Partha Narayan Mishra

Dr. Partha Narayan Mishra obtained his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Queensland, Australia in 2020 with the Dean’s Award for Outstanding HDR theses. He was conferred with the Institute Gold and Institute Silver Medals from National Institute of Technology Rourkela, India during his graduation with a dual degree (B.Tech. Hons. In Civil Engineering and M.Tech. in Geotechnical Engineering) in 2015.

Research

Partha is a Geotechnical Engineer and researcher with research interests in the arenas of improvement of soft soils, behaviour of unsaturated soils, electromagnetic characterisation and monitoring of soil processes, biomediated geotechnical engineering and clay barrier systems in hazardous waste disposal facilities. Outcomes of his research have been summarised in 30+ technical articles in top tier international journals, conferences, and book chapters. In academic and research space, Partha has worked as a summer research fellow at IIT Guwahati, India (2013) and at IIT Madras, India (2014), research scholar at IIT Madras, India (2015-2016), casual academic/research assistant in Civil Engineering at UQ, Australia (2016-2020), adjunct lecturer in Civil Engineering at UQ, Australia (2020-cont.) and at UCSI university, Malaysia (2020-2021).

Industry

As a practicing engineer, he has worked on several projects pertaining to tailings storage facilities (TSFs) in Australia and overseas. His industry experience comprises of working as a consulting geotechnical engineer with Klohn Crippen Berger (KCB Australia) (2020- 2021) and as an owner’s engineer with Rio Tinto Aluminium (2021-2022). Through these roles he has developed an intimate understanding of the challenges encountered in engineering, operation, and management of TSFs, some of which he aims to address through his research.

Teaching

Partha has co-supervised 1 masters, 2 bachelors and 3 summer research thesis to completion at UQ. He currently co-supervises 2 PhD students. He has co-delivered Advanced Soil Mechanics (CIVL4230) at UQ in 2021. He has also tutored Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics (CIVL2210) and Geotechnical Engineering (CIVL3210) at UQ from 2016 - 2020. In 2020, Partha initiated the ‘Lecture Series on Advancements in Geotechnical Engineering: from Research to Practice’ (AGERP) in collaboration with Professor Sarat Das. The AGERP lecture series is a pro-bono attempt towards disseminating the coupled learnings from academia and industry on several key topics in Geotechnical Engineering. The AGERP lecture series has reached to participants (academics, practicing engineers and students) from over 125 countries. More on the AGERP initiative is here: https://www.age-rp.com/. Partha was conferred with fellowship (2021) and associate fellowship (2019) from the Higher Education Academy, UK for his teaching portfolio benchmarked against UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) for teaching and supporting learning in higher education.

Service

Partha is a member of the Australian Geomechanics Society (AGS), the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), the Indian Geotechnical Society (IGS) and an associate member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He regularly reviews technical articles (50+ so far) for top tier international journals in the discipline such as Geotechnical Testing Journal, Acta Geotechnica, Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering etc. Partha was the President of UQU association of postgraduate students (2016-2017) and chair of the annual conference of the EAIT faculty of UQ (2017-2018). He has also sat in the UQ library advisory committee (2018) and student experience committee of UQ academic board (2017).