Tao received his DPhil (PhD) degree in Engineering Science from University of Oxford in 2014. His DPhil research project was “Investigation of Landslide-Induced Debris Flows by the DEM and CFD”, supervised by Prof. Guy Houlsby and Prof. Stefano Utili. Tao holds a BEng degree in Civil Engineering awarded in 2010 by Tongji University, China. Tao’s research interest spans a broad range of computational analysis of geotechnics and geohazards. Over the past 10 years, he has been working on the computer modelling of landslides, debris flows, and rock avalanches using the discrete element method (DEM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Tao has been dedicated to understanding the underlying physics of these geohazards and establish predictive models. Tao has published more than 30 high-quality peer-reviewed scientific papers on leading research journals with an H-index of 19 from the Google Scholar. He has received the ‘Young Scholar’ research grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China as PI, working on exploring the landslide mobility mechanism. He also joined several research projects (as Co-I or key contributor) during his career in China.

Research area(s)
Geotechnical Engineering, Geophysical Research

Research Interests
Discrete Element Method (DEM), Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
Random Discrete Element Analysis (RDEA)
Investigations of landslides, debris flow, rockfall and rock avalanche
Analyses of rock fragmentation, granular mechanics

Responsibility
Department International Partnership Officer
Member of Brunel University International Working Group (China region)
Transnational Education (TNE) Programme Coordinator
CEE Department Web Champion
Digital Education Champion