Finalists Announced for the 2024 Cooling Prize Competition
The British Geotechnical Association (BGA) is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2024 Cooling Prize Competition to be held at the BGA’s 75th Anniversary Conference in London on 15 October 2024.
Details of the event can be found HERE.
The Cooling Prize is held annually to celebrate the life of the late Dr Leonard Cooling, past chairman of the British Geotechnical Society Committee (forerunner of today’s BGA), to encourage young ground engineers to hone their technical paper-writing and oral presentation skills.
The Cooling Prize Finalists are:
Thomas Riccio – University of Dundee: Pile installation effects and plugging in soft rock
Thomas Riccio is a PhD student at the University of Dundee, where he is researching installation and loading effects on pile foundations in soft rock and where he has developed a small-scale physical testing apparatus for integrate X-ray CT use, enabling new insights into soil-structure interaction problems. Prior to commencing his PhD, Thomas worked in the offshore engineering sector.
Hansini Mallikarachchi – Gavin and Doherty Geosolutions: Two-way Pressure Cycling during Installation of Suction Buckets in Cohesive Soil
Hansini Mallikarachchi is a geotechnical engineer with a special interest in offshore projects. She started her career after completing her PhD in geotechnical engineering from the University of Cambridge. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering with a first class (Hons), majoring in structural engineering. She has 5.5 years of industrial experience (4.5 years in the UK and 1 year in Sri Lanka) and 6 years of experience in academia. She is currently working at Gavin and Doherty Geosolutions (Venterra Group) as a design engineer.
Cheng Wei Kwang – Mott MacDonald: Enhancing Strain Gauge Data Interpretation through Fast Fourier Transform and Butterworth Filter
Cheng joined Mott MacDonald as a geotechnical engineer in 2020 after graduating with an MEng from Imperial College London. She has 4 years of experience in the geotechnical design of large-scale infrastructure works in the UK and abroad, focusing on deep excavations and retaining structures. This year, she was highly commended in the Ground Engineering Rising Star category and won the Women in Construction and Engineering Best Young Engineer award for early career excellence. During her site placement, she recognised the value of interpreting instrumentation and monitoring readings, and is keen to promote data-driven designs to achieve sustainability goals.
