KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
CHIEF GUEST
Dr. BRETT C. PHILLIPS, PH.D., CPENG, NER, IntPE(AUS), D.WRE, F.ASCE, F.EWRI, F.IEAUST, FTSE
Brett C. Phillips is a senior principal with Stantec with more than 38 years of experience in managing and undertaking a wide range of hydro-environmental assessments, catchment studies, flood and floodplain management studies, and water-sensitive urban design and low-impact design investigations for government and industry clients. He also had senior roles on 33 projects, receiving 43 divisional and national engineering excellence awards from Engineers Australia, Stormwater Australia, Stormwater NSW, and Consult Australia since 1987. He is an author or co-author of more than 200 papers published in international and Australian conference proceedings on integrated catchment management, flooding and floodplain management, hydrology, and sustainable development. He has served as ASCE Australia section president, Region 10 governor, Region 10 director, and a member of various ASCE committees and task forces.
Dr. Yunus Ballim holds B.Sc., M.Sc., and PhD degrees in civil engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (Wits). After six years in the construction industry, he was awarded the Portland Cement Institute Research Fellowship based at Wits in 1989, was appointed as a lecturer in 1992, and currently holds an Emeritus Professorship in Civil Engineering at Wits. He was the Head of the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering from 2001 to 2005. His research is mainly in cement and concrete materials science and he has held a National Research Foundation rating as a researcher since 1994. He is a Senior Member of RILEM and has served on a number of their international Technical Committees. He is an Honorary Fellow of the South African Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering. His Publications and research standings are 42 Journal papers published in State-accredited local and international journals, 11 Book Chapters, 46 refereed conference papers, 3 research monographs for technology transfer. Ballim served as the founding President of the African Materials Research Society and held the Bram Fisher-Oxford Fellowship in 2000. Between 2006 and 2012, he served as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor - Academic and the Vice-Principal at Wits. He served two terms as a member of the Commission for Higher Education in South Africa and was Chair of the Higher Education Quality Council. Between 2018 and 2022, he was a member of the Council of Umalusi (South African Quality Council for Further Education and Training), where he also served as Chair of the Assessments Standards Committee and is presently Chair of the Umalusi Council (2022-2026).In 2012 and 2013, he was the Chair of the Board of the National Institute for Higher Education in the Northern Cape and served a 6-year term as the founding Vice-Chancellor of the Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley.
Dr. Shen-En Chen, Ph.D., P.E. degrees in civil engineering from West Virginia University, 1996. At present working as a professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. His area of research is Power transmission structures, Carbon storage in geological formations, Remote sensing for bridge monitoring, and Forensic investigation. He published more than 200 articles in various Journals, Conference and Book chapters.
Dr Peter Demian is a Reader in Building Information Modelling at the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University, UK. In REF 2021, the recent assessment of research excellence in the UK, Loughborough University was ranked second in the UK in built environment research. Dr Demian holds undergraduate degrees from Cambridge University and a PhD from Stanford University. His research is on all aspects of information management in engineering and construction. He is a Charted Engineer and Chartered Construction Manager in the UK.
Dr. pradeep kumar Ramancharla completed his B.Tech in 1995 from Vasavi College of Engineering, M.Tech in 1997 from IITKanpur and PhD in 2001 from The University of Tokyo. He is a structural engineer with 20+ years of experience in teaching and research at IIIT Hyderabad. At present He is the Director of Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) Roorkee. His areas of specialization are the non-linear behavior of structures and earthquake safety assessment of buildings. Guided the doctoral thesis of 10 students and published 120 Journal papers. His notable contribution are Establishing Earthquake Engineering Research Centre (EERC), Stated an MTech program in Computer Aided Structural Engineering (CASE), National report on Earthquake Disaster Risk Indexing of Cities / Towns, A Primer on Rapid Visual Survey(RVS), Passionate contribution towards Universal Human Values in Academic Institutions. He is currently a BIS panel member of IS456 & IS1343, Earthquake Engineering Sectional Committee,National Building Code and IRC bridge standards & specification committee.
Dr. Ravi Shankar Badry is a Senior Computational scientist at Arup India Pvt. Ltd having over 20 years of experience in structural software development, teaching, design and research. He completed his masters degree from IIT Kharagpur and Doctoral degree in Earthquake Engineering from IIIT Hyderabad under the guidance of Prof. Pradeep Kumar Ramancharla (Director CBRI and former professor & Head Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, IIIT Hyderabad). He published part of his PhD work in a very high impact journals along with international peer reviewed conferences in several countries like Spain, London, Italy, Turkey etc. He also served as Professor of Practice in ICFAI University for School of Engineering Hyderabad.
Dr. Badry worked on several international code implementations for steel, concrete and composite beam design (such as American, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong and India) and included the design features in the structural software called GSA also leading a onsite team for implementation of Material modelling in geotechnical consolidation problem. He is a Lead software developer for Gofer Cloud based geotechnical finite element product. He also developed the finite element code for explicit dynamic analysis including many nonlinear materials.
Dr Suriya Prakash is currently a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Hyderabad. He is a recipient of prestigious Ramanujan fellowship from the Government of India. Before joining IIT Hyderabad, he worked as a design engineer at Structural Group Inc., Baltimore, USA. He received his PhD from Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA in 2009. He obtained his M.S degree in Structural Engg. from IIT Madras in 2005. His research interests include use of advanced composite materials for civil infrastructure, precast systems for affordable housing, and repair and rehabilitation of structures. He has sixteen years of research and teaching experience, guided 6 Ph.Ds., published more than 80 research papers in internationally reputed journals and presented more than 75 papers in national and international conferences. He is also serving as the associate editor for ASCE journal of bridge engineering and a member of ACI, ASCE, ICI, IIBE and ASTR. He is also an executive member of Indian Institution of Bridge Engineers. He is also serving in the editorial board of ASCE journal of composites for construction and in various code committees of BIS and IRC.
Dr. Bahurudeen A is an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at BITS Pilani-Hyderabad Campus. He has expertise in construction materials and sophisticated analytical techniques. He has published a book titled “Testing of Construction Materials, in CRC Press as an international Edition. He has also published 7 patents, 60 refereed highly reputed Journals and 32 international conference papers with 1600 citations to his credit. He obtained OPERA award (Outstanding Potential for Excellence in Research and Academics). He has successfully completed several real-time consultancy projects and is actively involving in many educational bodies.He completed PhD in Civil Engineering from IIT Madras, Chennai. His doctoral study was selected for the prestigious "Indian concrete Institute ICI-outstanding PhD award 2015" at National level. Additionally, he was awarded the "Bhagyalakshmi and Krishna Iyengar Award 2015", Best PhD research at institute level in the 52nd Convocation at IIT Madras.
