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Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Canterbury is rated in the top 1 per cent of civil

16/10/2026

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Researchers from our department are contributing to a new four-year University Research Programme titled, "Right-Sized Retrofit: Cost-Effective Seismic Strengthening for Vulnerable Concrete Buildings," funded by the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake, exploring more cost-effective approaches to strengthening vulnerable concrete buildings.

Professor Santiago Pujol and Dr Ke Jiang from UC Civil and Environmental Engineering are associate investigators on the programme, alongside Dr Alex Shegay and Dr Lucas Hogan from the University of Auckland, with UC postdoctoral researcher Dr Cesar Pajaro also contributing.

The research builds on a growing body of work focused on improving the seismic resilience of existing reinforced-concrete buildings in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Professor Pujol has previously led NHC-funded research into developing practical retrofit guidance for existing reinforced-concrete multi-storey buildings, including work with researchers such as Dr Hogan and Dr Shegay. The research highlighted the importance of identifying and prioritising critical vulnerabilities and ensuring that retrofit solutions address the actual needs of a building.

More recently, members of the new research team have been involved in research following the 2024 Hualien earthquake in Taiwan, examining the performance and cost of different retrofit approaches in reinforced-concrete buildings. Dr Jiang has also contributed to research examining lessons from the earthquake for the functional recovery of buildings and community resilience.

The new programme will build on this wider research to investigate how seismic strengthening can be appropriately targeted to vulnerable concrete buildings, with a focus on solutions that are both effective and practical.

For UC Civil and Environmental Engineering, the programme provides another opportunity to contribute to research aimed at improving the resilience and long-term performance of Aotearoa New Zealand's built environment.

15/10/2026

Can Year two UC Civil Engineering students build a timber bridge strong enough to hold two people - but designed to break when a third steps on? 🌉

Join us for testing day as teams compete for awards recognising bicultural design, innovation, aesthetics, sustainability and structural efficiency, plus the most catastrophic failure!

📅 Friday 16 October
🕙 10am–12pm and 1–3pm
📍 C Block Lawn, UC (in case of wet weather, come on over to the Undercroft)

Come along and watch creativity, calculations and timber collide!

14/10/2026

A group of 13 engineering students from the University of Washington Tacoma visited UC in August as part of a Study Abroad programme exploring engineering, sustainability and the built environment through a Māori cultural lens.

During their two-day visit, the students toured UC’s Civil and Mechanical Engineering facilities, including the Geomechanical lab where they saw a demonstration of liquefaction, Fluids lab, Structural Engineering and Fire labs and looked at the city's resilient buildings and Red Zone areas in the C*D.

Dr Chris de la Torre gave a presentation about earthquake damage and observed ground motions in Christchurch, while Associate Professor Chris McGann shared insights into earthquake-resilient structural design and retrofit strategies.

The visit also provided an opportunity to strengthen connections between UC and the University of Washington Tacoma, with Assistant Professor Lorne Arnold and Professor Mark Pagano meeting with Vice-Chancellor Professor Cheryl de la Rey and Professor Pedro Lee during their visit.

This programme gave the students a chance to see first-hand how engineering, disaster recovery and resilience come together in a city shaped by major earthquakes.

12/10/2026

📢We're pleased to welcome Chenxi Hu, who arrived last week from Beijing and will be spending the next year with the University of Canterbury as a joint PhD student in our department. Chenxi joins a vibrant community of visiting PhD students and will be supervised by Associate Professor Mehdi Ekbatani while here.

Chenxi's research focuses on autonomous vehicles, with a particular interest in microscopic traffic flow simulation and optimisation. His work explores how artificial intelligence techniques, including deep reinforcement learning, deep learning, and large language models, can be combined with optimisation methods to address lateral and longitudinal control challenges for both individual and multiple autonomous vehicles operating in complex traffic environments.

Outside of his research, Chenxi enjoys playing badminton, cycling, travelling, and a wide range of video games.

