Dr Wonjun Cha

• PhD in Energy Resource and Petroleum Engineering 2021
• MSc in Geotechnical Engineering, Kookmin University, 2016
• BSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Kookmin University, 2013

Wonjun Cha is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering in the School of Engineering at the University of Birmingham. He received his M.Eng degree (Hons.) in geotechnical engineering from Kookmin University, South Korea, in 2016 and a PhD in Energy Resource and Petroleum Engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in 2021.

He served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Smart Infrastructure in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2022 to 2023. He joined the University of Birmingham in September 2023. He has extensive experience in geophysics, laboratory tool development, and both onshore and offshore fieldwork. He has significantly contributed to international collaborations on foam cement development and bio-inspired geotechnical damping material development.

His research interests include the long-term response of soil subjected to varied mechanical and environmental stresses (heating-cooling and freezing-thawing), as well as long-term buried infrastructure monitoring with robotics and wireless sensing networks.

• BEng/MEng Civil Engineering
• MSc Geotechnical Engineering

Wonjun is currently supervising 4 post graduate students in Geotechnical Engineering and Advanced Engineering Management programmes.

Wonjun is accepting PhD students and welcoming postdoctoral researchers and academic visitors. Applicants could be interested in projects related to geophysical monitoring and sensing (Distributed Fiber Optic sensing DFOS, wireless sensing node WSN, Nuclear magnetic resonance NMR, and electromagnetic EM measurement) for geo-infrastructure, Long-term soil behaviour modelling (repetitive loading – cyclic shear loading, heating and cooling, freezing and thawing, wetting and drying and Salt intrusion) Renewable energy (shallow geothermal).

Wonjun is currently working on:

• Long-term soil response to climate change
• Geomembrane response to heating and cooling cycles
• Data-driven prediction model for buried pipeline
• Robust soil characterization tool development
• Stress analysis for ground anchor using Fiber optics