Staff: David Smith

Academic Qualifications

• PhD in Engineering - The University of Sydney (1990)
• BE in Civil Engineering (First Class Honours) - Sydney University (1986)

Professional Affiliations

• Fellow, The Institution of Engineers, Australia. FIEAust
• Engineers Australia Chartered Professional Engineer (specialisations in civil and environmental engineering) NPER-3 registered. CPEng
• Member, American Society of Civil Engineers. MASCE
• Member, Member Australian Society of Soil Science.
• Member, Chart. Int. Member of the American Society of Engineering Education MASEE

Summary of Professional Experience

After initially studying medicine for four years, David graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Civil Engineering from The University of Sydney in 1986. In 1990, he was awarded a PhD from The University of Sydney for numerical analysis of a proposal to dispose of radioactive waste in the ocean floor. Since that time, David has been a career academic, teaching civil engineering at the University of Newcastle (Aust), and researching geotechnical, geoenvironmental and biomedical problems. He was appointed Professor of Biomedical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Melbourne in 2004.

David has researched consolidation and transport behaviour of clays soils, and is an expert in the field. For his PhD thesis, he developed Green's functions describing the thermoconsolidation behaviour of clay. David has developed detailed geochemical transport models, and derived new analytic solutions for the solution of the advective-reactive transport equation. New theoretical models of soil behaviour have been developed, the most significant published contributions being: (i) a new set of transport equations appropriate for a deforming porous medium; (ii) new transport equations and appropriate boundary conditions taking into account spatially varying dispersivity; (iii) development of the concept of granular temperature, (iv) developing micro-macroscale modeling approaches to better understand fundamental dissipative mechanics in charged porous media and (v) developing a numerical model of neutron-diffusion through soils for neutron probe calibration.

Though fundamental geoenvironmental research has been the primary focus, this work has been complemented by applied research. The most significant practical contributions are: (i) modeling contaminant transport through engineered liner systems landfills, (ii) modelling fluoride transport through aquifers; (iii) developing a strategy for decontamination of fluoride polluted aquifer by sorption onto alumina; (iv) developing a strategy for decontamination of a hydrocarbon polluted aquifer by sorption onto granulated tyre rubber; (v) setting up a field site to investigate expansive clay soils and the effect they have on house foundations and (vi) investigating the suitability of soft clay soils for electro-osmosis.

In the last few years, David has developed original micromechanical and numerical models-the most significant of these are: (i) describing the transport of ions through a charged porous medium; (ii) quantifying the effects of anion exclusion and cation inclusion on mass transport through clay soils; (iii) explaining why cavity-cavitation is suppressed in materials with a diffuse double-layer and, (iv) describing the coupling of a diffuse-double layer with the Navier-Stokes equation.

Over the last seven years, David has been developing his research interests in biomedical engineering by building on his biological knowledge obtained as a medical student. The most significant projects undertaken to date are: (i) development of a theoretical model describing calcium oscillations in smooth muscle cells (with Dr Mohammad Imtiaz) (ii) development of a new conceptual approach to identifying women at risk of preterm birth (with Prof Roger Smith) and (iii) development of theoretical models describing the behaviour of ligament (with Prof Nigel Shrive) and cartilage (with Dr Bruce Gardiner and Prof Alan Grodzinsky). Most recently, he been modeling development in drosophila (with Dr Bruce Gardiner), and developing a new model of mechano-signal transduction in bone (with Dr Peter Pivonka). David is generally interested in all problems in computational biology, including cellular signal transduction, cell mechanics, physiology of the kidney, problems in developmental biology and others.