Geotechnical engineering for sustainable social development

Speaker: Lidija Zdravkovic

Venue: Anzhong Lecture Hall, Anzhong Building, Zijingang Campus

Abstract: Professor Lidija Zdravkovic is a Professor of Computational Geomechanics at Imperial College London. She served as Head of the Geotechnics Section from 2014 to 2024, and currently holds the positions of Admissions Tutor for the MSc in Geotechnical Engineering and Co-Director of the Nuclear Engineering Centre at the same institution. She also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the internationally renowned journal Géotechnique. Her research focuses on the development and application of numerical methods in geotechnical engineering, as well as the experimental characterization of soils under mechanical and thermal disturbances. Her major contributions include the development of computational algorithms and constitutive models for coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical analysis of saturated and unsaturated soils under static and dynamic conditions, and their successful application to complex soil-structure interaction problems. These applications span offshore foundations, life-cycle assessment of climate change-affected infrastructure (such as embankments, earth dams, and slopes), flood defense works, rapid landslides, tunnels and deep excavations, as well as geological disposal of nuclear waste. Her core research philosophy is to provide reliable computational predictive tools for geotechnical engineering design through the deep integration of laboratory/field soil characterization and advanced numerical simulation. To date, Professor Zdravkovic has supervised over 40 doctoral students. In 2019, she was awarded the Imperial College President’s Medal for Excellence in Teaching and Research Supervision. She has published over 250 scientific papers and co-authored the classic textbook Finite Element Analysis in Geotechnical Engineering (two volumes), the Chinese edition of which was introduced by Science Press in 2010. Her research achievements have received numerous accolades, including the Telford Gold Medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers (2002), and the British Geotechnical Association Medal (2008/2010/2012/2020). She was also invited to deliver the Géotechnique Lecture in 2013 and the Rankine Lecture in 2024, one of the highest honors in the field of geotechnical engineering.