Lab leader

Abdollah is an Assistant Professor in the school of Civil Engineering at UCD. He obtained his PhD in Civil Engineering at UCD in 2016 which was focused on “Drive-by bridge health monitoring”. He won “KB Broberg” medal for “Best UCD PhD Thesis in Mechanics- 2016”. He also won Royal Irish Academy Charlemount award in 2018 for his collaboration with University of Alberta.


Postdoctoral researchers

Dr. Muhammad Arslan Khan

Muhammad is a Postdoctoral researcher working on Railway track monitoring. He completed his PhD in Civil Engineering at UCD in 2020 which was focused on ‘Re-deployable Sensor’s Technique and Vibration-based Bridge Health Monitoring’. He also has a post-PhD industrial experience at Intel Ireland, as a Facilities Engineer to manage construction of fabrication facilities and vibration-based structural evaluation. His primary expertise is structure and infrastructure monitoring of railway and road bridges using direct or indirect vibration signals. In the Di-Rail project, his research focuses on the Railway track monitoring using vibration-based and machine learning techniques. 

Dr. Ramin Ghiasi

Ramin is a Postdoctoral researcher working on developing AI algorithms for Structural Health Monitoring. He completed his PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Sistan & Baluchestan (USB) in 2019 which was focused on “Probability-based intelligent health monitoring of structures using metaheuristic optimization algorithm, big data analysis and surrogate methods”. After that, he joined to International Institute for Urban Systems Engineering (IIUSE) at Southeast University as an adjunct research assistant professor and did research in the domains of sustainable infrastructure and hysteresis modeling. His main research interests are structure/infrastructure monitoring using advanced AI algorithms, big data in civil engineering, and wavelet applications in structural engineering.

Dr. Amiya Pandit

Amiya is a Postdoctoral researcher in the school of Civil Engineering working on vibration control of offshore wind turbines funded by Irish Research Council (IRC)- Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship. He completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at National Institute of Technology Rourkela in 2020 which was focused on “Seismic response of partially filled sloped bottom container and tuned liquid damper for vibration control”. He also has post-Ph.D. experience as Technical Manager to manage NDT evaluation of buildings in Abu Dhabi, UAE. His research interests are liquid-structure interaction, dynamics of partially filled container, vibration control and seismic resilience of buildings and AI algorithms.


PhD Students

Robert Corbally

Robert is a PhD student in the School of Civil Engineering in UCD. He is a Chartered Structural Engineer whose experience lies primarily in the field of bridge engineering and in the development and implementation of advanced solutions for the design, assessment and monitoring of bridges. Robert’s PhD research focuses on the use of machine learning techniques as part of drive-by bridge condition monitoring.

Satish Jawalageri

Satish is a PhD student in the school of civil engineering funded by Irish Research Council (IRC). His primary research is on offshore wind turbines as he has done master’s thesis on dynamic analysis of floating offshore wind turbines. His PhD thesis mainly focuses on Dynamic Assessment of Offshore Wind Turbines using Fully Integrated Load Simulations.

Mahdis Ashkarkalaei

Mahdis is a PhD student in the School of Civil Engineering at UCD, primary supervised by Dr. Abdollah Malekjafarian and co-supervised by Prof. Vikram Pakrashi. She has a Master’s degree in Structural Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. She is working on WindLEDeR project funded by Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) where she will develop a novel framework for lifetime extension of onshore wind turbines using structural health monitoring approaches.

Asal Ameen Taha

Asal is a PhD student in the school of Civil Engineering at UCD, Primary supervised by Dr. Abdollah Malekjafarian and co-supervised by Prof. Vikram Pakrash. She holds a Master’s degree in Structural Engineering and Construction from Universiti Putra Malaysia.  She is working on time-dependent reliability analysis of floating offshore wind turbines.

Theodoros Varouxis

Theodoros is a PhD student in the School of Civil Engineering at UCD, primary supervised by Dr. Abdollah Malekjafarian and co-supervised by Prof. Vikram Pakrashi. He is a Chartered Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineer with a Diploma from the University of Patras, Greece. His primary academic research is in the Vibration-Based Structural Health Monitoring of wind turbines and composite materials. The later being the main focus of his Diploma Thesis in the fatigue damage identification in composite materials using random vibration signals. Theodoros is working on a project funded by NexSys where he will be working towards the development of a physics-informed data-drive framework for real-time condition monitoring of offshore wind turbines.

Fatemeh Bandarian

Fatemeh is a PhD student in the School of Civil Engineering at UCD, under primary supervision of Dr. Abdollah Malekjafarian and co-supervision of Dr. Fatemeh Golpayegani from UCD Computer Science. She holds a Master’s degree in Transportation Engineering from Imam Khomeini International University in Iran. She is working on a research project titled “Augmented Cooperative Connected Automated Mobility (Augmented CCAM)” which is funded by European Commission under Horizon Europe call.

Gohar Shoukat

Gohar is a PhD student under primary supervision of Prof. Vikram Pakrashi and co-supervision of Dr Abdollah Malekjafarian from SDA-Lab. He graduated with a Masters in Hydrodynamics and Offshore Renewable Energy from Ecole Centrale Nantes, France and is funded by Irish Research Council (IRC) pursuing a PhD in Fatigue Analysis for foundations of offshore structures.  He studied experimentally the loading on tidal turbines. Deep Learning (AI), Data Analytics and Software Development within the Renewables sector is another major focus. He is interested in exploring possibilities within coupling AI with classical mechanical problems.  He loves Animes, and Cricket. Occasionally, when the weather permits, likes to row.

Zeyneddin Öz

Zeyneddin is a PhD student in the School of Computer Science at UCD, primary supervised by Dr. Fatemeh Golpayegani and co-supervised by Dr Abdollah Malekjafarian from SDA-Lab. His research area mainly focuses on the Optimal trade-off accuracy and network cost of distributed learning in Mobile Edge Computing. He has experience in academia and industry regarding Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Deep Learning, and Combinatorial Optimization areas.



Former PhD students:

Dr. Alexandra Micu

Alexandra finished her PhD on “Traffic Load Monitoring on Long-span Bridges” in 2019. She was primary supervised by Prof. OBrien and co-supervised by Dr. Malekjafarian (SDA-Lab).

Dr. Paul Fitzgerald

Paul was a finished his PhD in 2018. The title of his thesis is “A vibration-based approach to bridge structure and substructure condition monitoring using direct and drive-by methods”. He was primary supervised by Prof. OBrien and co-supervised by Dr. Malekjafarian (SDA-Lab).

Dr. Daniel Martinez Otero

Daniel was a Marie Curie PhD student in TRUSS project where he finished his PhD in 2018. His thesis title is “Bridge Damage Localisation using Displacement and Velocity Measurements”. He was primary supervised by Prof. OBrien and co-supervised by Dr. Malekjafarian (SDA-Lab).