Dr Alister Smith

My work has a strong emphasis on real-world impact (REF2021 Impact Case Study) and translating research into practice. I have had the privilege of cultivating meaningful partnerships with industry stakeholders and engaging in collaborations with international institutions, supported by a portfolio of £6.7 million in personal and collaborative research funding. I have been honoured to receive a number of prestigious awards for my work, including the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Engineering, the Worshipful Company of Engineers’ Hawley Award for Engineering Innovation, and the ICE Thomas Telford Premium (on two occasions).

Current research activity

Doctoral Training Cluster – RAINDROP (Resilient eArthwork INfrastructure: Diagnosis, RehabilitatiOn & Prognosis)

Principal Investigator of funding secured in 2025 that will provide a series of PhD Studentships in research areas that contribute to sustainable, intelligent, and climate change-resilient engineered slopes. The Cluster aim is to deliver diagnostic, rehabilitation and forecasting approaches to manage earthworks in a dynamic and changing climate. 

National Engineered Slope Simulator (NESS)

Principal Investigator and Director of NESS, funded by the Wolfson Foundation: the world’s first large-scale configurable climate-controlled testing facility for clay slopes. The 15-tonne steel box can be filled with 45 tonnes of compacted clay, then rotated to a typical infrastructure slope angle. The clay slope can be subjected to accelerated wetting and drying cycles to simulate seasonal weather conditions, deteriorating the clay mechanical and hydraulic properties. A suite of instrumentation enables monitoring of stresses, strains, deformation, pore pressures, suctions, moisture content, photogrammetry and more. After several months of deterioration by wetting and drying, the slope can be rotated to 45 degrees to cause failure. The facility is used to advance understanding of slope deterioration processes and climate change impacts, develop remediation strategies and new detection technologies, and inform design of new infrastructure.

Recently completed research projects

ACHILLES

ACHILLES (Assessment, Costing and enHancement of long lIfe, Long Linear assEtS, EP/R034575/1) was a £4.9M EPSRC Programme Grant investigating climate change impacts on infrastructure slopes. The team comprised researchers from the universities of Loughborough, Newcastle, Durham, Southampton, Leeds and Bath, and the British Geological Survey, coalescing our field, laboratory and computing facilities. Working in collaboration with a team of stakeholder project partners, we have made significant advances in understanding of weather-driven deterioration in slopes, at the material- and asset-scales, and developed tools to forecast the long-term hydromechanical performance of slopes under future climate projections. Our key outcomes are summarised in a series of Reading Guides that can be accessed through our website (link above).

Listening to Infrastructure (L2I)

I led the Listening to Infrastructure (L2I) research programme to develop acoustic emission (AE) monitoring for geotechnical infrastructure systems (e.g. buried pipes, dams, foundations, retaining structures, tunnels). This research has been funded by an EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (£285k, 2017-20, EP/P012493/1) and the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Engineering (£100k, 2020-22).

Slope ALARMS & Community Slope SAFE

Working together with Professor Neil Dixon, we developed acoustic emission (AE) landslide early warning systems. An algorithm quantifies a slope’s rate of subsurface movement and can alert users when it accelerates, enabling timely intervention or evacuation. Successful lab experiments led to full-scale field trials across the UK and in Austria, Italy, Canada, Malaysia, and Myanmar. A steel tube with granular backfill surround, installed in a borehole to intersect existing or anticipated shear surface(s), acts as an active waveguide. Slope movements cause backfill/steel interaction, dissipating energy in the form of AE. These mechanical waves propagate up the waveguide to the surface where they are detected by a piezoelectric transducer and converted to an electrical signal. The system processes the AE signals and generates alarms based on warning thresholds – alerting decision-makers. More information at the REF2021 Impact Case Study

• Li S and Smith A (2024) Pipeline–Soil Interaction Behavior: Acoustic Emission and Energy Dissipation. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 10.1061/JGGEFK.GTENG-12913 https://ascelibrary.org/doi/full/10.1061/JGGEFK.GTENG-12913
• Helm P, Svalova A, Morsy A, Rouainia M, Smith A, El-Hamalawi A, Wilkinson D, Postill H and Glendinning S (2024) Emulating long-term weather-driven transportation earthworks deterioration models to support asset management. Transportation Geotechnics, 10.1016/j.trgeo.2023.101155 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214391223002283
• Briggs K, Helm P, Smethurst J, Smith A, Stirling R, Svalova A, Trinidad Gonzalez Y, Loveridge F and Glendinning S (2023) Evidence for the weather-driven deterioration of ageing transportation earthworks in the UK. Transportation Geotechnics, 1016/j.trgeo.2023.101130 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214391223002039
• Li S and Smith A (2023) Acoustic emission and energy dissipation in soils during triaxial shearing. Computers and Geotechnics, 10.1016/j.compgeo.2023.105639 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0266352X23003968
• Wang H, Barone G and Smith A (2023) A novel multi-level data fusion and anomaly detection approach for infrastructure damage identification and localisation. Engineering Structures, 1016/j.engstruct.2023.116473 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014102962300888X
• Morsy A, Helm P, El-Hamalawi A, Smith A, Hughes P, Stirling R, Dijkstra T, Dixon N and Glendinning S (2023) Development of a Multi-Phase Numerical Modeling Approach for Hydromechanical Behavior of Clay Embankments Subject to Weather-Driven Deterioration. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 10.1061/JGGEFK/GTENG-11213 https://ascelibrary.org/doi/full/10.1061/JGGEFK.GTENG-11213

My teaching in Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering has been recognised with excellent student feedback.

As Programme Leader for Civil Engineering, I have managed major curriculum updates, including initiatives to integrate climate emergency content, and led the 2025 JBM re-accreditation process.

In my role as Undergraduate Placements Coordinator, I successfully streamlined placement processes and enhanced employability support for students.

I actively champion initiatives to support underrepresented groups in construction and engineering through mentoring and coaching schemes. Additionally, I foster the academic and professional growth of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers by providing comprehensive mentorship and personalised training and development.

I actively participate in national and international academic and professional activities. I have had the privilege of being a visiting scholar at the GeoEngineering Centre at Queen's – RMC in Canada.

I contribute to shaping the research landscape through service to various funding bodies, including the UKRI Talent Peer Review College, Leverhulme Trust, and Royal Society, as well as international organisations such as the Czech Science Foundation, NSERC-Canada, and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

My journal contributions include serving on the Editorial Board for the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology & Hydrogeology and reviewing for over 25 other journals. Additionally, I chaired the Scientific Committee for the 2024 International Conference on SIMR.

My work has been featured in films on the BBC and Discovery Channel. In the UK, I have recently delivered talks at the BGA Annual Conference and Ground Engineering Sustainability Conference, judged the Ground Engineering Early Careers Challenge, and currently serve as an External Examiner for the Civil Engineering degrees at the University of Brighton (2022-2026).