Sanandam Bordoloi is a newly appointed Assistant Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the School of Engineering at Aalto University. He hails from the north-eastern state of India called Assam. He was awarded PhD in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, India. Thereafter, he joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST; 2024 QS world rank in Civil Engineering: 28) as a postdoctoral research fellow from 2019-2021. He joined the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC; 2024 QS world rank in Civil Engineering: 14) and worked as a post-doctoral research associate from 2022-2023. In the past 6 years, he has published 60 SCI indexed journals with an H-index of 22 (Scopus) in the field of geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering.
His major research interests are in the design of hazardous waste containment systems; valorization of industrial waste in geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering; hydromechanical assessment of rooted soil in partially saturated soil; applied clay science; and carbon capture in geotechnical engineering. He holds laboratory expertise and field experience in testing of partially saturated soils, physicochemical investigation clay and biochar-based composites, biochar production and advanced plant drought stress measurement. His research experience is predominantly experimental followed by field monitoring and numerical modelling of unsaturated flow.
Regarding his current research direction and future research endeavors, he quotes “I am not hardnosed in pursuing only certain research directions as I start my professional career in Finland. Working in three distinct continents is humbling for me in the sense that I realize every country has its specific research problems and one must be ready to take up challenges relevant to the country. Now, I am educating myself and taking active interest three topics. First, is in coming up with low CO2 emission construction materials. Second, explore electro-osmosis as a tool for rapid consolidation in soft Finnish clays. Third, is to explore relevancy of unsaturated soil mechanics and my experience in bio-inspired geotechnics to come up with low cost, sustainable and resilient solutions capable of resisting climate change induced stresses in geotechnical infrastructure. To Finnish Geotechnical Society; I look forward to learn, collaborate and contribute to the society; Olen kiitollinen tästä mahdollisuudesta!”
Sanandam Bordoloi