Dr Maryam Ghodrat

Dr Maryam Ghodrat

Senior Lecturer

 

  • Doctor of Philosophy, University of New South  Wale, UNSW Sydney  (2014)
  • Master of Engineering ,University of New South Wale, UNSW Sydney (2010)
UNSW Canberra
School of Eng & Tech

Dr Maryam Ghodrat is a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering specialised in Fire Safety Engineering and leader of two research teams Heat Transfer and Combustion and Adaptive Design for Resilient Structures at School of Engineering and Technology, UNSW‌ Canberra. Her research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the development of robust, scalable, and adaptive strategies to mitigate fire damage through effective design, construction, and use of novel materials.

Her research focuses ...

Phone
+61 2 5114 5153
E-mail
m.ghodrat@unsw.edu.au
Location
Building 17, Room 130

More than 250k of internal and 700 k of external competitive grants as lead or co-investigator in the past 6 years. 

  • Goldstar award for 2024, ARC-DP placed top 10%
  • Recognized as one of the top 2% of highly cited research scientists in the world by Stanford University and Elsevier (2024).
  • Goldstar award for 2023, ARC-DP placed top 10%
  • School of Engineering and Technology Publication award for outstanding research outcome  in 2022. 
  • Recognized as one of the top 2% of highly cited research scientists in the world by Stanford University and Elsevier (2023).
  • Goldstar award for 2022, ARC-DP placed top 10%
  • Best Paper Award, International Conference of Flow Dynamics (ICFD) conference, 2023
  • People choice award for my pitch on "Pyrometric Lab" , UNSW Pitch Night, 2023 
  • Researcher Development Awards for gender equity (WSU)
  • UNSW Postgraduate Research Support Scheme (PRSS) Conference Travel Grant
  • University Industry Postgraduate Award, the University of New South Wales

 

Research Interest includes:

  • Fire Safety Design
  • Impact of wildfires on the built environment
  • Smouldering combustion
  • Fire and Materials 
  • Wildland Urban Interface Fire Modeling 
  • Li-ion Battery Fire Safety 
  • Urban AI, Built Environment and Climate change
  • AI and hybrid methods in thermal analyses
  • Cooling techs for batteries and fuel cells (Fire Safety Mitigation including detection in EV's Li Ion Batteries)
  • Energy-efficient thermal systems
  • Thermo-Fluid visualisation
  • Environmental heat & mass transfer
  • Climate change impact on thermal systems
  • Thermal management in sustainable buildings

Current research activities cover four broad and interdisciplinary fields :

Fire Safety Engineering 

  • Performance-based fire safety design
  • Design and development of building fire safety strategies.
  • Fire Safety analysis of new materials 
  • Fire Safety design and analysis of timber buildings 
  • Fire and smoke modelling
  • Mitigating fire damage by proper design, construction, arrangement and use of buildings, materials and structures

Design for Extreme Environment

  • Application of data assimilation to risk and disaster management.
  • Fire Safety and Smart Building
  • Infrastructure and community resilience
  • Fire modeling including CFD and zone modeling;
  • Wind Engineering

Emissions and pollution Transport Physics 

  • Numerical models in predicting atmospheric dispersion of pollutant.
  • Computational Fluid dynamic simulation of plume dispersion in Urban areas

Decarbonization of Energy Sector

Focused on application of CFD modeling and thermodynamic analysis in design and optimization of energy-efficient technologies

  • Hybrid renewable energy systems for net zero energy buildings (Thermodynamic analysis)
  • Co gasification of biomass and EVA from end of life solar panels (Numerical modeling and thermodynamic analysis)
  • Thermodynamic analysis of multi generation power system based on Hybrid renewable energy configurations

 

  • Executive committee of Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand Inc. (MSSANZ)
  • Scientific committee member of 5th International Conference on Fluid Flow and Thermal Science (ICFFTS 2024), Portugal
  • Scientific committee member of International Conference on Fire Safety Engineering Research and Practice (iCFSERP-2024)
  • Scientific committee member of 5th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Safety Materials Science and Engineering (2023, Sydney AUS)
  • Scientific committee member of Australian Combustion Symposium, 2023, Darwin, NT
  • Scientific committee member of Australian Fluid Mechanics Conference, Sydney, 2023
  • Mentor in International Association of Wildland Fire

