Dr. Liuxin (Lucy) Chen
Details
College: School of Engineering
Department: School of Engineering
Campus: City Campus Australia
lucy.chen@rmit.edu.au
Open to
- Collaborative projects
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
- Industry Projects
About
Dr Liuxin (Lucy) Chen is a Lecturer in Civil and Infrastructure Engineering at RMIT University. Her research focuses on developing resilient, sustainable and intelligent geo-infrastructure capable of withstanding climate extremes, natural hazards and repeated traffic loading.
Lucy combines laboratory testing, computational modelling, field monitoring and data-driven methods to address practical challenges affecting road pavements, unsealed roads, riverbanks, railway foundations and buried pipelines. Her research spans unsaturated soil mechanics, infrastructure resilience, erosion and slope stability, recycled construction materials, and AI-enabled engineering.
A defining feature of her work is close collaboration with industry, government and infrastructure end users. Her collaborative projects include assessing timber-pile riverbank remediation under tropical flooding and erosion; understanding deterioration and corrugation in unsealed roads;
advancing intelligent pavement construction through multi-sensing; and designing sustainable backfill materials to improve buried-pipeline durability.
Lucy is a Chief Investigator on an ARC Discovery Project investigating corrugation control in unsealed roads and Lead Chief Investigator of an Australasian Association for Engineering Education project developing an equitable generative AI co-pilot for engineering students. She is also a committed educator and mentor who supports PhD, master’s, undergraduate and capstone students through inclusive, research-led supervision.
Research fields
- 400505 Construction materials
- 400502 Civil geotechnical engineering
UN sustainable development goals
- 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- 13 Climate Action
- 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
Academic positions
- Lecturer, Civil and Infrastructure Engineering
- RMIT University
- Australia
- 13 Jul 2026 – Present
- Lecturer in Civil Engineering
- James Cook University
- Australia
- 12 May 2025 – 13 Jul 2026
- Research Fellow
- Monash University
- Melbourne, Australia
- 4 Sep 2023 – 12 May 2025
Teaching interests
Lucy is an inclusive, research-informed and practice-oriented educator with teaching experience across Australia and China. She teaches civil and infrastructure engineering at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, with particular expertise in soil mechanics, geotechnical engineering, computational methods, systems engineering and infrastructure resilience. Her teaching integrates industry case studies, research findings, computational tools and interactive problem-solving to develop students’ technical capability, systems thinking and professional judgement.
Lucy also conducts research into responsible and equitable uses of generative AI in engineering education. She develops AI-supported learning activities that strengthen—not replace—critical thinking, problem-solving and independent verification.
Research interests
Lucy’s research aims to improve the resilience, sustainability and long-term performance of geo-infrastructure under climate extremes, natural hazards and changing operational demands. Her principal research interests include:
- Climate-resilient geo-infrastructure;
- Road pavement and unsealed-road engineering;
- Riverbank stability, erosion and flood resilience;
- Rainfall-induced slope instability;
- Unsaturated soil mechanics;
- Hydro-mechanical behaviour of compacted soils and granular materials;
- Cyclic loading, shakedown, ratcheting and permanent deformation;
- Sustainable and recycled construction materials;
- Buried-pipeline performance and corrosion-resistant backfills;
- Coupled multiphysics and finite element modelling;
- AI, machine learning and digital engineering for infrastructure;
- Performance-based design, monitoring and asset management.
