Keynote Speakers
5th International conference on Structural Engineering and Concrete Technology (ICSECT’20)
The keynote speakers for the 5th International conference on Structural Engineering and Concrete Technology (ICSECT'20) will be announced shortly! Thank you for your patience.
Dr. Nawawi Chouw
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Nawawi Chouw is an Associate Professor and was Director of the University of Auckland Centre for Earthquake Engineering Research (2011-2017). Prior to joining the University of Auckland he worked at universities in Germany, Japan and Australia. He gained his diploma in Civil Engineering from the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. After working in a group of consulting engineers in Germany he returned to the Research Centre on Structural Dynamics at the Ruhr University Bochum, and he was awarded his doctorate. He has been awarded twice the Gledden Fellowship of the University of Western Australia, Fritz-Peter-Mueller Prize of the Technical University of Karlsruhe, Germany, the Best Research Award of Chugoku Denryoku Research Foundation, Japan, and received twice recognition for excellence in research supervision from Chinese Scholarship Council. He was invited by China Ministry of Education, NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Qatar Science Foundation, SA National Research Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service and by other European Research Institutions to assess applications. He was also invited to teach at several universities in Europe, China and Japan. He was Guest Editor of a number of journals, e.g. Protective Structures, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering. He is editor of the international journal of Materials, Shock and Vibration and an associate editor of Frontiers in Build Environment – Earthquake Engineering and is an editorial board member of a number of international journals. He was a visiting and guest professor at a number of universities in China, Germany, Canada, Australia, Serbia, Macedonia and Japan.
Topic of Keynote: Behaviour of bridges under spatially non-uniform earthquake motion 
Keynote Abstract
Dr. Piervincenzo Rizzo
University of Pittsburgh, USA
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Piervincenzo Rizzo received his Laurea (M.S. equivalent) in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Palermo, Italy in 1998. After serving in the Italian Army Corps of Engineering, Dr. Rizzo moved to the U.S.A. where he received a Master (2002) and a Ph.D. (2004) in Structural Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. In September 2006 he became assistant professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2012, and to Full Professor in 2018.
Dr. Rizzo’s research interests are in the area of nondestructive evaluation and structural health monitoring using methods such as ultrasound, acoustic emission, solitary waves, infrared thermography, and electromechanical impedance. His research has been supported by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Railroad Administration, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT).
From the ASNT, Dr. Rizzo received the 2002 Fellowship Award, the 2007 Faculty Grant Award, the 2009, 2015, and 2019 Fellowship Research Award, and the Outstanding Paper Award in 2013 and 2017. Dr. Rizzo is the first person worldwide who has received both the Achenbach Medal (in 2012) and the SHM Person of the Year Award (in 2015). The Medal recognizes one young individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of the field of SHM. The Award recognizes accomplishments within the past year or the past few years. Both honors are selected by the editors and associate editors of Structural Health Monitoring: An International Journal, the top academic journal on the subject. He is also the recipient of the 2016 University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Junior Scholar Award. The award includes faculty across the whole University, within 12 years from their Ph.D., who have demonstrated great potential and have achieved international standing. Recetly, Dr. Rizzo was awarded with the 2020 A.J. Durelli Award, that recognizes younger members of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) for contributions made early in their career.
Dr. Rizzo published 101 referred papers, 8 book chapters, over 160 conference proceedings and reports, and 2 patents. For more information, visit Dr. Rizzo’s home page: http://www.pitt.edu/~pir3/
Topic of Keynote: Nonlinear solitary waves for the nondestructive evaluation of concrete Keynote Abstract
Dr. Xue Zhang
Dalian University of Technology, China
Invited Speaker
Dr. Zhang held his B.Sc. and Ph.D. from Tianjin University and Dalian University of Technology (DUT) in 2007 and 2015, respectively. Since that he has been on the faculty of School of Civil Engineering at DUT. Meanwhile, he has a postdoctoral research experience majoring in Engineering Mechanics from 2015 to 2018. Dr. Zhang’s research interests are primarily in the area of structural engineering, such as retrofitting of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures and structural nonlinear analysis technologies/models. In the last five years, he had granted over ten research projects with a total budget exceeding 2 million CNY (290,000 USD). Based on the research findings, Dr. Zhang has published more than 30 journal and conference papers, most of which were published on ASCE-Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE-Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Materials and Structures, etc. Dr. Zhang is now serving as a member of the Scientific Committee for the 5th International Conference on Structural Engineering and Concrete Technology (ICSECT’20).
Topic of Keynote: Modelling bond-slip for reinforced concrete member considering transverse stress: theory, test and numerical implementation Invited Speaker Abstract