Rate My Professor Lihai Zhang

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.