The Group

Principal Investigator

 

Prof. Jim Hambleton

Associate Professor, University of Cambridge
Adjunct Professor, Northwestern University

Originally from rural Wisconsin, I was educated at the University of Minnesota, where I completed B.C.E., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering.  My involvement in research started at a young age with an appointment as an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota.  Between my undergraduate and graduate studies, I also completed an internship at Barr Engineering Company in Minneapolis.  After being awarded my Ph.D. in 2010, I joined the Centre for Geotechnical and Materials Modelling at the University of Newcastle, Australia, first as a Post-doctoral Research Associate (Lecturer) and then as a Research Academic (Senior Lecturer).  In the latter role, I was a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Geotechnical Science and Engineering (CGSE), a joint initiative between The University of Newcastle, The University of Western Australia, the University of Wollongong, and various industry partners.  I was a faculty member in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University from October 2016 – August 2023. I am now an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

Other sites:

Google Scholars Profile

Curriculum Vitae

Email: jh631@cam.ac.uk, jphambleton@northwestern.edu

Twitter: @jimhambleton

 

 

Post-doctoral Fellows

 

Dr. Nima Goudarzi

Post-doctoral Research Fellow

About to finish my degree in Geotechnical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, I am currently a visiting Ph.D. student at NU who joined the Hambleton Research Group in June 2017. My research focuses on expanding and optimizing Discrete Element Method (DEM) at meso- and macro-level analysis in newly emerging geotechnical disciplines like soil-structure and soil-machine interaction. I am doing this through implementing new contact laws as well as employing reduced order modelling techniques (ROM) for speeding up time intensive simulations. I earned my MS degree in Geotechnical Engineering from Khaje Nasir Toosi University of Technology (KNTU), IRAN where I completed my thesis on evaluating static and seismic bearing capacity of jointed rock foundations using FEM in the framework of a case study. Upon the completion of my Ph.D., I aim to work as a postdoctoral fellow under Professor Hambleton in areas of soil-structure and soil-machine interaction to enhance my scientific accreditation in modern geotechnical engineering as well as to prepare scholarly works essential to my success in the increasingly competitive academic job market.

 

 

Graduate Students

 

Jiachen Guo v2Mr. Jiachen (Jason) Guo

M.S. Student

I’m enrolled in a joint program held by Northwestern and Zhejiang University. I completed my undergraduate study at Sichuan University. My current research is focused on the interaction between granular materials and machines, especially to understand the ploughing process by using state-of-the-art methods. Besides research, I love traveling, reading maps, and listening to Schubert and Strauss Family.

email: jiachenguo2020@u.northwestern.edu

 

 

"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" by B10m is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Mr. Hyunjin Lee

Ph.D. Student

Coming soon!

email: hyunjinlee2021@u.northwestern.edu

 

 

 

 

Ms. Zhefei Jin

Ph.D. Student

I am a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University (NU). Prior to joining the Ph.D. program, I earned a B.S. degree in Geotechnical engineering from China University of Geosciences and a M.S. degree from NU, where I worked in Professor Gianluca Cusatis’s group on the study of anisotropic elastic, strength and fracture properties of Marcellus shale. Currently, my research interests lie in modelling fundamental process in soil-machine interaction (SMI). In particular, I experimentally studies force-displacement histories and characterize soil deformation mode for most important cases in SMI, which is benefited from our automatic and efficient lab facilities (a six-axis robot and a fluidized bed). Theoretically, I work on developing efficient computational techniques, i.e., sequential kinematic method-based model and macro-element model, for predicting soil responses in the SMI processes. These two techniques can accelerate the simulation considerably, making it desirable to be applied to the emerging SMI applications, such as the redesign of machines and autonomous mobility control of a robot.

email: ZhefeiJin2015@u.northwestern.edu

 

Ms. Anastasia Nally

Ph.D. Student

I am a PhD student in the field of Geotechnical Engineering. I began my PhD studies at Northwestern University in the Fall of 2017. My current areas of research are related to soil-machine interaction an methods of in situ soil testing. Prior to attending Northwestern, I completed a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (First Class Honors) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Whilst completing my undergraduate degree, and in the time between my degrees, I worked as a Project Engineer for Fusion Civil, a civil construction company based in Australia. In this role I was responsible for project scheduling, cost control and quality assurance. Although I have not ruled out a career in academia, following the completion of my PhD, my current aspiration is to work in the private research sector. I hope to work in newly emerging fields of geotechnical engineering and incorporate multi-disciplinary engineering technologies.

email: AnastasiaNally2021@u.northwestern.edu

 

Qinghao Yang v2Mr. Qinghao Yang

Ph.D. Student

I began my PhD studies in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University in 2018. I have strong interests in applying theoretical and numerical tools to understand the physical behaviors of geomaterials and its interaction with surrounding environment. My current research is about the accelerated simulation for geotechnical problems, mainly focusing the large deformation of soil and soil-machine interaction, through data-driven methods. The resulting reduction in computational costs could benefit to address the time-consuming problem in high-fidelity numerical methods (e.g. discrete element methods) and iterative simulation (e.g. inverse problems). Prior to coming Northwestern, I obtained my B.S. in Engineering at Southeast University and M.S in Civil Engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University in China. During my M.S. studies, I also provided monitoring and consulting services for a construction project.

email: qinghaoyang2022@u.northwestern.edu

 

 

Undergraduate Students

 

Mr. Jesse Noss

Undergraduate Research Assistant

 

 

Former Group Members