"I'm excited to join the department and look forward to learning from everyone and growing together!"

09/10/2026

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Professor Gregory MacRae has been recognised for his contribution to seismic steel structure research at the 12th International Conference on the Behaviour of Steel Structures in Seismic Areas at the Structural Engineering and Steel Structures in Seismic Areas Conference (STESSA 2026), held at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in New Delhi from 7–9 September.

Greg was a co-author, alongside José Christian Chanchí Golondrino, of the paper “Prying Forces Model for the Sliding Hinge Joint (SHJ) Connection”, which received a Best Paper Award under the conference’s Seismic Design, Analysis & Code Development theme.

The paper focuses on prying forces in Sliding Hinge Joint (SHJ) connections, contributing to a better understanding of how these connections behave under seismic loading and supporting the ongoing development of seismic design approaches for steel structures.

Greg also took part in the conference as a keynote speaker, presenting “Some Considerations for Seismic Design of Steel Structures.” His keynote explored an important aspect of earthquake engineering: what happens to steel structures after the earthquake stops can be just as critical as what happens during the earthquake. He shared insights into seismic performance, structural stability, residual displacements and fracture behaviour in steel systems, highlighting the need to consider how structures perform both during an earthquake and in its aftermath.

STESSA 2026 brought together researchers, academics and industry professionals from around the world to share research and developments in the behaviour and design of steel structures in seismic areas.

The Best Paper Award and keynote invitation recognise Greg’s ongoing contribution to international research and practice in seismic design and the behaviour of steel structures.

07/10/2026

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For Juan Jose Sepulveda Garcia, research starts with curiosity.
“I’ve always wanted to understand why things happen and how the world around us works," he says.

Originally from Colombia, Juan studied Civil Engineering before completing a Master’s in Engineering, specialising in Geotechnics, at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Juan’s research aims to develop better earthquake simulation models that are more suitable for the conditions of a seismic country like New Zealand.
Earthquake simulations require assumptions about many different things: how an earthquake ruptures, how seismic waves travel through the Earth, and how local conditions such as soil and topography modify the shaking experienced at the surface. Juan’s research is carried out under the main supervision of Professor Brendon Bradley and the co-supervision of Dr Robin Lee. It focuses on better understanding and calibrating these inputs, as well as their uncertainties, so that simulations provide a more realistic representation of earthquake shaking in New Zealand.

His work looks at three main components: the source, which is the earthquake rupture itself; the path, which describes how seismic waves travel from the earthquake; and the site, which describes how local conditions can amplify or reduce the shaking experienced at a particular location.

“By making these three components more representative of New Zealand’s particular conditions, we can develop more realistic earthquake simulations and better understand the uncertainties associated with them,” he says.

Ultimately, he hopes this will contribute to a better understanding of how New Zealand may experience future earthquakes. One of the things he has found particularly interesting is just how different New Zealand can be in terms of soil conditions and topography, and how much these local conditions can change the shaking experienced during the same earthquake.

There is a phrase often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Once you stop learning, you start dying.” Whether or not Einstein actually said it, Juan says it captures something he really believes in.

06/10/2026

📢 We're very pleased to announce the arrival of our Erskine Fellow Dr Meera Raghunandan, an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), India and is hosted by Dr Reagan Chandramohan.

Meera’s research focuses on seismic performance and risk assessment of structures, with emphasis on nonlinear analysis, damage, and life-cycle cost. Her research interests include Probabilistic seismic risk and resilience assessment of structures and communities, Earthquake-resistant design and retrofit of structures, Performance assessment of structures under earthquakes, Nonlinear modelling and dynamic analysis of structure and Life-cycle cost and sustainability assessment. A broader objective of her research is to connect structural performance with the consequences of natural hazards, including damage, economic loss, functionality, and recovery. While much of her work has focused on earthquakes, she has recently begun exploring how these approaches can be applied to other natural hazards and their implications for the resilience and sustainability of buildings and communities.

