| Prof Buddhima Indraratna has been proactive in starting various
geotechnical and railway track research activities since early
1990’s. The key geotechnical strands and their applications
in railway track design (Appendix 1) were born through his
primary strength in Experimental Geotechnics and Numerical
Modelling in Geomechanics. Apart from domestic students, these
research strands have attracted high calibre international
students, including from USA, UK, South and Southeast Asia.
During the past few years, 9 PhD students have graduated under
Indraratna’s
supervision. |
| Dr
Richard Dwight has been working in the area of track maintenance
and track degradation monitoring for almost 7-8 years, and
is well known for his dedicated efforts of introducing Railway
Engineering education at the Masters degree level at both UoW
and in Southeast Asia. His research efforts have attracted
significant funding from Rail-CRC to UoW attached to 3 major
projects. |
| Dr
Phil Flentje and Prof
Robin Chowdhury are leading experts
in Australia in engineering geology and landslide hazard and
risk assessment. Their profound understanding of this subject
area has given UoW the topmost recognition at national and
international levels. Flentje has been at UoW since 1993, and
has held 2 consecutive ARC projects since graduating with PhD
from UoW, and has
also successfully supervised PhD students. |
| A/Prof Philip Laird has many publications in Rail Transport
and Energy Efficiency, and he was also the Chairman of the
Technical Review Committee of CORE2002 and CORE2004. He
is in the executive Committee of the Railway Technical Society
of Australasia. |
| Prof Kiet Tieu is an expert in computational mechanics and
rolling technology. He assists this research group in several
rail projects including research in relation to on-board wheel,
wear and noise monitoring for the direction of track Maintenance. |
| Dr
Brett Lemass is a specialist in the application of Decision
Support Systems (DSS) in the reliability and risk management
of civil infrastructure, including railway tracks, retaining
walls and rail bridges. |
| A/Prof Ernest
Baafi has been a leader in Systems Engineering
and GIS applications ranging from Civil Engineering to Mine
Planning. Their efforts in the application of DSS Systems in
Railway Engineering have been recently acknowledged by the
RIC. |
| Dr. Samanthika Liyana-Pathirana and Dr. Alex Remenniokov
are both outstanding researchers in numerical modeling in soil-structure
interaction. Their computational skills are imperative
for students’ progress and Rail-CRC projects on predictive
analysis of rail track behaviour. Already, Dr Remennikov has
secured a major Rail-CRC project ($90000/year), supervising
2 research students, while Dr Liyana-Pathirana has already
begun co-supervising 3 PhD students. Their performance in the
near future will be reflected through a sound rate of publications
and research income that they will endeavour to secure through
ARC and Rail-CRC projects. |
| Dr
Hadi Khabbaz is in charge of large-scale geotechnical
testing for railways, and is a key player in the management
of Rail-CRC at UoW with Prof Indraratna. He is also involved
in co-supervision of 3 PhD students. |
| Dr
Jiandong Jiang has completed a number of major research proposals
to industry and refereed publications since his employment
in 2002 as full-time Rail-CRC Research
Fellow. Jiandong has already produced a prototype system for measuring
and interpreting wheel-rail interaction with Dr. Richard Dwight. Apart from showing
promising leadership in handling an additional Rail-CRC project as its Project
leader, plus making a successful bid for a new Rail-CRC project, he is jointly
supervising 2 research students. |
| Dr
Alexandra Golab is an ARC Research Fellow working on acid sulphate
soils. Dr Golab graduated in December 2003 from the University
of Wollongong with a PhD in geochemistry. She is an expert
in acid sulphate soils, isotope geochemistry and groundwater
geochemistry. |
