Ryan obtained his BEng, MPhil and PhD degrees from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Prior to joining the University of Auckland in 2016, he worked as a Research Fellow at HKUST (2003-2005), a Visiting Scholar at Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Germany (2005), and an Assistant Professor at University of Macau (2005-2009) and the University of Hong Kong (2009-2015). He has published more than 60 technical research papers in various international journals and conference proceedings. His current research interests include experimental characterization, constitutive and numerical modelling of geomaterials, application of Bayesian analysis to geotechnical engineering, soil-structure interaction as well as bio-geomechanics. He was the President-Elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) (Hong Kong Section) in 2015 and a committee member of the Geotechnical Division of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE) from 2009-2015. Ryan is a chartered member of HKIE (Geotechnical Discipline). His Master Thesis titled “Three-dimensional Modelling of Diaphragm Wall Installation” was awarded the Best Master Thesis presented by ASCE (Hong Kong Section) in 2000. He also received the ICACM Young Investigator Award presented by the International Chinese Association for Computational Mechanics in 2013, and the Higher Education Research Excellence Natural Science Award (First Class) presented by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China in 2016.