CIES warmly welcomes Dr Da (Daniel) Chen, an ARC DECRA fellow and a new Lecturer at Civil & Environmental Engineering, UNSW Sydney.

CIES warmly welcomes Dr Da (Daniel) Chen, an ARC DECRA fellow and a new Lecturer at Civil & Environmental Engineering, UNSW Sydney. 

Daniel also holds honorary appointments at the University of Melbourne and University of Queensland.

Daniel has a diverse research background across structural, mechanical, and material engineering. With a focus on the development of novel composite and structural forms, he is best known for his contributions to the advance of Functionally Graded Porous Structures, where he has published 6 Highly Cited Papers (WoS) and edited one book to be distributed soon by Elsevier.

His current research interests involve the mechanical examination, AI-assisted evaluation, and additive manufacturing of non-uniform porous composite structures. This kind of composite forms are gaining traction in various industrial sectors, and are featured with light weight, high specific stiffness, good energy absorption, and promising thermal, electrical, biological, acoustic characteristics. He is also interested in nanocomposites, structural optimisations, concrete foam printing, and structural health monitoring, etc.

Daniel aims to bridge the micro-macro divide in the mechanical analysis of composite materials/structures, and to push this field towards multi-functional application and commercialisation.

Daniel’s journey:

In June 2018, Daniel obtained his PhD in structural engineering from the School of Civil Engineering, University of Queensland, with the topic: Static and Dynamic Analysis of Functionally Graded Porous Structures, where he systemically examined the bending, buckling, vibration, and energy absorption of innovative composite structural forms made of foams, featured via graded porosities, and reinforced by graphene platelets. His PhD thesis was well recognised with a Dean's Award for Outstanding HDR Thesis.

After completing his PhD, he embarked on new research related to vibration absorbers, offshore fish cages, and wheel-rail interactions within the Blue Economy CRC, School of Civil Engineering, and School of Mechanical & Mining Engineering at the University of Queensland. These studies were centred on the theoretical, numerical, and experimental assessments of mass-spring-bar systems by considering vibration mitigation, hydrodynamics, and coupled vibrations. Meanwhile, he worked as the conference manager of the 25th Australasian Conference on the Mechanics of Structures and Materials (ACMSM25), 2018 Brisbane. He led a team of 12 to deliver this prestigious four-day international event with 240 attendees.

From May 2021 to May 2022, Daniel joined the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, under the support of “Future Talent” scheme, and was affiliated with Division Mechanics of Functional Materials (MFM) and Institute of Structural Mechanics and Design (ISMD). He continued his journey on porous structures and extended his study towards multi-scale modelling and deep learning.

From May 2022 to April 2023, he worked at the Department of Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne, under his DECRA project: Smart Optimisation of Functionally Graded Porous Structures. In the meantime, he was involved in the experimental investigation of advanced composite concrete columns and structural health monitoring of bridges and road networks. He also obtained a Learning and Teaching Initiatives Grant (UoM) to incorporate AR, VR, and deep learning into teaching.

Daniel started his role at the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UNSW Sydney as a Lecturer from May 2023.