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Mr Wangcheng Zhang, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems (COFS), is the inaugural recipient of the Fugro Scholarship in Offshore Geotechnics. The scholarship is designed to assist in addressing key questions relating to design and performance in the field of offshore geotechnics, and to reduce risk by enhancing engineering design across the offshore sector.

Under the supervision of the Fugro Chair in Geotechnics, Professor Mark Randolph, and co-supervised by Dr Dong Wang (COFS) and Professor Sasha Puzrin (ETH Zurich), Wangcheng will explore the initiation of submarine landslides and develop recommendations to improve the identification of zones of the continental shelf break that have increased submarine landslide risk. Submarine landslides are of great concern in deep water oil and gas developments and are also among the most challenging of natural hazard risk to quantify. This is due to difficulties in predicting their occurrence, and their potentially devastating consequences including collision with oil and gas pipelines or the generation of tsunamis.

Fugro and COFS work together to sustain a research group that is committed to supporting Fugro’s activities worldwide. This partnership has put Australia on the global geotechnical map and supports the international geotechnical community and offshore projects in the oil and gas and renewable energy industries.

Image: Mr Wangcheng Zhang

Media references

Professor Mark Randolph, Fugro Chair in Geotechnics, +61 8 6488 1142