People
This project brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers from groups at Durham University (DU), the University of Dundee (UoD) and Oxford University (OU). Numerical modelling expertise comes from Charles Augarde, Will Coombs & Alexandros Petalas at DU, and physical modelling expertise come from Jonathan Knappett at Oxford University and Michael Brown at UoD.
Professor Charles Augarde
Charles Augarde is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Durham University and the overall lead for the Braced excavations: what about the corners? project. Charles has over 20 years experience in computational geotechnics and has published 90+ peer-reviewed articles, on computational modelling. Charles is on the editorial boards of Acta Geotechnica, Computers & Structures and Underground Space, is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College, a Chartered Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and past president of the UK Association for Computational Mechanics (2016-18).
Dr Ahmed Alagha
Ahmed is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at UoD, working on the physical modelling part of the 'Braced excavations: what about the corners?' project. Ahmed holds a Global Talent Endorsement granted by UKRI. He obtained his MSc in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Birmingham in 2018, where he graduated with distinction and was awarded the 'Best Overall Performance Award', which is given by the Midlands Geotechnical Society. His MSc dissertation titled ' Numerical modelling of tunnel face stability in homogenous and layered soft ground' was published in a peer-reviewed journal which, to date, has been cited nearly 100 times. Ahmed received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2023, where he worked on developing a novel miniature Tunnel Boring Machine or TBM to be used to investigate the 3D effects of constructing a new tunnel on nearby piled foundations. He was a warded the Philip Turner Prize in recognition of his outstanding PhD research. Ahmed has also worked as a research assistant at the University of Cambridge from June 2022 to September 2023, where he was involved with various commercial projects, such as the response of piled foundations subjected to monotonic and cyclic loads, lateral behaviour of large diameter monopiles in sand, and soil-pile interaction in cold European regions.
Professor Mike Brown
Mike Brown is a Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Dundee. Mike carries out specialist physical modelling/simulation of offshore geotechnical engineering challenges for the Oil & Gas and renewable energy (ORE) sectors for a variety of problems, working closely with industrial stakeholders. He led the £1.0M EPSRC Supergen Grand Challenges Project: Developing screwpiles for offshore wind, partnered Durham University on the seabed cable ploughs project, has led research funded by the Energy Technology Partnership (ETP) and others into cable/umbilical flotation risk and characterising pipeline backfill material. Mike is an expert on the development of scientifically-based industry-focused toolkits that link in situ site investigation data to key offshore geotechnical engineering questions, such as cable plough tow forces and foundation installation requirements. He has undertaken a significant amount of work directly funded by industry looking at the simulation of offshore pipeline ploughing which has led to the development of bespoke testing facilities at the University of Dundee. This has been used to develop new plough performance prediction models and understand how ploughs behave when encountering geohazards. He was also Co-I on the FP7-funded Geowave project (1.46M Euros) looking at anchoring of wave energy converters and led the delivery of the Scottish Marine Renewables Test Centre (SMART, ERDF LUPS Priority 1, £1.8M) which resulted in key laboratory infrastructure for the renewables sector. He is a member of the newly formed EPSRC Supergen ORE Research Alignment Group (RAG). He is a recent past member of the JGS Soils and Foundations and Geotechnique journal panels, a member of the Society for Underwater Technology (SUT) Offshore Site Investigation Group (OSIG) and a UK representative on International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) TC 212: Deep Foundations. He has a track record of research outputs that create impact for industry which is recognised through industry appointing him to chair CEN TC341 WG7 and be a member of BSi B/526/03 Site investigation and ground testing.
