Rate My Professor Abbas El-Zein

Professor Abbas El-Zein is Professor of Environmental Engineering in the School of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, at the University of Sydney. He earned a BE in Civil Engineering from the American University of Beirut in 1986, an MSc in Structural Engineering, a DEA equivalent to MSc in Environmental Science and Technology from a French institution, and a PhD in Computational Mechanics from the University of Southampton. Abbas El-Zein joined the University of Sydney in 2004, where he progressed to full professor. He leads the Geoenvironmental Engineering Research Group and directs the Geoenvironmental Laboratory (GEL), focusing his research on geoenvironmental processes such as contaminant and microplastic transport in unsaturated soils, soil water retention curves, biomechanics of tree roots for slope stabilization, relative permeability in CO2 storage, flood vulnerability under climate change, and land degradation. His work addresses critical environmental challenges including pollution protection, climate impacts, and sustainable resource management.

Abbas El-Zein has produced over 165 peer-reviewed publications, with notable contributions including 'Geophysical and social vulnerability to floods at municipal scale under climate change: The case of an inner-city suburb of Sydney' (Ecological Indicators, 2021), 'Flexible Wall Permeameters for Research on Microplastic Transport in Soils' (Environmental Science & Technology, 2025), 'Predicting soil water retention curves using machine learning' (Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2024), 'The effect of diameter and moisture content on biomechanical properties of tree roots' (Plant and Soil, 2024), and 'Measurements of the relative permeability to CO2-and-brine' (Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology, 2021). His scholarship has accumulated 3,798 citations and an h-index of 35 according to Google Scholar. El-Zein has obtained competitive grants from the Australian Research Council, such as Discovery Project DP130100203 and a 2024 award of $625,501 for studying micro- and nanoplastics transport. He teaches environmental geotechnics, supervises PhD students on microplastics and related topics, and contributes to professional service within the Faculty of Engineering.