Towards an adaptive infrastructure system decision support model

Biography

Dr Donya Hajializadeh, BEng (Hons), MEng, PhD, CEng MICE, MIEI, EUR ING, MWES, FHEA is a Chartered Engineer, European Engineer, and Senior Lecturer in Bridge/Structural Engineering at the University of Surrey, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE).

Dr Hajializadeh is a Fellow of the Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence (AI), CEE Director of Employability, IStructE - University of Surrey Liaison Officer along with other roles and responsibilities across the CEE, University of Surrey, UK and EU institutions and professional bodies.

Dr Hajializadeh was a recipient of the prestigious Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher Scholarship awarded by the European Commission for the duration of her PhD at the University College Dublin (UCD). Following completing her PhD, she spent 3 years in the industry as a Research Engineer at Roughan & O’Donovan Innovative Solutions (RODIS) and as a Lecturer (part-time) at UCD Civil Engineering School. Subsequently, she was appointed Senior Lecturer in Civil/Structural Engineering at Anglia Ruskin University for 3 years prior to joining the University of Surrey.

Donya is an active member of several professional bodies, including the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), the Institution of Engineers of Ireland (IEI), the European Federation of National Engineers Associations (FEANI) and the Women’s Engineering Society (WES).

Donya’s Research Interests with the industry-focused application:

• Structural health monitoring (SHM)
• Data-driven-based SHM
• Machine learning-based asset management systems
• Deep learning-based damage identification systems
• Bridge Weigh-in-Motion (WIM)
• Bridge traffic load modelling
• Advanced finite element analysis (FEA)
• Risk and reliability assessment of bridges
• Infrastructure interdependencies’ modelling
• Resilience, vulnerability and risk assessment of critical infrastructure

Dr Hajializadeh is keen to supervise and support outstanding candidates who wish to pursue their studies at the PhD level in any of the above research areas or related fields. To discuss PhD research topics, funding opportunities and the application process, please contact Donya directly by email: d.hajializadeh@surrey.ac.uk

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Biography

Dr Boulent Imam graduated with an Honours B.Sc. degree from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. He obtained his M.Sc. in Structural Engineering with Distinction from the University of Surrey in 2002. His M.Sc. dissertation was on the probabilistic fracture assessment of the Northridge moment resisting connections and led to the publication of two papers. Dr Imam continued his studies at the same university where he successfully defended his PhD in June 2006. Dr Imam's PhD work focused on the fatigue analysis of riveted railway bridges and was funded by EPSRC and Network Rail. He developed a general methodology for the fatigue assessment of riveted railway bridges, through finite element (FE) analysis, by concentrating on the fatigue behaviour of their primary connections.

Following the completion of his PhD in June 2006, Dr Imam continued his research as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Surrey. He expanded his experience in load modelling by investigating the effect of future load evolution scenarios on the remaining life of riveted railway bridges. Parallel to this study, he also investigated, as a continuation of his PhD work, the application of novel assessment methods for more reliable remaining fatigue life estimation of riveted bridge connections.

In November 2007, Dr Imam was appointed as a Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences in the University of Surrey. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2013. Dr Imam has contributed significantly towards in-depth understanding of the fatigue behaviour of riveted railway bridges and developed methods for more reliable quantification of their remaining fatigue life taking into account historal rail traffic, novel fatigue assessment methods, loading, resistance and modelling uncertainties as well as system effects. Later on, he extended his work on fatigue towards developing fracture mechanics guidelines for the assessment of fatigue crack growth in steel bridge details towards the optimisation of inspection and maintenance planning in steel bridges. Recently, Dr Imam has provided valuable insight towards understanding the potential impacts of climate change on bridges and quantifying the resilience of bridge infrastructure against these impacts by developing a risk-based framework for assessing the reliability of bridges over time by considering long-term material deterioration and bridge scour as well as the consequences of failure of bridges. This is complemented by his research in the area of climate change adaptation and asset management.

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Biography

I am a mathematician (Maths, University of Patras) doing research in computer science (PhD in Theoretical Computer Science, University of Surrey). My work on Learning and Control in complex networks focuses on when and where to intervene in a network in order to steer to a desirable outcome. I am keen on mathematical methods (control theory, approximations methods) combined with computational methods such as Reinforcement Learning (rule-based, deep).

This video clip provides a quick overview of my recent research activity.

