Celebrating five new Associate Professors – five already brilliant careers

The School of Civil & Environmental Engineering is delighted to announce the promotion of five of our academic staff to the position of Associate Professor at UNSW. 

Congratulations to Asal Bidarmaghz, Elnaz Irannezhad, Divya Jayakumar Nair, Taehwan Kim and Kefeng Zhang.

As Head of School Professor Nasser Khalili said, ‘This wonderful achievement recognises their exceptional contribution to research, education, leadership, and engagement.’

All five have pursued and attained their goals of academic excellence in varying ways, but all are already leaders in their field and committed to further achievements in sustainability and social usefulness.

Associate Professor Asal Bidarmaghz’s research asks how the ground and buried infrastructure can become part of the energy and climate solution without compromising geotechnical safety.   She leads the UNSW Energy Geotechnics Research Group and Laboratory, one of the first of its kind in Australia.

Associate Professor Elnaz (Elli) Irannezhad focuses on freight transport optimisation, decarbonisation, automation and strategic transport modelling. Her career trajectory highlights a steadfast commitment to research translation and industry collaboration.

Associate Professor Taehwan Kim’s research focuses on developing low-carbon and alternative construction materials and improving their long-term performance and durability. 

Associate Professor Divya Jayakumar Nair’s research focuses on resilient, efficient and equitable transport and logistics systems, with an emphasis on solving practical problems that affect communities.

Associate Professor Kefeng Zhang leads the Water Green-Urban-Management (WaterGUM) group, with a focus on stormwater nature-based solutions, urban water quality, emerging contaminants, monitoring, modelling, real-time control and IoT-enabled asset management.

Read below for more details.

Associate Professor Asal Bidarmaghz
UNSW Centre for Infrastructure, Engineering and Safety (CIES)

Associate Professor Asal Bidarmaghz’s research asks how the ground and buried infrastructure can become part of the energy and climate solution without compromising geotechnical safety.

Asal studies how tunnels, piles, retaining walls and pavements exchange heat with the surrounding ground; how soil responds to repeated heating and cooling; and how heat accumulating beneath cities affects the structures already there. 

She founded and leads the UNSW Energy Geotechnics Research Group and Laboratory, one of the first of its kind in Australia. The group combines laboratory experiments, hermos-hydro-mechanical theory and modelling, and field implementation.

Research Focuses

•    Experimental energy geotechnics. Purpose-built rigs designed and commissioned at UNSW: •    Thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of energy geostructures. Critical-state-based frameworks for energy tunnels that capture temperature-induced settlement, pore-pressure change and lining stress under cyclic thermal loading, and coupled heat, water and vapour transport models for energy piles in unsaturated ground.
•    Geothermal pavements. Modelling and model-scale experiments on how heat exchange within pavements affects thermally induced creep, pavement life and surface temperatures.
•    Underground climate change. City-scale modelling of ground temperature and groundwater beneath dense cities, now extended with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.  

Field implementation. A directional shallow geothermal system has been installed at Peats Ridge, NSW, supplying about 30 kW of thermal energy to a greenhouse, with an accompanying web-based design tool.

Current and Recent Funding

•    ARC Discovery Project DP260102508 (2026–2028, $750,000), A Mechanistic Approach to Assess Integrity of Soil–Geothermal Structures. Chief Investigator.   

 Australia’s Economic Accelerator Seed AE230100068 (2024–2025, $215,000), Transforming Urban Energy Supply with Innovative and Cost-Effective Shallow Geothermal Systems. Project lead.
•    Australia–Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme (2025–2026), Archetypes for Resilient Underground Structures under Thermal Changes (ArcRUS), with KIT. Lead Chief Investigator.
Research Group and Supervision

Teaching

•    CVEN4202 Advanced Topics in Geotechnical Engineering, which introduces shallow geothermal systems, hermos-hydro-mechanical analysis and advanced soil modelling.
•    CVEN4204 Ground Improvement Techniques.

