Dr Chunshun Zhang is a Lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering at Monash University, Melbourne Australia. Chunshun’s expertise is in general areas of geotechnical engineering and geo-infrastructure. He has a background in both academia (over 4 years) and industry (almost 3 years in GHD, Australia) and is a member of Engineers Australia and Australia Geomechanics Society.

He has made novel contributions to areas including geomechanics in modelling of load-induced grain crushing, estimation of the piled foundation bearing capacity in crushable soils, mineral crushing in roll mills, etc. His applied research areas are on modelling of surface subsidence induced by underground longwall mining, where he has established one of Australia’s largest numerical models for vast scale underground mining processes for industrial applications. In recent years, his seminal contributions are on buried water pipelines with a focus on the failure mechanism of pressurised water mains. He has carried out a large number of numerical analyses to develop a Monash Tool for water utilities to improve their asset management capability.

Overall, he has published over 40 technical papers in a diverse range of topics and has been involved in attracting over 7 million Australian dollars external and internal research grants, either being CI or project lead. He is the winner of some prestigious international/national awards, including the George Stephenson Medal for the best paper in Géotechnique 2014 (second best paper across all ICE journals), International Water Association’s Project Innovation Award (2016), etc.