CIES congratulates academics Dr Asal Bidarmaghz and Dr Ali Kashani on their promotion to Senior Lecturers
In June 2022 Head of School of Civil & Environmental Engineering Scientia Professor Nasser Khalili was delighted to announce the promotion of CIES academics Dr Asal Bidarmaghz and Dr Ali Kashani to the position of Senior Lecturers.
‘It was an acknowledgement,’ Professor Khalili said, ‘and recognition of their contributions to research, teaching and service to the School, the Faculty and the profession.’
CIES Director Professor Chongmin Song added his congratulations to Asal and Ali on their achievement. ‘We welcome the recognition of our staff by UNSW for all their hard work as researchers and educators, and their constant endeavours in translating their extensive knowledge into industry practice, for the good of the community.‘
We also congratulate Dr Divya Jayakumar Nair from the School’s Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI) for her promotion to Senior Lecturer.
Dr Asal Bidarmaghz’s expertise is in Energy Geotechnics. Asal received her PhD in Civil Engineering (Geothermal Technologies) from the University of Melbourne in 2015, and worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at their Department of Infrastructure Engineering from 2015-2017. Prior to joining UNSW in 2019, Asal was a Research Associate at the Engineering Department, Cambridge University (2017-2019).
Research Activities:
Asal specializes in geo-energy systems, hydro-thermo-mechanical characteristics of urban subsurface and underground structures synergistically with above/underground built environment.
Her research concerns large-scale simulation of urban underground heat island and the quantification of its consequent geotechnical, environmental and hydrological impacts with specific emphasis on sustainable and resilient utilization of underground structures and geo-energy resources.
Asal's research has led to new urban-scale methods and tools for predicting the ground temperature and groundwater distributions at high resolutions in the presence of underground heat sources and sinks.
Asal is the Deputy Chair of the Australian Geomechanics Society (AGS) Sydney Chapter and the task force leader for underground climate change initiative at the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE).
See more here about Asal’s research : https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/only-way-down-why-underground-urban-development-rise
Dr Ali Kashani’s expertise is in Sustainable Construction.
A Churchill Fellow in Construction Automation and 3D Printing, he has extensive experience in research, development, and commercialisation of advanced and sustainable construction materials.
One of his research areas is 'Construction Automation' via development of novel high-performance materials and techniques for robot-aimed construction including 3D printing.
His other main area of research is sustainable construction materials for 'Circular Economy' including wastes valorisation, carbon capturing and mineralisation, low-carbon construction materials, sustainable concrete, and alkali-activated materials (geopolymers).
He has been the Project Leader in several R&D projects funded (over $1M) by government entities and construction industry leaders in Australia, to promote research in advanced and sustainable concrete. He continues to look at partnerships with industry.
he says, ‘We are looking forward to working with cement and concrete industries and building standard regulators to prove the viability of using sustainable concrete and automated 3D printing in different applications.’
Dr Kashani is a NSW committee member of the Concrete Institute of Australia, and co-Chair of the Cement and Concrete working group for the Materials and Embodied Carbon Leaders Alliance (MECLA).