Service Roles and Professional Organisations/Affiliations

•    Chair, UNSW Engineering Faculty Staff Gender Equity and Diversity Working Group
•    International Scientific Committee, ICSMGE 2026 (sole Australia/New Zealand nominee)
•    ISSMGE TC308 (Energy Geotechnics), nominated member
•    Australian Geomechanics Society: Sydney Technical Committee Engagement Coordinator; NSW representative, Women in AGS
•    Associate, UNSW Australian Human Rights Institute

Editorial Boards

•    Editorial Board, Environmental Geotechnics
•    Guest Editor, Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology
•    Special Issue Editor, Discover Applied Sciences

Associate Professor Elnaz (Elli) Irannezhad
Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation

Associate Professor Elnaz (Elli) Irannezhad focuses on freight transport optimisation, decarbonisation, automation and strategic transport modelling. Her career trajectory highlights a steadfast commitment to research translation and industry collaboration.

Elli began her professional career in 2005 as a Civil and Road Design Engineer and has accumulated two decades of industry experience across consulting and government sectors, complemented by an extensive academic and research career.

Her research contributes to the advancement of science in cross-disciplinary fields, including agent-based freight transport modelling, Logistics 4.0, digital supply chain, shared economy mobility and logistics solutions, blockchain technology, automated driving, and heavy vehicle smart monitoring.

In 2025 Elli was awarded an ARC Early Career Industry Fellowship. The Fellowships aim to facilitate the adoption, translation, and commercialisation of Australian research, addressing industry-identified challenges, and turning bold ideas into practical solutions. Elli’s project will enhance the efficiency and reliability of container operations at Australia’s ports by developing an adaptive, data-driven digital twin model for Port Botany in Sydney.

Research Focus & Supervision Areas

·      Agent-based and/or system-dynamic freight transport modelling

·      Activity-based strategic freight transport modelling

·      Digital twins development, AI predictive algorithms, optimisation and decision support systems for freight transport and port applications

·      Route and infrastructure optimisation for electrified heavy vehicles and freight rail

·      Automation of trucks and container terminal operation, interaction with infrastructure

Teaching

Postgraduate Course CVEN9421, Transport Logistics Engineering
Undergraduate courses:  ENGG1400, Infrastructure Systems Engineering (Focus: Operation Research and Systems Modelling)
CVEN3402, Transport Engineering and Environmental Sustainability ( Focus: Transport Emission Modelling)

Engagement

Elli is an Associate of the UNSW's Australian Human Rights Institute and engages in human rights activities and projects.  She has served as the Equity, Diversion, and Inclusion (EDI) Officer at the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, and co-leads the UNSW JEINA Program, tailored for supporting, mentoring and networking UNSW's female students with forced migration and refugee background.   

She is a Board Member, Centre For Connected & Automated Transport (CCAT),  on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Transportation Planning and Technology, and on the organising committee of the Bridging Transport Researchers (BTR) Conference, an online free peer-reviewed conference for connecting transport researchers around the globe which aims to remove the burden of travel and obtaining visa, the cost of registration, & greenhouse gases associated with transport & accommodations.

Associate Professor Taehwan Kim
UNSW Centre for Infrastructure, Engineering and Safety (CIES)

Associate Professor Taehwan Kim’s research focuses on developing low-carbon and alternative construction materials and improving their long-term performance and durability.

Taehwan believes that the development of sustainable construction materials requires a shift from predominantly empirical testing towards a more comprehensive and fundamental understanding of their behaviour. As these materials become increasingly complex, empirical approaches often require extensive testing, resulting in significant time and cost.

His research therefore combines physico-chemical characterisation, advanced testing methods and engineering applications to establish more predictive approaches for the design and assessment of low-carbon concrete.

Since 2021, Taehwan has led a CIES research group focused on low-carbon construction materials, including alternative cementitious materials, cement chemistry, durability and concrete repair.  His work aims to connect fundamental scientific understanding with practical solutions for industry and infrastructure.

This research has resulted in extensive national and international collaborations and has attracted approximately AUD 5 million in competitive research funding administered through UNSW, as well as approximately AUD 16 million in international research funding from the National Research Foundation of Korea.

As well as teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the School such as CVEN3304 Concrete Structures and CVEN9824 Advanced Materials Technology, Taehwan has also supervised more than seven PhD students to completion, with graduates progressing to academic and research positions at universities and institutions in Australia and internationally.

Leadership and additional achievements

·       Elected President of the Korea Academy of Scientists and Engineers in Australasia (KASEA) for 2026–2027.

·       Elected Pacific Regional Convenor of RILEM for 2025–2027.

·       Chair of the 14th Asia-Pacific-Korea Conference (AKC2026), to be held in Sydney.

