Finalists announced for the Pai Lin Li Grant 2025

Lena Zhu 

Lena Zhu is a Chartered Engineer (CEng MIEI, AIStructE) in Ireland and the UK, currently pursuing a Master's in Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment at the University of Cambridge. She brings almost a decade of international experience across Canada, China, Hong Kong, the Middle East, Ireland, and the UK. She has worked on a range of structural projects including high-rise buildings, data centres, airport expansions, modular developments, and complex refurbishments.

Her diverse industry background has shaped a growing interest in sustainable construction materials, with a particular focus on engineered bamboo. She is committed to advancing low carbon and regenerative building practices, drawing on both Eastern and Western methodologies. Her current research focuses on integrating bamboo into European structural frameworks, aiming to bridge material innovation, policy development, and design leadership in the global built environment.

Luciana Livia 

Luciana Livia is a graduate civil engineer currently working at Structures Lab in London as a Graduate Structural Engineer. She earned First Class Honours in Civil Engineering from London South Bank University, where she built a strong foundation in structural design, environmental sustainability, and infrastructure resilience.

At Structures Lab, Luciana has contributed to a diverse range of projects across sectors, including residential refurbishments, sustainable new builds, and special structures such as staircases, balustrades, and sculptural installations. Her responsibilities include scheme design, structural calculations, drawing production, detailing, and providing technical support during construction. Since starting her professional journey, she has deepened her understanding of steel, concrete, timber, and masonry structures, as well as foundation and geotechnical systems, learning how to approach real-world challenges with practical, tailored solutions.
Luciana’s interest in coastal engineering and climate resilience was sparked during her undergraduate dissertation, which explored sediment transport and sustainable coastal development in Salaverry, Peru. Through this research, she developed a strong passion for how structural engineering can support vulnerable coastal communities adapting to environmental change.

Her proposal for the Pai Lin Li Travel Grant builds directly on this interest. In South Korea, she plans to investigate hybrid flood-resilient infrastructure,  examining how structural systems are being integrated with nature-based solutions and smart technologies in response to escalating climate risks. She hopes to gain a deeper understanding of how these systems are designed, tested, and implemented across different environmental and policy contexts.

Beyond her academic and professional experience, Luciana has been actively involved in the engineering community. She served as a student ambassador for the Institution of Civil Engineers, co-founded the Women in STEM society at her university, and took part in group design competitions, research trips, and technical site visits.

Luciana is passionate about the role of engineers in shaping a more adaptive, inclusive, and environmentally responsible future. She sees the Pai Lin Li Travel Grant as a unique opportunity for both personal and professional growth, a chance to connect with leading researchers, expand her international perspective, and bring back valuable insights to share with her peers and the wider structural engineering community.

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Hora Behnejad

Hora is a recent graduate of University College London (UCL), where she earned a first-class honours Integrated Master’s degree (MEng) in Civil Engineering. In recognition of her academic excellence, she was awarded the Vernon-Harcourt Prize for outstanding merit in the final year of her programme (2024-25). She spent her penultimate year abroad at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), ranked third in the U.S. for civil engineering, where she achieved a 3.95/4 GPA and made the Dean’s List both semesters, placing her in the top 20% of the College of Engineering. While at UIUC, she also completed the Illinois Leadership Certificate, receiving the Outstanding ePortfolio Award.

As an Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) QUEST Scholar, sponsored by WSP, Hora completed three summer internships with the global engineering firm, two in England and one in Chicago, gaining hands-on experience across diverse infrastructure sectors. She will be joining WSP UK’s Aviation Team as a graduate engineer in September 2025. She is also a recipient of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s prestigious Engineering Leaders Scholarship, which supports her ambition to become a leader in sustainable and bio-based construction.

Hora’s interest in bamboo as a sustainable construction material began in 2021 during a two-week workshop in Mexico focused on bamboo and membrane structures. This formative experience sparked a lasting commitment to low-carbon materials and laid the foundation for continued exploration. Since then, she has expanded her knowledge through research and public engagement - including a published article for the ICE.

Most recently, Hora served as administrator for the Amazonia Workshop 2025, a British Council-supported international event held in Belém, Brazil, and co-organised by the Spatial Structures Research cluster at the University of Surrey and the Federal Rural University of Amazonia (UFRA). The workshop focused on the sustainable development of bio-based construction materials and brought together over 80 participants from 13 countries across five continents, representing more than 15 institutions. In her role, Hora supported participant coordination, workshop logistics and managed communications and social media. This highly international event provided a valuable platform for participants to deepen their technical knowledge and explore commercial opportunities related to bamboo and palm species available in the Amazon region, suitable for construction.

At UCL, Hora also served as President of the UCL Women’s Engineering Society (UCLWES) in 2022-23, advocating for diversity in STEM. In 2024-25, she was the Lead Departmental Representative for the Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE) Department, where she worked to enhance the academic experience and was shortlisted for UCL’s Rep of the Year Award. She is an active STEM Ambassador and while studying abroad, she volunteered at a bilingual primary school, helping students with mathematics.

Fluent in Persian, English, and Spanish, Hora enjoys travelling, cultural exchange, and interdisciplinary collaboration. She hopes to drive innovation in engineering by promoting bio-based materials and shaping a more sustainable built environment.

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Atif Rasheed Baloch

Atif is a PhD researcher in Structural Engineering at Imperial College London, where his work focuses on sustainable and low-cost seismic isolation systems. With a background in civil and structural engineering and a strong interest in low-carbon design, his academic journey bridges rigorous theoretical modelling with practical, real-world applications. His doctoral research, carried out at the Emerging Structural Technologies Group, investigates the performance of traditional construction materials, particularly shicras, an ancient Peruvian foundation technique involving stones wrapped in fibers, as innovative seismic isolation systems for low-income regions. His work combines analytical methods with advanced numerical modeling using a hybrid Discrete Element–Finite Element framework.

Atif’s broader research interests lie at the intersection of digital construction, computational design, and sustainable structural optimization. Inspired by the UK’s 2050 net-zero emissions target, he is exploring how topology optimization and 3D concrete printing (3DP) can be harnessed to transform the material and environmental performance of buildings and infrastructure.

Under the Pai Lin Li Research Grant 2025, his proposed study tour will explore cutting-edge advancements in these areas through visits to leading academic and industrial centers in the USA and Canada. The goal is to bridge the gap between research and implementation by examining how computational workflows, robotic construction, and novel materials converge to deliver low-carbon, high-performance infrastructure. Through this international collaboration, he aims to collect best practices, scalable strategies, and regulatory insights that can inform the UK’s evolving approach to sustainable construction.

Atif has previously been awarded the SECED Research Fund for his contributions to seismic resilience and was selected for the Global Fellows Program at Imperial College London, funded by the UK Government’s Turing Scheme, to undertake a visiting research fellowship at the University of Toronto. He also contributed to the most recent update of Pakistan’s seismic building code, through the development of probabilistic seismic hazard maps, including Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) and Spectral Acceleration (SA) datasets.
Passionate about democratizing access to safe and sustainable construction, Atif envisions a career in structural engineering that brings together research, creativity, and policy to address the pressing challenges of climate change, social vulnerability, and urban resilience.

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