Two students from the School of Ocean and Civil Engineering (OCE), Mr. Iftikhar Azim and Mr. Kaushal Raj Gnyawali, were selected as the candidates of ‘2020 Awards for Excellent International Post-Graduate Students’on 25th December, 2019.

Iftikhar Azim, PhD candidate studying Civil Engineering

Azim joined the School of Naval Architecture Ocean & Civil Engineering (OCE) as a PhD candidate in September, 2016. He is graduated from one of the top engineering universities of Pakistan. His majors is on structural engineering and performs his research on the topic of progressive collapse of structures under the supervision of Prof. Jian Yang, Assistant Dean of the school of OCE. He bears an excellent academic record and is the lead and co-authors in numerous SCI indexed journal papers. In addition to the active participation in co-curricular activities in the university, he was selected as one of the student leaders in the Belt & Road Initiative Global Horizon Team (BRIGHTeam) under the Global Engagement Program funded by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in the summer 2019. The team was led by Prof. Jian Yang, which investigated the challenges faced by the Chinese companies working in the One Belt One Road Initiative countries and consequently proposed feasible solutions to those identified problems. The team also visited various Pakistan’s ministries & government departments and Chinese companies (such as Ministry of Housing & Works, Ministry of Planning, CPEC Center of Excellence, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Economic Zones Development & Management Company,  China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation Ltd., China Road & Bridge Corporation etc.), Pakistani universities (National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad; University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore; The Agriculture University, Peshawar; Islamia College University, Peshawar). Azim was also the chief organizer for a two days international forum jointly arranged by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and The University of Agriculture Peshawar. He has deep interest in learning Chinese culture and can speak basic Chinese well. He is also a sports lover and regularly plays sports such as cricket and football in the campus.

Kaushal Raj Gnyawali, Master candidate studying Civil Engineering

Gnyawali joined OCE as a Masters’ student in September, 2017. He comes from Nepal, a small and beautiful mountainous country that was recently struck by the 2015 Gorkha earthquake (7.8 Mw). On assisting the international geo-scientists to document the learnings from the earthquake, especially the landslides and the associated damage in the mountain regions, he got inspired to pursue higher studies and research in disaster science. At OCE, his major is Civil Engineering and his research direction is disaster prevention of large landslides. Along with an excellent academic track record, he has already published two SCI-indexed journal papers related to his research direction. He works under Prof. Aiguo Xing to investigate the triggering and the motion dynamics of a disastrous landslide that was triggered by the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. He went to Sichuan to attend an international conference about the Wenchuan earthquake and to Xi’an to participate in a training about disaster research in China. He is recognized as an IRDR Young Scientist by the IRDR International. Along with his research, he keeps himself active in global voluntary initiatives to engage youths and young professionals in this field. In this regard, he travelled to Indonesia and Pakistan to attend international workshops on U-INSPIRE- an Asia and the Pacific Alliance for disaster risk reduction, on a full funding support from the UNESCO Office. He is the leader of the national chapter of Nepal on this alliance.