Beneath Our Feet: Understanding the Ground That Supports Our World

Host: Dr Golnaz Alipour Esgandani

Wednesday 21 October 2026, 6.15pm – 7.30pm

TBC

Overview

What’s happening beneath the ground we walk on every day — and why does it matter?

In this talk, Dr Golnaz Alipour explores the world of the underground and explains how soils and rocks play a vital role in everything we build; from homes and bridges to tunnels and entire cities.

Using real world examples such as landslides and sinkholes, Golnaz will explain how engineers strengthen and stabilise the ground, and how new tools, including sensors, satellites and artificial intelligence, are changing the way we monitor and protect the places we build on. Major Australian projects will bring these ideas to life and highlight the often unseen work that keeps our built environment standing.

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Biography

Dr Golnaz Alipour is a Senior Lecturer and the Bachelor of Engineering Course Director at Macquarie University, where she has been a member of the School of Engineering since 2021. She is a geotechnical engineer whose research bridges fundamental soil mechanics and real‑world infrastructure challenges. Before joining Macquarie, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney, contributing to an ARC Discovery project on the mechanics of healing and self‑healing in clay soils as part of a multidisciplinary research team.

Dr Alipour completed her PhD in Civil (Geotechnical) Engineering at the University of New South Wales in 2019, supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) and the Engineering Research Award (ERA) top‑up scholarship. Her doctoral work involved developing a constitutive model to better understand the behaviour of unsaturated soils under both static and dynamic conditions.

Her research interests include computational geomechanics, soil stabilisation, ground improvement, and advanced soil testing. Alongside her research, Dr Alipour has extensive experience in curriculum design, course coordination, and teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate engineering programs. Her teaching philosophy is grounded in a constructivist approach, emphasising motivation, meta‑learning, self‑regulation, and critical thinking to equip students for future engineering challenges.

Contact Us

For more details about the series, contact us at fse.outreach@mq.edu.au.

Main campus

Wallumattagal Campus
Balaclava Road
Macquarie University NSW 2109

City campus

Angel Place
Level 24, 123 Pitt Street
Sydney NSW 2000

Event Contact

events@mq.edu.au

Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which Macquarie University stands - the Wallumattagal Clan of the Dharug Nation - whose cultures and customs have nurtured, and continue to nurture, this land since time immemorial. We pay our respects to the Elders, past and present.