Adnan SufianView profile
Senior Lecturer
Academic Profile Dr. Adnan Sufian is a Senior Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering at the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney). He holds a PhD (2017) and BE (2012) in Civil Engineering from UNSW, with research visits to MIT. Prior academic roles include positions at Imperial College London and the University of Queensland. He also has industry experience at SMEC Australia on major infrastructure projects. Research Focus Dr. Sufian specializes in multi-scale mechanics of granular materials, investigating fluid-particle interactions through computational (DEM, CFD-DEM), experimental, and theoretical approaches. His work addresses geotechnical challenges including erosion, landslides, and contaminant transport, with applications in infrastructure, environmental management, and industrial processes. Current projects focus on internal erosion in dams, particle migration, and climate-resilient infrastructure. Publications & Trends Recent articles (2019-2025) demonstrate strong emphasis on granular material behavior under hydraulic/mechanical stresses, featuring advanced computational techniques like pore-network modeling and coupled CFD-DEM. Key themes include internal erosion mechanisms, filtration dynamics, soil-fluid interactions, and microstructural analysis. Publications consistently appear in top geotechnical journals including Geotechnique and Computers and Geotechnics . Awards & Recognition Best Paper Award (Early Career Researcher), Australasian Conference on Computational Mechanics (2019) Best Paper Award (Postgraduate Student), Australasian Conference on Computational Mechanics (2015) UNSW Geotechnical Discipline Prize (2011) Grants & Projects ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2024-2026): Predicting internal erosion in dams using real-time coupled experiments ARC Early Career Industry Fellowship (2023-2026): Safeguarding dams/levees from internal erosion NSERC Alliance Award (2023-2024): Internal erosion in hydroelectric dams (with Zheng) Research Leadership Supervises HDR projects on transport processes in granular media, particle shape effects on erosion, and flood-impacted infrastructure. Collaborates with physicists and mathematicians to study emergent granular phenomena. Co-organizes the European Working Group on Internal Erosion Symposium and holds memberships in the Australian Geomechanics Society and Engineers Australia.









