BGA 23rd Annual Conference 2026 and AGM

Professor Francesca Casini

Francesca Casini is Associate Professor of Geotechnics at Università di Roma Tor Vergata.

Her research expertise spans from fundamental soil mechanics in saturated and unsaturated conditions, including thermal loading and its relevance to engineering applications. She has been Early Stage Researcher Marie Curie (ESR) within the MUSE (Mechanics of Unsaturated Soils for Engineering) project (2006-7) and Experienced Researcher Marie Curie (ER- Intra European Fellowship) working on Numerical Modelling of Artificial Ground Freezing (AGF) at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) Barcelona (Spain).

She has been research fellow (post-doc) at ETH Zurich working on the triggering mechanism of shallow landslides induced by rainfall (2008-2011).  Since then, the main thrust of her research has been on the applications of soil mechanics, also in unsaturated conditions, to geotechnical engineering, and has dealt mainly with thermo-hydro-mechanical couplings in soils.

Since 2014 to 2015 she has been an assistant professor (ricercatore t.d. b) at Università di Roma Tor Vergata in the Civil Engineering Department and Associate professor from 2015 to date.

She has been awarded a grant, Programma per Giovani Ricercatori “Rita Levi Montalcini”, by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research (MIUR). Her research has received financial support from national and international funding agencies, including the Italian Ministry of University and Research, the European Commission, and by industry.  She has been the PI of the FROZEN project (2015-17) on the design of a new triaxial apparatus working with temperatures below zero. The prototype has been patented at national level.

She is member of TC308 (energy Geotechnics) of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE). She has been member of Géotechnique Advisory Panel (GAP 2018-21), ICE London.  At the moment, she is PI of a project on the effects of cycles of wetting and drying due to the Tiber river level variation on the historical building foundations.

Marcos Arroyo

Tiago Gaspar

Dr Tiago Gaspar is Assistant Professor of Geotechnical Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London.

His research focuses on unsaturated soil mechanics, expansive clays, soil–structure interaction, field monitoring, and climate-related geotechnical hazards. Prior to joining Imperial, he held academic and research positions at the University of Sheffield and Durham University, and completed his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Pretoria.

His work combines physical modelling, field instrumentation, laboratory testing, and numerical analysis, with applications to piled foundations, embankments, slopes, transport infrastructure, and tailings facilities. He also maintains links with industry through advisory work on unsaturated soil problems.

His current work includes international collaborations in India and South Africa on slope resilience and tailings performance under changing climatic conditions. Dr Gaspar has published widely in these areas, and his work was recognised with the Jennings Award in 2024.

Dr Nicky de Battista

Dr Nicky de Battista is a civil engineer with several years of experience in structural design and construction. He has an MSc in structural engineering and a PhD in structural health monitoring from the University of Sheffield, UK.

Between 2014 and 2023 he worked at the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) at the University of Cambridge, carrying out applied research in state-of-the-art monitoring technologies. 

Nicky is the Managing Director of Epsimon Ltd., a company he co-founded in 2016, providing consultancy and system integration and operation services related to specialist instrumentation and monitoring applications for civil infrastructure, using fibre optic sensing.

Kate Kendall

Kate Kendall is a Principal Engineering Geologist with AtkinsRéalis, part of the East West Rail Alliance, and is a Chartered Geologist.

Kate has been involved with East West Rail from late 2016 where she began with scoping the trackbed investigation.

She has since been involved with the early design stages and ground investigation before joining the site construction team in 2020 leading the delivery of approximately 6km of earthworks, trackbed and drainage. 

Simon R Miles

Simon Miles is a Chief Geotechnical Engineer with AtkinsRéalis, a part of the East West Rail Alliance.  He is a Chartered Civil Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers.  

From 2021 he led the geotechnical team providing on-site design support to the Alliance during construction of East West Rail Phase 2 (Bicester to Bletchley).  

Responsibilities included design interventions to support trackbed renewal, earthworks rehabilitation and new structure foundations, and the occasional new retaining wall and distressed arch bridge.

Jack Sherlock

Yuli Doulala-Rigby

Yuli Rigby-Doulala started her career in geotechnics in 1995, working as a graduate engineer on the Jubilee Line extension project. After spending almost a decade in Hong Kong as a geotechnical engineer, she returned to the UK and joined Tensar, a specialist in ground stabilisation and soil reinforcement, in 2006.

She initially took overall responsibility for the firm’s eastern hemisphere design team. More recently, she has focused on developing the business and educating the industry about the benefits of geosynthetics in construction.

An ICE Fellow, Rigby-Doulala became chair of the British Geotechnical Association in June 2025.

Ahmed Saadeldein

Ahmed is a Section Engineer for the Civil Works Alliance on Sizewell C project with over 6 years of design and operational experience in geotechnical and tunnelling engineering. Ahmed is currently working on Sizewell C, focusing on the delivery of three bridges connecting the Main Construction Area to the Temporary Construction Area.

In his role, he has been involved in the installation of cofferdams, piling works and soil improvement for major bridge and marine structures, contributing to effective design and construction coordination to achieve key project milestones.