Plenary and Keynote Speakers

Dr. Shahria Alam
University of British Columbia, Canada
Plenary Speaker

Topic of Plenary:

Dr. Nawawi Chouw
The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Plenary Speaker

Professor Nawawi CHOUW was Director of the University of Auckland Centre for Earthquake Engineering Research in New Zealand. He worked at universities in Germany, Japan, and Australia before joining the University of Auckland. He received his doctorate in Civil Engineering from the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. He has twice been awarded the Gledden Fellowship of the University of Western Australia, the Fritz-Peter-Mueller Prize of the Technical University of Karlsruhe, Germany, the Best Research Award of Chugoku Denryoku Research Foundation, Japan, and received two recognitions for excellence in research supervision from Chinese Scholarship Council. He has published 458 publications, including 147 in international journals. He was invited to teach at several universities in Europe, China, and Japan. He was guest editor of several journals, e.g., Protective Structures, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering. He is the associate editor of Materials, Shock and Vibration and Frontiers in Build Environment – Earthquake Engineering and serves on the editorial board of several international journals, e.g., Engineering Structures. He was a visiting and guest professor at several universities in China, Germany, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

Topic of Plenary: The Importance of Soil Behaviour for Structures during Earthquakes
Plenary Abstract

Dr. Mamadou Fall
University of Ottawa, Canada
Plenary Speaker

Prof. Mamadou Fall is a Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Ottawa (Canada), where he also holds the prestigious University Research Chair in Geotechnical Engineering for Net Zero Transitions. A Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, Dr. Fall is internationally recognized as a leading expert in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering, with a particular focus on technologies that are critical for the construction and maintenance of sustainable structures and net zero transitions. Throughout his career, Prof. Fall has secured substantial research funding and produced over 325 publications, with his work being widely adopted by industry, governmental agencies, and research institutions around the world. He has supervised and trained more than 100 highly qualified personnel (HQP), many of whom now occupy leadership positions in academia, government, and industry. Prof. Fall has delivered numerous keynote lectures and contributed to scientific committees across five continents. His outstanding contributions have earned him multiple prestigious honors, including the John B. Stirling Medal, the Franz-Special Award for Geotechnical Engineering, the University of Ottawa Award for Research Excellence, and recognition among the world’s top 2% of scientists by Stanford University. Beyond his research, Prof. Fall has held several strategic leadership roles, including Vice-President Technical of the Canadian Geotechnical Society, Director of the Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Environmental Engineering, and Coordinator of the German Research Chair in Environmental Geosciences and Geotechnics.
His plenary lecture will explore the critical role of subsurface engineering in enabling safe, long-term nuclear energy solutions that support global sustainability and net-zero targets.

Topic of Plenary: Safe Below, Clean Above: Subsurface Engineering for Sustainable Nuclear Energy
Plenary Abstract

Dr. Mijia Yang
North Dakota State University, USA
Keynote Speaker

Dr. Mijia Yang, P.E., was a tenured professor at Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, North Dakota State University. Dr. Yang received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering 2006. Before joining NDSU, he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Yang has practiced teaching and research broadly in structural engineering. His research concentrates on impact and blast protection with advanced engineering materials, multi-scale modeling of composite and concrete materials, smart health monitoring in Civil Infrastructure, and self-healing concrete. His representative work included developing a systematic design method for impact barriers, a unified fatigue criterion for uniaxial Polyurethane E-Glass composite laminates, damage detection through guided wave, and a creep design methodology for Epoxy bonded anchor systems. Dr. Yang is currently serving as the associate editor of Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, ASCE, and has more than 100 publications, including journal papers, conference papers, and reports in the field of composites, structural testing and characterization.

Topic of Keynote: DeepShap Explanation XAl of Using Fused Data of Damage Images and Vibration Signals in Structure Health Monitoring
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