Laing O’Rourke Centre PhD student Sakthy Selvakumaran has been named in the prestigious Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ listing of promising young individuals in European industry for 2016.
Sakthy, 27, is researching a strategy for deriving better value from structural health monitoring. She argues that current monitoring systems tend to produce either too much data, which can be expensive and difficult to interpret, or measure the wrong things altogether. As a result, many infrastructure owners are wary of investing in them. For her doctorate, Sakthy aims to develop methodologies for improving the design and deployment of structural health monitoring systems, using existing UK bridges as case studies. The project is being supervised by Centre director Professor Cam Middleton and is sponsored by the National Physical Laboratory with additional funding from Laing O’Rourke.
Sakthy Selvakumaran graduated from Cambridge University Engineering Department in 2010, going on to work on civil and structural engineering projects in the UK, Canada, Sri Lanka, Peru and Spain. In 2013 she joined Laing O’Rourke’s Engineering Excellence Group, working on new developments in infrastructure design, construction and maintenance. She re-joined the Engineering Department to begin her doctorate in the autumn of 2015.
Sakthy is a Chartered Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and maintains an active role in Institution activities. She has also been a volunteer with the charity Engineers Without Borders UK for some ten years as well as working as a consultant for them, courtesy of a Vodafone World of Difference Award.
https://www.ice.org.uk/news/ice-members-included-in-forbes-30-under-30