Professor Will Coombs
Will Coombs is a Professor of Computational Mechanics at Durham University. Will is an expert in non-linear computational solid mechanics particularly for large deformation geotechnical problems, including the formulation and implementation of material models for fine-grained soils and the development of new plasticity approaches. Will, in collaboration with Charles Augarde, are experts in the material point method (MPM) and its application to problems in geotechnical engineering. As part of this they have solved several issues with the MPM relating to: implicit solution of large deformation problems, application of boundary conditions, avoidance of spurious numerical artefacts such as volumetric locking and defining appropriate continuum mechanics frameworks to solve the governing physical equations. They are committed to making these developments as open as possible via AMPLE: A Material Point Learning Environment, a freely available, open source MATLAB code, designed to make the MPM approachable. Will is a Co-Investigator on a number of current EPSRC funded projects in the areas of: offshore wind foundations and cabling in close collaboration with Orsted (EP/R004900/1) and onshore wind turbine foundations (EP/P029434/1). Will has collaborated with Michael Brown (University of Dundee) on a number of successful recent projects, on seabed cable ploughing (EP/M000397/1) and screwpiles (EP/N006054/1), the latter receiving follow-on EPSRC impact acceleration funding to enhance the industry readiness of the developed software tools. In 2014 Will received an EPSRC Bright Ideas award for resilient infrastructure research. He is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College, sits on the editorial board of Geotechnique Letters and Advances in Engineering Software, is a focus area coordinator of the Project Aura Durham-Hull-Sheffield collaboration in wind energy (aura-innovation.co.uk), is a technical lead & the PhD project coordinator for the Aura CDT (auracdt.hull.ac.uk, EP/S023763/1) and was previously the UK's representative on the ECCOMAS Young Investigators Committee.
Professor Jonathan Knappett
Jonathan Knappett joined the University of Oxford in 2026 as Professor of Engineering Science in Geotechnical Engineering and a Tutorial Fellow at Brasenose College. Before joining Oxford, he was at the University of Dundee for 19 years, including as Professor of Civil Engineering (2018-2025), where he also served as Discipline Lead for Civil Engineering (a.k.a. Head of Department) between 2016-2021. Prior to this, he obtained MEng and PhD degrees in Engineering from the University of Cambridge. Jonathan is a Chartered Engineer and a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. His expertise includes physical modelling, numerical simulation and analytical modelling, with research interests in three main areas associated with innovative design against extreme dynamic environmental actions, including: (i) Nature-based and nature-inspired alternatives to conventional ground engineering interventions; (ii) Geotechnical Engineering for energy decarbonisation, including anchorages for offshore renewable energy; and (iii) Earthquake Engineering, focussing on structure-soil-structure interaction of buildings and infrastructure in densely populated urban areas. This research has been supported by funding from the UK Research Councils, the European Commission, and various overseas, charitable and industrial organisations to a total value of over £8.2M. Jonathan's research has been awarded the British Geotechnical Association Medal in 2009, the TK Hsieh Award for Civil Engineering Dynamics from the ICE/IStructE in 2010, the ISSMGE TC203 Young Researcher Award in Earthquake Engineering in 2018, the ICE Geotechnical Research Medal in 2023 and the Telford Gold Medal in 2024. In 2017 he gave the 13th Géotechnique Lecture on the use of vegetation in low carbon geotechnical engineering. He was Chairman of the Editorial Panel of the International Journal of Physical Modelling in Geotechnics (2014-2018) and has previously served on the Géotechnique Advisory Panel (2011-2013). He is a current UK National Representative on Technical Committees TC104 (Physical Modelling), TC203 (Earthquake Engineering) and TC223 (Bio-geotechnical Engineering) of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) and a member of British Standards Committee B/526 implementing the second generation of Eurocode 7 in UK practice. Jonathan is also the principal author of the internationally best-selling textbook Craig's Soil Mechanica (8th and 9th Editions), and co-author of Design of Pile Foundations in Liquefiable Soils.
Dr Mao Ouyang
Mao Ouyang is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Durham University working on the numerical part of the “Braced excavations: what about the corners?” project. Mao received his BEng from Central South University, China; MEng and PhD from Tokyo Institute of Technology (now The Institute of Science Tokyo), Japan, with a MEXT scholarship. Mao has experience in geotechnical/structural engineering, hydraulic engineering, data assimilation and atmospheric science through postdoctoral and academic work at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the University of Tokyo and Chiba University (2016-2023). Mao's role in the project is development and use of the 3D FE code (WP1) and the reduced order models (WP3).
Dr Alexandros Petalas
Alexandros Petalas is an Assistant Professor of Offshore Geotechnics at Durham University. He received his MEng (Mining) from Technical University of Athens in 2009 (Greece), his MSc in Geomechanics from TU Delft (Netherlands) in 2012 and his PhD from UC Davis in 2018 (USA). He has worked as a researcher at the finite element software company Plaxis BV (currently part of Bentley systems) and also as a postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers University (Sweden) and Imperial College (UK).