Weiwei Zhan

Weiwei Zhan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering at the University of Central Florida (UCF), College of Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Clemson University (2020) and a B.S. in Geological Engineering from Chengdu University of Technology, China (2014). He is the director of the Geosystems Engineering and Intelligence Laboratory (GEI), which focuses on intelligent and systematic solutions for geohazard mitigation and infrastructure resilience.

• Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, Clemson University, USA, 2020
• M.Sc. in Civil Engineering (non-thesis), Clemson University, USA, 2019
• B.Sc. in Geological Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology, China, 2014

Dr. Zhan's research lies at the intersection of geotechnical earthquake engineering, geohazards, and data science. His primary interests include landslide hazard assessment and mitigation, soil liquefaction triggering and consequence assessment, earthquake site response and ground motion modeling, explainable machine learning and deep learning, geospatial modeling and uncertainty quantification, and multi-hazard infrastructure resilient design. His lab leverages interdisciplinary techniques from geotechnics, geology, geophysics, geodesy, and data science to advance smart cities and resilient infrastructure initiatives.

His recent publications reflect a strong trend in applying machine learning and signal processing to geohazard detection. Key themes include accelerogram-based liquefaction detection, remote-sensing-based landslide early warning using satellite and UAV imagery, probabilistic seismic analysis of earthen levees, and geospatial modeling of seismic hazards. His work emphasizes uncertainty quantification, real-time hazard assessment, and the development of open-source tools like the OpenLIQ geospatial liquefaction database.

Scientific awards and honors include:

• National Scholarship, Ministry of Education of China (2016)
• Travel Grants from NHERI SimCenter and EERI (2022)
• Top 10 Bachelor’s Thesis at Chengdu University of Technology (2014)
• Honorable Mentions in International and National Mathematical Modeling Competitions

Dr. Zhan has served as a reviewer for numerous journals and as a convener for major conferences such as SSA and IAEG. His lab, GEI, conducts research on full-cycle landslide hazard management, near-real-time liquefaction detection, earthquake ground-motion modeling, and geospatial analytics. He has secured research support through travel grants and symposium funding, and his ongoing work includes developing globally applicable models for lateral spreading and improving ground-motion models using geospatial proxies.