Civil Engineering Research Symposium 2021 was successfully held at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa on the 17th November 2021 with the participation of eminent academics, students and the industry from Sri Lanka and around the world. This is an annual symposium organised by the Department of Civil Engineering to showcase the latest research activities undertaken by undergraduate and postgraduate students of the Department.
The symposium this year had two key sessions, a morning and an afternoon session. The morning session, which was fully online, featured presentations of the most cutting-edge research carried out by the undergraduates of the department. These presentations were followed by engaging set of panel discussions conducted by the academic staff of the department. The presentations and discussions were focused on broad areas of civil engineering, from 3D Digital Image Co-relation to Cell Transmission Models using crowdsourcing data for expressway monitoring. Selected 47 abstracts received for the symposium were also published in a proceeding.
The afternoon session of the symposium was a hybrid event dedicated to Emirates Professor Priyan Dias. This session featured keynote speeches by two world renowned academics, Prof David Thambiratnam and Prof Mahen Mahendran from Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Prof Thambiratnam enlightened the audience on “Structural Dynamics Research – Some Recent Projects”. Prof Mahendran spoke on the topic of “On Connectivity – Continued: Cold-formed Steel Structures Research”, as a continuation to the famous farewell lecture given by Prof Priyan Dias on his retirement day.
A 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) Challenge was also featured for the first time in history of the Civil Engineering Research Symposium to demonstrate the latest research achievements of the postgraduate students in a creative manner. Out of over 25 submissions, four winners were selected, and were awarded with cash prizes. The 3MT challenge winners were, Pasindu Meddage (1st place), Ishan De Silva (1st runner-up), Nalaka Jayantha and Sharon Gurupatham (joint 2nd runner ups).
The afternoon session ended with a speech by Emirates Professor Priyan Dias in which he discussed about his 40 years of experience as an academic at the department and also on the importance of engineering teaching.
Head, Department of Civil Engineering Prof Chintha Jayasinghe stated “The symposium is based on multi-faceted research that has been carried out at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, mainly by its undergraduates under the supervision of the staff members. With the research findings presented at the symposium, I am sure that some of the unsolved research questions could be addressed with a greater degree of confidence and effectiveness”.
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