Liang Cui (right), a PhD Student at the Department of Civil Engineering, has won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Civil, Structural and Transportation Engineering. The paper, entitled “Multiphysics Modeling of the Behaviour of Cemented Tailings Backfill Materials”, was completed under the supervision of Professor Mamadou Fall (left).
The international conference was held May 4-5, 2015 at the University of Ottawa, and provided a world-class forum for scholars and engineers from around the world to present and discuss their latest research findings in this rapidly-changing field. Experts from Canada, the United States, Asia, and Europe participated. UOttawa’s Professor Mamadou Fall delivered a keynote lecture at this conference, discussing the importance of gas generation and migration in the safety assessment of deep geological repositories for radioactive wastes.
This award is an important milestone for Liang, who is in the third year of his doctoral studies. The conference scientific committee agreed that this paper is highly original and has made a novel contribution to the understanding of the behaviour and the design of geotechnical structures made of cementitious material.
Liang commented: “I am pleased and very proud to receive this award. This was an important international conference and I was delighted to meet and interact with top scholars and practitioners in my field. I am extremely grateful to my PhD supervisor, Professor Mamadou Fall, for his valuable guidance and unlimited support. I am also thankful to the Faculty of Engineering and the University of Ottawa for providing me with excellent support and creating a motivating research environment”.
Professor Mamadou Fall praised his student: “Liang is a brilliant and meticulous PhD student. He has developed novel and sophisticated computer models that enable the design of cemented backfill structures in more cost-effective and environmentally-friendly ways. Liang’s success is a result of his persistence and extremely hard work. As a supervisor, I feel very proud of his research achievements.”
Liang previously graduated from one of China’s national key universities, China University of Mining and Technology (CUMTB); he was one of the top students in Geological Engineering at the undergraduate level, and Mining Engineering at the graduate level.
During his time at CUMTB, he won several prestigious scholarships and awards, including:
- The Annual Scholarship for Excellent Student
- The School First-class and Second-class Scholarships
- The Scholarship for Postgraduate Research
- The Award to the Excellent Graduate
- The Coal Industry Award for Science
- The Excellent Master Thesis Award in Mining Engineering
- The Excellent Bachelor Thesis Award
Professor Sai Vanapalli, Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering, also applauded Liang’s success: “Liang Cui is sincere, hardworking, and a highly dedicated research student. I always see him in the lab working with a great passion and energy. I am very pleased to learn that he has received this prestigious award.”