• Soil Mechanics and Offshore geotechnical engineering     

• Fluid-structure-seabed interaction

Education Experience:  

• 2014.09 – 2015.09  Visiting PhD Student, Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems, The University of Western Australia  

• 2011.09 – 2016.06  PhD, Hydraulic Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Tianjin University  

• 2007.09 – 2011.07  BE, Port, Channel and Coast Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Tianjin University

Work Experience:  

• 2023.11 – now  Professor, South China University of Technology  

• 2022.06 – 2023.10  Associate Professor, South China University of Technology  

• 2019.01 – 2022.05  Research Fellow, National University of Singapore  

• 2016.07 – 2018.12  Engineer / Senior Engineer, Tianjin Port Engineering Institute Co., Ltd.

Professor Zhichao Shen, a recipient of the NationalExcellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas), is mainly engaged inteaching and research in the field of soil mechanics and offshore geotechnicalengineering (including the interaction between soil and marine structures, suchas shallow foundations, pile foundations, anchors, and pipelines; settlement ofsoft ground; and the application of artificial intelligence methods in offshoregeotechnical engineering, etc.). He has been the PI of 9 research projects and hasbeen awarded the Minister Innovation Award (Distinguished Award) of the Ministryof Transport, Singapore. He has published more than 30 papers in the field of soilmechanics and offshore geotechnical engineering.   

Five selected projects:   

• National Natural Science Fund for Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas), Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, 2023.11 to 2026.10, PI    

• Design Optimization of Shared Mooring Anchoring System for Offshore Floating Wind Power, Supported by Guangdong Province Natural Science Foundation, 2023.11 to 2026.10, PI    

• Failure Mechanisms and Bearing Capacities of Multiline Bucket-type Anchors under Omnidirectional Dynamic Loading, Supported by Guangdong Province Natural Science Foundation, 2025.01 to 2027.12, PI    

• Numerical Simulation for the Installation of Ultra-large Steel Cylinders, Supported by CNOOC (China) Limited Ocean Engineering Company, 2023.10 to 2024.02, PI.    

• Research on the Mechanism of Soil-Pipe Interaction at the Touchdown Zone of Deepwater Risers and Fatigue Assessment Method, Supported by CNOOC (China) Limited Beijing Research Institute, 2024.09 to 2025.12, PI

• Shen Z, Pan Q, Chian S C, Gourvenec S, Tian Y. Probabilistic failure envelopes of strip foundations on soils with non-stationary characteristics of undrained shear strength, Géotechnique, 2023, 73(8): 716-735.  

• Shen Z, Tian Y, Chian S C, Yan Z. Improving the estimation of soil spatial variability by considering transformation uncertainty based on LDRFE analysis. Computers and Geotechnics, 2023, 156: 105299.  

• Shen Z, Jin D, Pan Q, Yang H, Chian S C. Effect of soil spatial variability on failure mechanisms and undrained capacities of strip foundations under uniaxial loading. Computers and Geotechnics, 2021, 139: 104387.  

• Shen Z, Feng X, Gourvenec S. Effect of interface condition on the undrained capacity of subsea mudmats under six-degree-of-freedom loading. Géotechnique, 2017, 67(4): 338-349.  

• Shen Z, Bie S, Guo L. Undrained capacity of a surface circular foundation under fully three-dimensional loading. Computers and Geotechnics, 2017, 92: 57-67.