Prof. Anthony LEUNG Received ISSMGE Outstanding Young Geotechnical Engineer Award
Prof. Anthony LEUNG, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been awarded the Outstanding Young Geotechnical Engineer Award by the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), which is the largest international learned society in geotechnical engineering. This award is given out every four years, and Prof. Leung is one of the three awardees from around the world this year. The award ceremony was held at the 20th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering 2022 (ICSMGE 2022), which was delivered in hybrid mode in Sydney, Australia on May 1-5, 2022.
The award aims to recognize young members (under the age of 36) who have made outstanding contributions to the practice or research in geotechnical engineering through research or industrial projects. Candidates are evaluated on their contributions to geotechnical project development and construction, research contributions in the geotechnical community, involvement in national and international geotechnical societies, and publications and education in the geotechnical discipline.
Prof. Leung’s research expertise is in unsaturated soil-plant interaction with emphasis on geotechnical engineering applications such as slope stabilization. A prolific researcher and author, he has published more than 70 SCI journal articles in the subject of soil-vegetation interaction, and has co-authored the textbook Plant–Soil Slope Interaction (Taylor & Francis, 2019). In addition, Prof. Leung is currently the editor-in-chief of ISSMGE Bulletin and secretary of both ISSMGE’s Technical Committee on Unsaturated Soils (TC106) and Technical Committee on Tropical Residual Soils (TC107). He is also serving on the editorial boards of multiple international academic journals, including Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Landslides, International Journal of Physical Modelling in Geotechnics, as well as Environmental Geotechnics.
“I’m very honored,” says Prof. Leung, “to receive this prestigious international award! I’m very glad, of course, because of winning, but more so and more importantly because it means that my ‘farming’ research in geotechnical engineering has been recognized. The past several years has been an absolutely amazing journey; I’ve very much been enjoying ‘unearthing’ [pun intended] the hidden half of plants – i.e. their roots, including how they interact with different soils, and how we can, and should, learn more about nature and work with nature to achieve better, more sustainable engineering designs. ISSMGE has provided me an excellent platform to share my research with fellow scholars and peers through different international activities. I must thank them for giving me opportunities to contribute and serve in different capacities.”
Previously, Prof. Leung also received the 2018 International Award for Innovation in Unsaturated Soil Mechanics and 2019 Bright Spark Lecture Award from ISSMGE. He was named an Excellent Young Scientist (優青 (港澳)) by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) in 2019, which was the first year that NSFC opened the highly competitive award scheme to scholars from Hong Kong and Macau, and was the only scholar in the civil engineering discipline among the 25 inaugural awardees. Most recently, his co-authored paper was awarded the Geotechnical Research Medal 2022 by ICE Publishing of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), UK.