·       Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering and the KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering.

Associate Professor Divya Jayakumar Nair
Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI)

Associate Professor Divya Nair’s research focuses on resilient, efficient and equitable transport and logistics systems, with an emphasis on solving practical problems that affect communities.

Divya’s research investigates how communities can prepare for natural disasters, how transport networks can support safe evacuation, and how emergency resources can be allocated when infrastructure and services are disrupted. She combines optimisation, simulation, behavioural analysis and economic modelling to inform planning and response decisions.

She is involved in ARC Linkage projects examining disaster-resilient regional planning and the potential of quantum computing for evacuation management, working with government and industry partners including NSW State Emergency Service. The regional planning work considers disaster exposure, evacuation behaviour, transport capacity and wider economic effects, with the aim of helping decision makers plan safer and more affordable communities. The quantum computing project investigates whether emerging computational approaches can improve prediction and optimisation for emergency response.

Equity, ethics and fairness are central to this work. Rather than assessing transport plans only by overall travel time or cost, Divya examines how benefits and burdens are distributed, particularly for people and communities with fewer resources or greater vulnerability. Her research seeks to make resilience investments and evacuation strategies not only effective, but socially defensible.

Divya’s interests also extend to emerging mobility, including air taxis and urban air mobility, exploring planning, simulation and human factors questions as these technologies develop.

Education Leadership and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

As an Education-Focused academic, Divya seeks to connect engineering theory with professional practice and help students develop the judgement, adaptability and collaborative skills needed to address real societal challenges. She has led and contributed to transport curriculum and program review, using international benchmarking, industry input and evidence about emerging skills to guide renewal. Her teaching incorporates industry software, authentic projects, sustainability, intelligent transport systems and responsible use of AI.

International Engagement and Leadership

As UNSW Engineering’s Associate Dean - International, Divya leads strategic international engagement initiatives across UNSW Engineering, with a particular focus on strengthening partnerships with India. Her approach extends beyond student recruitment to building sustained institutional relationships that connect education, collaborative research, higher degree research training and academic exchange.

Associate Professor Kefeng Zhang
UNSW Water Research Centre (WRC)

Associate Professor Kefeng Zhang leads the Water Green-Urban-Management (WaterGUM) group within the WRC, with a focus on stormwater nature-based solutions, urban water quality, emerging contaminants, monitoring, modelling, real-time control and IoT-enabled asset management.

A/Prof Kefeng Zhang’s internationally recognised research has advanced the science and practice of nature-based solutions (NBS) for urban stormwater management, addressing critical challenges arising from climate change and rapid urbanisation, including water pollution, flooding, and water scarcity.  His work spans engineering, environmental science, and urban design, contributing to the development of soil–water–plant systems as functional urban infrastructure.

Kefeng is ranked 6th globally in publications on the subject of “stormwater” since 2021 (Scopus, 2026), and in the last five years, has published 50 journal papers with 98% in Q1 journals and >33% in top 1% journals.

His WaterGUM group was initially co-established in 2018 with Prof. Ana Deletic (then Pro Vice-Chancellor Research).  Since 2021, Kefeng has independently led the group’s research direction, growth, and project development.  The group is supported by a purpose-built glasshouse laboratory on the Kensington Campus and field-scale stormwater systems at the Water Research Laboratory, Manly Vale Campus.

He is the recipient of ARC funding totalling $5.83M as Chief Investigator, including an ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for IoT for Water (Theme Lead and Sub-project Lead) and an ARC Discovery Project (UNSW lead), as well as securing $524k in industry-funded research.

As an educator, he is responsible for two postgraduate courses in water and environmental engineering, (CVEN9625 Fundamentals of Water Engineering and CVEN9611 Urban Hydrology and Stormwater Management). In particular he undertook major redevelopment of CVEN9611, embedding design-led learning, real-world assessments, industry knowledge, and field-based education into a modern WSUD-focused curriculum.

Leadership and additional achievements

·      Internationally recognised expertise in stormwater and emerging contaminants, including co-founder and co-chair of the International Working Group on Emerging Contaminants.

·      Associate Editor of Water Research (top 1% journal) and Managing Editor of Blue-Green Systems

·      Sector leadership in stormwater practice and policy through national governance review of the Stormwater Quality Improvement Device Evaluation Protocol (SQIDEP) and NSW SQID Taskforce leadership.