Dr. Rudi van
Staden received a Diploma in Engineering from Cambridge Regional College, U.K.,
in 1999, a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) from the University of
Hertfordshire, U.K., in 2003, and a PhD from Griffith University, Australia, in
2008. He is a Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the Institute for
Sustainable Industries & Liveable Cities at Victoria University (VU). His
areas of expertise include structural engineering, civil engineering, pavement
engineering, and biomedical engineering.
Dr. P. L. P.
Wasantha received a BSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the
University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, in 2010, and a PhD in Geomechanics from Monash
University in Australia, in 2014. He is an Associate Professor of Geotechnical
Engineering at the Institute for Sustainable Industries & Liveable Cities
at Victoria University (VU). Before joining Victoria University, he held
research positions at various institutions, including the Technical University
Bergakademie Freiberg (Germany) in 2015-2016, University of Oxford (United
Kingdom) in 2016-2017, and Monash University (Australia) in 2013-2015. His
current research interests include modeling hydraulic fracture propagation and
induced seismicity, ground deformation due to tunneling in soft and hard rocks,
the shear behavior of rock joints, the effect of soil reactivity on lightweight
structures, and the use of ANN in geotechnical engineering.
Dr. Ashok K
Sharma received a BTech in Civil Eng, ME in Env Eng from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Roorkee, India, and a PhD in Civil Eng from the Indian
Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. Dr. Ashok K Sharma is an
Associate Professor of Water Resources at the Institute for Sustainable
Industries & Liveable Cities at Victoria University (VU). Before joining
VU, he worked for nearly 12 years at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia, as Senior Research Engineer and
Principal Research Engineer. There, he led research on decentralized systems and
water-sensitive urban design and managed various research projects on urban
water systems. Before CSIRO, he worked as a Planning Engineer at the Queensland
Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Australia, Assistant Professor of
Civil Engineering at Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi, India. His expertise
includes decentralized systems, centralized water & wastewater, hydraulic
and hydrology, integrated urban water management, and water-sensitive urban
design.
