Dr Mohammad Vahab

Dr Mohammad Vahab received his PhD in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2015. He immediately joined UNSW as a research associate in Geotechnical Engineering, where he is currently employed as a lecturer. The focus of his research is numerical simulation by employing the state-of-the-art computational methods, namely:

• Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM); and,
• Non-differentiable Energy Minimisation using Discontinuous Galerkin Method (DG).

Mohammad specializes in the hydro-mechanical coupling processes in saturated/unsaturated porous formations. This involves the development of physical models as well as advanced computational frameworks in relation to the hydraulic fracturing treatments in neat, fractured and/or layered domains.

More recently, Mohammad investigates the use of deep learning in the study of complex mechanical response of geo-infrastructures by means of the Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs). He is a Chief Investigator (CI) in the Research Hub on Resilient and Intelligent Infrastructure Systems (RIIS). The project in particular aims to sustainability, serviceability, resilience, planning, decision making, and safe operations. Mohammad contributes to the hub in discovery, inversion, and data processing with the purpose of health monitoring of the infrastructures across Australia, which is a key to sustainability in engineering design and practice.