     

 

In the Media:

UNSW Canberra pyrometric laboratory sets fire to protective clothing, car parts, building materials in bid to make them safer - ABC News

New 'fire lab' to help researchers develop better flame-resistant products (unsw.edu.au)

Urban Bushfires (youtube.com)

Warman returns to UNSW Canberra

Australia's healthcare industry battling 'devastating' level of waste, nurses and doctors say - ABC News

 

Memberships

Member of :

  • International association for fire safety science
  • International Association of Wildland Fire
  • Combustion Institute
  • Australian Institute of Energy
  • Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC)
  • Woman in Science and Engineering (WisE)
  • Science & Technology Australia
  • Women in Engineering @ UNSW 

My Research Supervision

PhDs currently supervising:

  • Mostafa Ali  (Main supervisor)
  • Osman Eissa (Main supervisor)
  • Mahmoud Wally (Main supervisor)

 

Submitted/ ready to submit:

  • Amir Hossein Sabouri Shirazi (Main supervisor)- Thesis to be submitted in May 2025
  • Mohamad Sadeghi (Joint Supervisor)- Thesis to be submitted in July 2025
  • Ali Edalati Nejad (Joint Supervisor)- To be submitted in July 2025

HDR completion at UNSW

Mojtaba Ajorloo (Main supervisor)

 

Honour thesis as Main supervisor:

  1. Elise Kate Swann   (Thesis title :Flammability and Flame Resistance in Upholstered Furniture)
  2. Rohnan Scott         (Thesis title: Smouldering Combustion of Fiber Insulation Materials)
  3. Matthew Hordern    (Thesis title: Burning Behaviours of Polymeric Materials in Vehicle Furnishings)
  4. Jonathan Lu            (Thesis title : A Comparative Analysis of Thermal Performance of Firefighter Clothing)
  5. Philip L. Davies       (Thesis title: Numerical investigation of the effect of wind speed on wildfire interaction with an idealized building)

 

Bachelor of Technology thesis supervision:

  1. Hamish Jobling    (Thesis title: Assessing flame retardancy of fibre-reinforced epoxy resin composites for aerospace and aviation)
  2. Melvin Ding          (Thesis title: Post fire behaviour of aeronautical multi-layer polymer metal laminates)

 

Post Doctoral research fellow:

  • Dr Ao Li (Past)
  • Dr Anan Du (past)

 

HDR completions (as main supervisor): 

  1. Juan Alonso
  2. Alvaro Alvarez
  3. Nirosh Nuwan Nammuni
  4. Olaoluwa Dawodu
  5. Zahra Nouri (co-supervisor)

 

Accepting PhD students.  

PhD positions are available for highly motivated candidate in materials , civil or mechanical engineering .  Knowledge and experience in working with OpenFOAM software is highly desirable.

Ideal candidates should have:

  • A four-year Bachelor's and two-years MSc degrees with high WAMs (minimum of 87%) and research experience from top institutions in the field of Mechanical or civil engineering
  • A track record of publications in top-ranked scholarly journals and presentations in peer-reviewed conferences; and,
  • Good interpersonal, communication, presentation and writing skills in English.

If you are interested in doing a PhD in my group , please send a copy of PDF combining your CV, Transcripts and English Test Results to m.ghodrat@unsw.edu.au 

My Teaching

I have taught in over 12 undergraduate and graduate courses, currently at UNSW and in previous academic roles at other universities

 

My current teaching at UNSW:

  1. Heat transfer and Refrigeration (ZEIT37010)
  2. Introduction to Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering (ZEIT1504)- Course coordinator 
  3. Electrical and Mechanical plants (ZEIT4504)- Course coordinator 
  4. Engineering Mechanics (ZEIT1503)
  5. Engineering Research (ZEIT4500 and ZEIT4501)

 

Previously taught at UNSW:

  1. Mechanical and Electronic Design (ZEIT2501)
  2. Mechanics of Solids (CVEN2301)