Finalists Announced for the 57th Cooling Prize Competition 2026
The British Geotechnical Association (BGA) is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2026 Cooling Prize Competition to be hosted by the BGA South West Group in Bristol on 25 February 2026.
Details of the event are available 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:
Pishun Tantivangphaisal – Imperial College London
Long-term cyclic assessment of offshore wind turbine foundations
Pishun recently completed his PhD at Imperial College London, focusing on field validated numerical modelling of the long-term cyclic response of offshore foundations. He first began his career as a graduate engineer at Arup. After stints crossing between industry and academia, he was appointed Assistant Professor at Imperial in January 2026, striving to bridge latest advances with practical applications. Pishun remains hugely active in promoting early career and student opportunities, previously a BGA ECG communications officer and now co-chairs the SUT ECOSIGG committee.
Marina S. Bortolotto – University of Cambridge
Polymer support fluids permeating sands
Marina S. Bortolotto is a Teaching Fellow in Civil Engineering at Imperial College London and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. She earned her PhD in Geotechnics from Imperial College London. Her work focuses on experimental geotechnics, particularly the behaviour of polymer support fluids in sands and their implications for bored pile construction, with the aim of reducing uncertainty in design and supporting more sustainable construction practices. Marina has research experience across Brazil, Australia, and the UK and engages with industry partners through collaborative research and knowledge-exchange activities.
Xinyue (Lois) Yin – AtkinsRéalis
Numerical Assessment of Pile-over-pile Foundation System for Offshore Monopile Life Extension
Xinyue Yin is a graduate geotechnical engineer at AtkinsRéalis, joined in November 2024. She holds an MSc in Geotechnical and Earthquake Engineering from Imperial College London and a BEng in Civil Engineering from the University of Bristol.
She has combined industrial and research experience in geotechnical engineering. Her current work focuses on seismic and offshore geotechnics, spanning numerical analysis of soil-structure interaction through to practical design for nuclear and offshore infrastructure. Her earlier research experience centred on offshore wind foundations, including monopiles and anchoring systems for floating wind.
Ahmed Alagha – University of Dundee
Tunnel-soil-pile interaction: what about the 3D effects?
Ahmed is a geotechnical engineering researcher specialising in mechanised tunnelling, deep excavations, and soil–structure interaction. He began his research career in 2018 at the University of Birmingham, where his MSc work on tunnel face stability was published in a leading journal and has received 160+ citations. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2023, developing a world-first miniature TBM to study tunnelling effects on piled foundations. He is currently a PDRA at the University of Dundee on an EPSRC-funded project on braced excavations. He is a UKRI-endorsed Global Talent and a recipient of multiple academic awards