Laing O’Rourke Associate Professor in Construction Engineering, Dr Brian Sheil, is one of the keynote speakers at Geotechniekdag 2025, the leading Dutch geotechnical engineering conference taking place today, 11 November 2025, in the Netherlands.
This year’s event, themed “Hoofd in de wolken, poten in de klei” (“Head in the clouds, feet in the clay”), celebrates the essential balance between theory and practice in geotechnical engineering. The theme reflects a profession grounded in empirical knowledge while embracing rapid advances in data-driven work, automation, and digitalisation, always anchored by the expertise of geotechnical professionals.
Dr Sheil’s keynote explores the emerging field of physics-informed machine learning in geotechnical engineering, a topic at the frontier of modern computational geomechanics. His talk examines how integrating fundamental soil mechanics, experimental and field data, and advanced computational methods can help overcome the limitations of traditional modelling approaches.
He highlights recent progress in embedding physical laws into data-driven architectures, creating models that maintain varying levels of physical constraint. The presentation also considers new strategies for combining models of differing fidelities, aiming to deliver more accurate, efficient, and generalisable predictions for geotechnical design and analysis.
Dr Sheil’s contribution demonstrates the growing role of artificial intelligence and physics-based modelling in transforming how engineers understand and predict soil behaviour, driving progress towards safer, smarter, and more sustainable infrastructure design.
Learn more about Dr Brian Sheil's work.
More information about the conference.