When it comes to exploring career paths for students, there is nothing that compares to the face-to-face conversations with the outstanding alumni. In order to provide such an opportunity for students to develop informative, productive considerations of careers and long-term personal goals, the University of Nottingham Ningbo China’s (UNNC) Department of Civil Engineering welcomed Dr. Lei Liu as their guest speaker for the department’s alumni talk on December 17^th, 2021.

Dr. Lei Liu is a Geotechnical Engineer at Pells Sullivan Meynink (PSM), Australia. Prior to joining PSM, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of New South Wales where he obtained his PhD in Civil Engineering in 2018. He received his BEng in Civil Engineering at UNNC in 2014. During his presentation, Dr. Lei Liu shared his adventure in the professional fields towards research and industrial perspectives. His research interests lie in the area of developing numerical methods for acoustics, acoustic-structure interaction, structural elastoplasticity, and dynamics. He has also shared several essential infrastructure projects that he has been involved in when working as the Geotechnical Engineer at PSM, Australia. Some students also asked questions about Dr. Liu’s experiences of continuing the Ph.D. study after undergraduate and working in the professional world as an engineer.

For Dr. Liu, this alumni talk session also gave him a chance to remotely return to the department to meet the past professors and interact with today’s students. “Acceptance of my Ph.D. application by University of New South Wales indicated the recognition of our undergraduate program,” he said. “UNNC has provided me with opportunities and skills that I needed for my later Ph.D. study as well as the industrial career.”