Background
With supporting letters from Prof. Guy Houlsby and his former student, Prof. Giang D Nguyen, Dr Nguyen was given a rare and prestigious opportunity to conduct research in the geotechnics section at Imperial College London, a renowned institution home to many leading figures, Sir Alec Skempton and Professor Alan Bishop. Dr Nguyen obtained a PhD and DIC degrees from Imperial College London, working under the supervision of Professor Catherine O'Sullivan. The title of this work is: "Micromechanics of shear wave propagation and non-linear stiffness of granular materials". The thesis was examined by Prof. Jamie Standing (Imperial College London) and Prof. Matthew Coop (University College London). A Vied-Newton PhD scholarship and a Dixon scholarship from Imperial College London sponsored this study. Dr Nguyen was awarded the Imperial Dean's Fund (2020, 2019, 2018, 2017). Dr Nguyen is grateful to Prof. Malcolm Bolton and Prof. David Potts for their inspiration through their love of research.
When I first came to Imperial, I was fortunate to be on the same lift with Prof. John Burland, who has inspired many generations of engineers and researchers working on geomechanics.
A picture of PhD students and researchers in geotechnics (Autumn 2017)
After my PhD, I spent almost two years (2021-2023) working as a postdoc research associate in computational geomechanics at the University of Liverpool, focusing on developing numerical tools for large deformation analysis using the particle finite element method. Between 9.2023 and 9.2024, I worked as a Postdoc research associate at RWTH Aachen University in Professor Julia Kowalski's group, focusing on developing advanced numerical methods combined with surrogate models (Gaussian process regression and other machine learning techniques) for geotechnical engineering stability and flow-like geohazards. Currently, I have collaborated with Professor Ritsa Sousa at New York University, working on applications of machine learning surrogate models to geotechnical engineering analysis.