At IIT Bombay, Meera teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in structural and earthquake engineering, spanning fundamental mechanics, structural analysis and design, and seismic performance. Her teaching emphasises connecting theoretical concepts with analytical, numerical, and practical engineering applications.

During her Erskine Fellowship, Meera will contribute to teaching into ENEQ621: Seismic Performance Assessment of Structures at UC and engage with colleagues and students in earthquake engineering, structural engineering, and natural-hazard resilience. She is looking forward to exchanging ideas, learning from the civil engineering community at Canterbury, and exploring opportunities for future research collaboration.

Outside academia, Meera enjoys reading fiction and travelling. She is also looking forward to exploring Christchurch and discovering more of New Zealand during her stay.

02/10/2026

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Congratulations to PhD Candidate Kate Melnik on successfully defending her PhD thesis, titled, "Flammability and fire behaviour of gorse (Ulex europaeus L.) at three experimental scales".

This thesis addresses these challenges by investigating how moisture content and fuel structure influence the flammability and fire behaviour of gorse (Ulex europaeus L.) at the bench, shrub, and field scales. This thesis uses the terms “flammability” and “fire behaviour” as defined in the field of wildfire science. Flammability refers to how vegetation fuels ignite and burn under defined environmental conditions, combining the fire safety science concepts of ignitability and burning behaviour into one overarching term. Fire behaviour refers to the burning intensity, persistence of flaming and spread of a wildland fire across the landscape. Overall, the thesis demonstrates why understanding wildfire behaviour requires looking across scales rather than relying solely on laboratory or field experiments. The findings provide better ways to characterise vegetation fuels and could improve wildfire behaviour modelling and prediction, particularly for gorse-dominated landscapes.

Thank you to Kate's senior supervisor Dr. Andres Valencia and Co-supervisors: Prof. Daniel Nilsson, Dr. Marwan Katurji (UC School of Earth and Environment), Extended advisory committee members: Dr. Greg Baker (Halliwell/UC/BRANZ), Grant Pearce (FENZ), Dr. Tara Strand (Bioeconomy Science Institute), Oral examiner: Dr. Tim Curran (Lincoln University), Second examiner: Dr. Michael Gollner (UC Berkeley), and Exam chair: Dr. Eric Scheepbouwer

(In the photo from left to right: Dr Andres Valencia, Kate Melnik and Assoc Prof Tim Curran (Lincoln University)

30/09/2026

📢 First-year BE (Hons) students - it's your last chance to chat to staff and students from the 8 engineering disciplines before you rank your favourites and apply for second year.

Civil’s Undergraduate Director, Dr Craig McConnochie, will be available at the drop-in to answer any questions you may have.

Drop into Rātā anytime between 11am and 1pm.

Student advisors and kaitoko will also be there to help.

Donuts drop for first year Faculty of Engineering students only!

28/09/2026

📢 Welcome to our newest visiting PhD student, Qiuyue Sun from Wuhan University of Technology, specialising in Management Science and Engineering. Her research in China focuses on using deep learning to estimate the state of health (SOH) of different types of batteries.

She will be at UC for a one-year joint PhD training program. Under the guidance of Dr. Aatif, Quiyue will work on a fire-safety-related research project.

" I’m especially interested in the intersection of deep learning, battery health management, and fire safety, and in how data-driven methods can help prevent risks and improve safety. "

"What drives me is the possibility of using AI and data science to address real-world safety challenges and contribute to a safer, more sustainable future. My professional interests include deep learning, battery health assessment, fire safety, and data-driven risk analysis. I hope to combine my background in management science and engineering with engineering research and learn from interdisciplinary collaboration."

Outside of her studies, Qiuyue enjoys making new friends, going for walks, and traveling. She loves exploring new places and experiencing different cultures.

" I’m excited to join the department, learn from everyone, and explore New Zealand during my stay.”

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63 Creyke Road
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Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+6433693113

Website

http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/civil

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