Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft Ground

Professor Wan-Huan Zhou currently serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Macau and the Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is a core member of the State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City, the Vice Director of the Macau Association for Geotechnical Engineering, and a board member in several international geotechnical organizations and societies. Her research mainly focuses on intelligent deformation analysis and monitoring in geotechnical engineering, multiscale modeling of geotechnical materials, and advanced laboratory and field testing. She currently serves as the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Geomechanics and as an editorial board member for several international geotechnical engineering journals such as Biogeotechnics, Transportation Geotechnics, and Canadian Geotechnical Journal. Prof. Zhou has published over 100 papers in top international journals and conferences. She has led more than 10 research projects, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province, and the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) of Macau SAR. In 2022 and 2023, she was in the World’s Top 2% Scientist-Stanford University Releases List (Career) of the Civil Engineering discipline. Dr. Zheng Guan is a research assistant professor at the University of Macau and a Registered Geotechnical and Structural Engineer in China, with over 5 years of engineering experience in geotechnical site characterization, geotechnical design, and geological hazard mitigation. He obtained his Ph.D. at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) in 2021, receiving the award for Best PhD Thesis in Geotechnical Studies 2021 from the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE). His research interests focus on combining techniques in dimensionality reduction/transforms, sparse sensing, and machine learning for underground digitalization and reliability- and performance-based design in geotechnical engineering. He has published more than 19 papers in top international journals. Dr. Xue Li is a postdoc fellow at the University of Macau. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Sun Yat-sen University in 2022. His research interests focus on mechanical behavior of marine coral sand and soft soil, and the application of machine learning in geotechnical engineering.