I have led several UK and EU funded research projects. Current projects include:

• Virtual Clinical Trial Emulation with Generative AI Models, funded by MRC (MR/X005925/1), with University of Strathclyde and Professor Feng Dong (lead), and NHS Glasgow and Clyde and Professor Chris Sainsbury, and colleagues Professor Simon Skene and Professor Jo Armes at Surrey, on equipping generative AI models with causality and differential privacy and applying such models to speed up clinical trials
• Advanced Persistent Threats defence in 5G networks (APTd5G), funded by EPSRC UKI-FNI, with the 5G/6G Innovation Centre (Dr Mohammad Shojafar) and Amity University Mumbai, India and Professor S. A Abimannan, on identifying realistic APTs in 5G networks using Reinforcement Learning and defining APT protection requirements
• AI Evaluation award, funded by NHS England and NIHR, on evaluating the AI side of DERM which is a tool for skin cancer diagnosis developed by Skin Analytics for the NHS; with Professor Simon Skene and Unity Insights 
• Vision-based positioning via diverse data sources, PhD project funded by Saab Group, on navigating an autonomous surface vessel based on on-board camera images without relying on GPS; PhD student Alastair Finlinson

Recent projects include:

• the Real-Time Flow (RTF) project, funded by EIT Digital IVZW - this is a collaboration with Amey UK (lead), Ferrovial, Ci3 (Spain) and Emu Analytics on modelling and predicting flows of passenger and train movements over transport networks
• the CoNTINuE (Capacity building in technology-driven innovation in healthcare) project, funded by GCRF, UKRI, which is an interdisciplinary project between Surrey Business School, Clinical and Experimental Medicine, and Computer Science 
• AGELink (Automated GEneration of Linkages between delay events) which looks at minimising reactionary delay -- the knock-on effect on the rail network of a train being late. This is an EPSRC IAA project in collaboration with the Rail Delivery Group (RDG)

I am a member of the executive committee of the IEEE Technical Committee on Cloud Computing and the technical committee on IEEE Industrial Informatics.

On the Programme Committee for the annual conference on Complex Networks, the IEEE Service Oriented Computing and Applications (IEEE SOCA), and a co-chair on the RuleML+RR International Rule Challenge in 2019, 2020.

An Associate member of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security (SCCS).

An IEEE Member (No. 41465193).

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Biography

Raffaella received the Laurea degree (cum laude) in Telecommunications Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II (Naples, Italy), in 2003 and 2007, respectively. In 2006, she received a two-year research grant from the University of Naples Federico II to be spent at the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering on the topic of electromagnetic field propagation in urban environment. In 2006, she was also a Guest Scientist with the Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Technische Universität München (Munich, Germany). In 2008, Raffaella joined the Surrey Space Centre (SSC), University of Surrey (Guildford, U.K.) as a Lecturer in Satellite Remote Sensing. Today she is still in SSC as Reader and Head of the Remote Sensing Applications research group. Since September 2019 Raffaella is also PostGraduate Research Director in SSC.

Raffaella has published more than 80 papers and was awarded the IEEE J-STARS Best Paper Award 2013 for her research on statistical analysis of SAR data.

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Biography

Emma is a Chartered Civil Engineer and NERC Embedded Digital Research Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and working with LEAP Environmental.  Her current project involves developing a Carbon Reduction Digital Twin (CReDiT) of brownfield remediation.  This aims to be a design tool for appraising brownfield remediation options, focusing on calculating and reducing the carbon footprint of the process and improving material sustainability. 

Her previous research focused on obtaining and analysing local government data on soil contamination, including asbestos and PAH.  Emma has worked in local government as a contaminated land officer, civil engineering consultancy as a geoenvironmental engineer and as a lecturer in soil mechanics and environmental geotechnics at the University of Surrey.  Her main research area involves contaminated land issues such as investigation and remediation of brownfield sites.  This area developed from her PhD at Cambridge University investigating the migration of pollutants in soil using numerical and geotechnical centrifuge modelling.  

Her consultancy experience was obtained at Atkins and Leap Environmental Ltd., which included working on projects including the site investigation at the Millennium Site, Greenwich, remediation at Fulham gasworks and acting as verification engineer for remediation work at housing developments.  In local government, she obtained DEFRA funding and project managed a major Part IIa remediation project of contaminated residential gardens.  She also developed a risk ranking criteria for Part IIa sites and has overseen the contaminated land requirements of the planning process particularly for residential development.   

She has research experience in overseeing PhD and Research Council projects on satellite monitoring of water quality, air pollution from traffic, using geographical information systems (GIS) on civil engineering projects and intelligent transport systems.  

Emma is also a STEM ambassador, keen to promote civil engineering, particularly in primary schools.  She is a member of the Women's Engineering Society and the Society of Brownfield Risk Assessors. 
 

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