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Senior Lecturer, School of Civil & Environmental Engineering

I am a Senior Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney). I completed my PhD at UNSW Sydney, spending one year as a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following the completion of my PhD, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Imperial College London, after which I joined the University of Queensland as a Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering. 

I also worked as a geotechnical engineer with SMEC Australia, where I was involved in several large-scale infrastructure projects around New South Wales, Australia, including Hunter Expressway, Gerringong Upgrade, Glenfield to Leppington Rail Line and Gosford Passing Loop, with experiences in site investigation, design, construction phase services, and project proposals.

Education

BE (Civil Engineering), University of New South Wales, 2012
PhD (Civil Engineering), University of New South Wales, 2017 

Research Interest

My field of research is in the area of multi-scale and multi-phase mechanics of granular materials. My research aims to develop tools and guidelines so that geotechnical engineers can better handle, manipulate and construct with granular materials, and this can lead to innovative solutions to geotechnical issues surrounding the development of urban infrastructure. I am also interested in understanding natural phenomena associated with granular geomaterials such as landscapes affected by erosion, mass movement of materials in landslides, and mitigating the spread of contaminants in subsurface flows. 

I focus on the interaction of water with soil particles, where I use a combination of theoretical, numerical and experimental tools to develop a fundamental understanding of these multi-scale and multi-phase interactions and apply this basic research within a geotechnical context. I have strong expertise in the development of novel, efficient and rigorous multi-scale computational modeling techniques, including the Discrete Element Method (DEM), Pore Network Models (PNM) and coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD-DEM).

While I focus on geotechnical applications, my research also has wider implications in the field of pharmaceutical, chemical processes, manufacturing, agriculture, and food processing. Research in the area of granular materials is a naturally multidisciplinary field and I am currently collaborating with physicists, mathematicians and engineers to uncover emergent phenomena from the collective behaviour of granular particles.

HDR Supervision

Current HDR projects include:

• Modelling and characterising transport processes in granular media using dynamic pore network models and graphs
• Investigating the role of particle shape on internal erosion
• Resilient Infrastructure in a Changing Climate: A Focus on Scouring in Extreme Flood Events

I am available to supervise HDR projects in the following fields:

• Computational modelling of fluid-particle systems including pore networks and coupled CFD-DEM
• Theoretical, numerical and experimental investigations of internal erosion
• Large-scale physical modelling of erosion phenomena in embankments

Grants & Funding

• Sufian A. (2024-2026). Predicting internal erosion in dams using real-time coupled experiments. Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, Australian Research Council
• Sufian A. (2023-2026). Safeguarding dams and levees from internal erosion failure. ARC Early Career Industry Fellowships, Australian Research Council
• Zheng, W. and Sufian A. (2023-2024). Onset and progression of internal erosion in hydroelectric dams using a coupled fluid-solid simulation method. NSERC Alliance International Catalyst

Awards & Invitations

• Invited feature lecture on "Particle-scale simulation of internal erosion processes" at the IRNGeoMech Workshop 2023
• Best Paper Award (Early Career Researcher) at the Australasian Conference of Computational Mechanics (2019) held at the University of Tasmania.
• Best Paper Award (Postgraduate Student) at the Australasian Conference of Computational Mechanics (2015) held at the Queensland University of Technology.
• UNSW Geotechnical Discipline Prize (2011)

Outreach

Professional Organisations/Affliations

• Australian Geomechanics Society, Member
• Engineers Australia, Member

Service Roles

• Co-organiser of the European Working Group on Internal Erosion (EWG-IE) Symposium