The inaugural lecture of Prof. Arash Lavasan entitled “Underground Space: where the future meets the past” will take place on 23 October 2024 on Belval Campus.
Presentation
Underground space holds significant potential as a crucial solution for a sustainable future, addressing challenges related to population growth, energy crises, climate change, and environmental conservation. Traditionally, our ancestors used subsurface areas to overcome similar challenges, and current evaluations suggest that this approach remains promising for the future developments. However, significant complexities arise in exploiting underground spaces due to limited knowledge on the behaviour and variability of subsurface strata, and the complex interactions that occur during construction activities. Following an introduction to this vast topic, Prof. Lavasan will outline research efforts aimed at enhancing our understanding and design of efficient underground structures. He will conclude by highlighting the research directions established by the COMPSOIL research group to advance this vision.
Biography
Prof. Arash Lavasan leads the Computational Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (COMPSOIL) group at the University of Luxembourg, focusing on theoretical and computational geomechanics, including constitutive modeling and thermo-hydro-mechanical analysis of soils for underground energy resources and biological soil improvement techniques. Previously, he spent about twelve years in Germany as a senior researcher and expert geotechnical engineer. He led projects at the Collaborative Research Center 837 “Interaction Modeling in Mechanized Tunneling” and was a PI at the Research Department “Subsurface Modeling & Engineering” at Ruhr University Bochum.
Programme
- 17:30 Welcome speech – Pascal Bouvry, Dean, Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine
- 17:35 Lecture “Underground Space: where the future meets the past” – Arash Lavasan, Associate professor in Computational Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering
- 18:15 Q&A
- 18:30 Cocktail