Annual academics conference 2025

Elisabeth is a Vice President of the Institution, chair of the educational panel and an associate at Cundall. She is an advocator for cross sector collaboration to generate knowledge and practice action towards more sustainable and resilient outcomes. Chartered in 2008, she gained international working experience as a sustainability consultant and then after a career break started doctoral research into the measurement, interpretation and decision-making of sustainability and resilience in the urban built environment. Her paper "Interpreting sustainability and resilience in the built environment" received an Elsevier award for best paper in 2024.

Pallavi Achanta graduated from the University of Bath in 2022 and works as a design engineer at London Structures Lab. Over the past three years, she’s been involved in a variety of refurbishment and new-build projects across the UK. She's especially interested in using parametric design and digital tools to make her work more efficient and to help deliver practical, buildable solutions.

Yasemin D Aktaş is a UCL academic, working on resilient and sustainable built environments, both at a building and urban scales, and at a use-comfort-health nexus. She is the Chair of the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) under the UK’s Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), where she has led and advised on several post-disaster reconnaissance missions. She is the co-chair of UNESCO Chair in Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Engineering working on holistic risk resilience of infrastructures. Her research is focussed on traditional/vernacular buildings, post-disaster recovery, structural rehabilitation of existing buildings, moisture damage and indoor microbime, and sustainable built environment resilience under coalescing geophysical and climatic hazards. 

Dr Alireza Behnejad is Associate Professor and Associate Head of External Engagement at the University of Surrey, UK, where he leads the Spatial Structures Research Cluster. He has received several awards, including the IStructE Excellence in Structural Engineering Award (2023) and a National Teaching Fellowship (2024). Alireza is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Space Structures, chairs IASS WG20, and serves on the IStructE Education Committee. He has held visiting roles in Brazil and China.

Jon has been a Consulting Engineer since 1988, becoming Chartered in 1995 and a Fellow in 2019, during which time he has worked on a diverse range of building structures. Jon began lecturing part-time at The University of Sheffield in 2007, setting up their ‘Integrated Design Project’ and 'Reuse of Existing Structures' modules, recently leaving to focus on running Jon Carr Structural Design (set up in 2011). Jon is actively involved with IStructE, sitting on the Yorkshire, Education and Nominations committees, as well as Council.

Peter is a Chartered Structural Engineer, a Member of the British Computing Society, and Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey. As Customer Service Lead at Oasys, he brings nearly four decades of experience in structural engineering, finite element analysis modelling, and AI. A Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers, Peter is the author of the popular Computational Engineering and an award-winning public speaker. His work focuses on best digital practices for structural design.

Richard has been a Senior University Teacher in Structural Design at the University of Sheffield since 2014. Prior to this he spent three year as a Lecturer in Structural Engineering and Architecture at Nottingham Trent University and 17 years as a structural engineer at Arup in London, Bangkok and Sheffield.

Nathan Korda is the Director of Research at Mind Foundry. As well as playing a role in developing cutting edge AI technology for Mind Foundry's products and services, Nathan leads forward-looking R&D projects on diverse subjects including applications of Quantum Computing, methods for governance of AI models, and multi-agent debate systems. Over the last few years, Nathan has lead the company's efforts in developing new products for civil infrastructure asset management, with a focus on bridges.

Andrew specialises in structural biomechanics, and in particular the development of combined structural finite element and musculoskeletal approaches. His most recent work investigates the application of optimisation strategies in structural engineering and skeletal biomechanics. He has a particular interest in engineering education and completed his MEd ULT at Imperial in 2014, investigating Conceptions of Engineering Leadership and the Role of Universities in Developing Engineering Leaders as the subject of his dissertation. He developed the innovative Sketching and Modelling module at Imperial equipping students with the analogue and digital design alongside leading Structural Analysis and Structural Mechanics modules.

Paul is a Chartered Mathematician, Scientist and Engineer with over 30 years’ experience in the Construction Industry.  After 8 years in consultancy, Paul is now Professor of Computational Design in the Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering at the University of Bath, and Co-Director of The Foundry: Centre for Digital Manufacturing & Design research.  Paul is also a STEM Ambassador and MathsInspiration.com speaker, promoting the value of Maths and Engineering careers to large audiences of high-school students.

Andy Yates is a Co-founder of The Engineers Reuse Collective, a group of practising structural engineers focused on action and empowerment to increase reuse in the built environment. Andy was previously a Director at Webb Yates Engineers and has worked on a wide range of retrofit, rehabilitation, and refurbishment projects. He is passionate about minimising waste, maximising reuse and ensuring that as engineers, we capitalise on our skills to address the climate emergency.