Research

My research applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to civil and structural engineering, with a focus on building intelligent, data-driven systems for monitoring and protecting infrastructure.

Research interests

• Agentic AI & large language models for autonomous infrastructure monitoring
• Vision-based structural health monitoring — damage detection, displacement measurement, semantic segmentation
• Data-driven structural dynamics & blast simulation with graph neural networks and Transformers
• Infrastructure digital twins from UAV imagery, sensing, and FEM
• ML surrogate modelling for high-fidelity engineering simulation and design optimisation
• Graph & diffusion learning — clustering, affinity learning, anomaly detection

Grants

As Chief Investigator I have secured over A$2 million in competitive research funding.

• ARC DECRA — Next-Generation Agentic AI System for Intelligent Infrastructure Monitoring — Principal Investigator, 2026–2028 — A$510,000
• National Road Safety Action Grant (Dept. of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts) — AI-Assisted Design of Sustainable Road Barriers for Improved Road Safety — Chief Investigator, 2025–2027 — A$641,436
• ARC Linkage Grant — Damage Detection and Quantification using Infrastructure Digital Twins — Chief Investigator, 2024–2027 — A$415,380
• CSIRO Next Generation AI Graduate Program (with WA Police) — Effective and Ethical Use of AI and Data Science in Law Enforcement — Principal Investigator, 2025–2029 — A$350,000
• Curtin Trailblazer EMCR Grant — AI-Empowered Multi-Modality Digital Twin for Reclaimers — Principal Investigator, 2025–2026 — A$20,000

Awards & honors

• 2026 — ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council
• 2025 — Curtin Trailblazer Early-Career Researcher (EMCR) Grant
• 2024 — Curtin Academy iSoLT Teaching Innovation Grant
• 2023 — Third Prize, ICSHM 2022 international Structural Health Monitoring competition (70+ global teams)
• 2020 — Chancellor’s Commendation, PhD graduation, Curtin University
• 2017 — Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship, Curtin University
• 2016 — MPhil Graduation Commendation, Department of Computing, Curtin University

Academic service

• Guest Editor — Buildings (Special Issue: AI-Powered Structural Health Monitoring, 2025); Mathematics (Special Issue: Advances in Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and Engineering Applications, 2024–2026)
• Editorial Board Member (Early Career) — Urban Lifeline, 2024–2026
• Organising Committee — Inaugural International Conference on Infrastructural Monitoring and Protection (CIMP1, 2025)
• Reviewer — 20+ Q1 journals across AI, machine learning, structural health monitoring, and structural engineering