching on new design and construction techniques to improve performance of high rise buildings under large earthquake.
He is leading several major research projects in this field and has conducted advanced numerical modelling and experiments to verify the new designs.
Dr Trung Ngo is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). His research interest is on the area of computational geotechnics; railway track design and advanced computational modelling using Discrete Element Method (DEM); coupled discrete-continuum modelling (coupled DEM-FEM). Prior to joining UTS, Dr Trung Ngo had been appointed as a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Wollongong.
Data analytics
As the leader of the smart infrastructure team, Yang keeps actively engaging external customers and delivering innovative data-driven solutions for industry. Yang has led 20+ collaborative projects with Industrial partners including Sydney Trains, V/Line, Sydney Water, Melbourne Water, Sydney Harbour Bridge, Queensland Urban Utility, Woodside, NBN, HK WSD, and Acer etc. The team has successfully raised over $5M of external funding since 2015. Yang actively interacts with industrial partners to carry out user-inspired research and leads the development of advanced analytics approaches for smart infrastructure applications. Yang has also filed 5 patents in Australia, China, and USA. Yang received the NICTA Impact Award of Wealth Creation 2014, NSW iAwards 2017, and 2 AWA Research Innovation awards (national and state) 2018.
A recipient of the China Scholarship Council from Chinese government and the International Postgraduate Tuition Award from the University of Wollongong (UOW), Yujie has done three and half year’s PhD research in geotechnical engineering under the supervision of distinguished professor Buddhima Indraratna and obtained her PhD degree in 2018 awarded with ‘Examiners’ special commendation’ for her thesis. Upon graduation from PhD, she has taken up the Research Associate position working on a Discovery Project funded by Australian Research Council. Sooner after 2-year's research at the University of Wollongong, she has been appointed as a Lecturer in the Transport Infrastructure Research Center at the University of Technology Sydney.
Associate Professor Mehran Abolhasan has over 20 years of experience in the ICT industry. His range of skill Academic Leadership, R&D, Teaching, Software and Prototype Development and Project Management. He has co-authored over 140 international publications in the area of wireless networking and has received over 4 Million dollars in Research funding over the past 6 years. He also provide consulting services in the area of networking and wireless communications. His Current research Interests are in; Software Defined Networking, Tactile Internet, Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Mesh, Wireless Body Area Networks, 5G Networks and Sensor networks. He is currently a Senior Member of IEEE. He is also an active reviewer for various International Journals and Conferences.
Traffic optimisation
Professor Jianchun Li received the PhD degree from Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland. He is currently a Professor of Structural Dynamics and the Director of the Centre for Built Infrastructure Research in Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney in Australia. His current research interests are in the areas of smart materials and smart structures, structural control for civil engineering, damage detection, structural health monitoring, non-destructive testing and structure rehabilitation. Dr Li has published over 200 journal and conference articles including over 100 SCI journal articles.
Dr Kasun Wijayaratna is a Lecturer in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He is a practical, application focussed transport researcher and teacher with over 10 years of industry and research experience, publishing in a vast array of fields extending across network modelling, traffic management, parking and car-sharing. He has been involved in delivering over a dozen local and state government planning projects, specifically providing microsimulation models and traffic modelling advice. Kasun has worked on a number of industry linked research projects and secured in excess of $1million in industry research funding and has published over 30 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. He is an experienced educator, having been involved in course content development and delivery since 2012 at UNSW and lecturing and coordinating undergraduate and postgraduate courses since 2016. He has been identified as an innovator within the tertiary education system transforming delivery of engineering knowledge to an evolving student body.
Transport economics
Michelle Zeibots is a transport planner, specialising in the analysis of sustainable urban passenger transport systems. Her research, consultancy work and teaching draws together operational, behavioural and governance features relating to multi-modal urban transport networks. Michelle has a continuing split appointment at UTS between the Institute for Sustainable Futures where she is a Research Director responsible for strategic oversight within the transport area, and a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology in the School of Civil Engineering where she lectures in transportation engineering. Michelle is also the Research Director for the UTS Transport Research Centre, a multi-displinary, cross-faculty research hub within UTS dedicated to applied transport research, teaching and learning programs within a customer service paradigm.
Our researchers
Core members
Core advisory team
Current PhD students