Rate My Professor Lihai Zhang

Professor Lihai Zhang is the Professor of Infrastructure Protection and Management and Leader of the Engineering Management Discipline in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering at the University of Melbourne. He earned a Master of Engineering degree from the National University of Singapore in 1995, followed by over ten years of professional experience in industry before completing his PhD in Bioengineering at the University of Melbourne in 2009. Since obtaining his doctorate, Zhang has held progressive academic appointments at the University of Melbourne, advancing from lecturer to his current professorial role.

Zhang's academic interests focus on infrastructure protection and management, reliability-based lifecycle optimization of risk, cost, and carbon emissions for critical assets including buildings, bridges, pipelines, ports, and energy systems. He leads the Infrastructure Protection and Management research group, which develops innovative solutions integrating artificial intelligence, advanced data analytics, and bioinspired engineering for monitoring, protecting, and managing infrastructure throughout its lifecycle. Notable projects include AI-enhanced enterprise resource planning for construction procurement and logistics, risk-carbon-cost optimised maintenance strategies, AI-driven multi-warehouse models for small enterprises, virtual training platforms for construction safety, and assessments of building glazing resilience to extreme weather. The group employs advanced facilities such as drones, unmanned boats, underwater robots, and non-destructive testing tools, applying them in industrial projects like structural health monitoring of the Heritage Eltham Rail Trestle Bridge, Merlynston Creek bridge, and Port of Melbourne jetties. Zhang has secured major grants, including the ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Whole Life Design of Carbon Neutral Infrastructure (2025–2030), ARC Linkage Projects (2025–2027), and CRC-P grants. His scholarly output exceeds 300 publications in civil engineering, porous media mechanics, and engineering reliability, garnering over 8,600 citations on Google Scholar. Earlier research addressed biomechanics topics such as solute transport in cartilage and computational mechanics of knee joints.