 So, what are the recent trends? If you want to be a matured mind or a researcher, you have to adopt what I am going to talk about here, civil engineering without materials is nowhere, can you give me some examples of how material science and civil engineering is interfacing with each other. In my personal professional career, I have used material science a lot and being a geomaterial scientist that is when I deal with soils and rocks, basically the basic component is same as any other material which a metallurgist will like to deal with and we understand this fact because our material also has silica, alumina and iron, calcium and I what not and the same thing metallurgists also deal with. Something which is becoming very interesting in the profession right now is neomaterials and the nanomaterials. Any idea about neomaterials and nanomaterials? That is very good, carbon nanotubes, they are used as a microfilter, you can use this filter for drinking water cleanup, any other example yes, but not in this form of silica, when I teach consolidation curve in the class, I always emphasize that soil has a memory, can you justify this? Yes sir. Have you gone through my lecture proofs earlier? Yes, that is right. So, if you look at the NC and OC behavior, the soil remembers that what was the pre-consolation pressure to which it has been exposed. So, there is a memory in the material with which we work and that is why I say that the material with which we work is a very lively material, it is a live material, you cannot deal this material as a dead material, there is a difference between the materials with which we deal and the other scientists deal. Neomaterials, any idea? Not really, geosynthetics are made up of PVC and neo is something which is latest, new, the application of new materials, where biology is heading towards now, biotechnology, we are trying to create artificial skins, can we design something of that sort, it becomes a artificial soil. So, when we talk about new materials, basically we talk about some minerals which are synthetic minerals, we talk about soils cracking, desiccating, shrinking, swelling type of soils, problematic soils and so on. Now, can I create some minerals or the material which are so intelligent, which will stop this process, the processes which are not conducive to construction activity. May be by the end of the course, I may use the words as self-sealing and self-healing minerals. So, this is where most of the research is going on, particularly I am very much eager to learn this subject that how minerals can be used, which can recognize based on the environmental condition, whether they have to seal the crack themselves or in the crack themselves. The application would be in concrete, where we are talking about bio-concrete nowadays, is it not? What bio-concrete is? Any guess? No idea? What bio, what is doing? It is using life in concrete. It can heal, it can heal by itself and. It can detect the cracks in itself. Monitabha, all types of materials and all kinds of cracks and all. It can subject the internal cracks and can heal itself. Why people are not happy with construction with soils? Why did they discover concrete? You could have made walls of soil. They can stand almost a meter and so on, strength. How strength comes? What is the engineering parameter which guides the strength of the material? Go to the micro level. Yes, please. Sir, when you want to construct the building also suppose, when we only deal with soil, it may not bear all the loadings of all this. Agreed. So, this is what you are saying that strength will be less. Yes, sir. Now, my question is why strength is less? And in what way concrete is more strengthful? Sir, soil is not a purely elastic. Don't go in all the, okay. So, when you say dense, can you elaborate a bit on how density comes in picture? Actually, soil is not an engineering material. Concrete is an engineering material whereas the. Exactly. So, when you are, exactly you are right. Here you are. Exactly. So, basically the difference between soil and concrete would be the porosity. Agreed. So, if a system has more porosity, it's bound to show you less strength as compared to a system which has less porosity. So, truly speaking, all civil engineers, particularly the construction specialists would be very happy and delighted if they can produce a concrete of zero porosity, okay. Now, zero porosity cannot be achieved just by adding silica fumes, senospheres, micro silica or whatever is in fashion these days. That means a little bit of void is still left which can be. Now, can you complete what, where we were and why I gave you so much of story? Exactly. Bio-activity. So, that means you think of a situation where the bacterial activity fills up the voids which are present in the concrete. How this is possible? The excreta of the bacteria can be utilized for filling up the voids which are present in the concrete. So, this is the whole concept of designing bio-concrete. So, you think of the materials which are going to act as nutrition or which are going to support the nutrition of bacteria in the most passive form. When you design filters for, let's say, reservoirs or swimming pools, you use silica. But on silica particles, you grow microbes and what these microbes are doing? They try to digest the sludge which is present in the water, clear? So, if this type of a situation occurs in the concrete where the bacterial activity itself takes care of the voids which are present in the concrete, this type of a concrete is going to be the best possible concrete. Now, this is where the research is going on. In geotechnical engineering, we would like to design covers, liners. I hope you understand what are covers and what are liners. These are basically compacted clays through which no water should permeate, clear? But go one step ahead. No gases should also permeate in the environment. One more step ahead would be no radioactivity should permeate out of it. So, this is where actually we require minerals which are synthetic minerals, which are much upgraded than the minerals which are already present in nature like monmonite, phantomite and so on which have certain limitations. So, these type of minerals are to be devised, fabricated, synthesized and their utility has to be shown. It is a very big chapter on which lot of people are trying to work. It is a very good research area. Some of you may find it useful either in your academic career or maybe as a professional career, whatever. These are very futuristic subjects. In mining or the mineral engineering, there used to be a time when people used to say I am a mining engineer and you are a civil engineer. Now Kunal, I think you can throw some more light on why these two subjects are amalgamating. Just for his introduction, he is basically an engineering geology student doing his PhD in geotechnical engineering because our research areas happen to be common. Yes, please. What are the activities and civil engineers always on the constructions and other constructions and other aspects? Yeah, so that thin demarcation... There is difference, little demarcation between both the... Yeah, but that is disappearing now. When we talk about the stability of slopes, we can talk about the stability of vertical cuts or shoots or the tunnels even. Yes. Okay? So mining is the activity where the whole idea was to take out the mineral resources from the ground. But then our role is to create a stable space. A strength. Yeah, a strength. Exactly, so that the production of minerals continues. It should not stop. So this is where you will find that this subject is also picking up the attention of geotechnical engineers. Geo-hazard mitigation, I am sure most of you must be aware of. Lot of money is being spent by government of India and all over the world to mitigate the geo-hazards. Can you name some geo-hazards? Landslites. Landslites. Yes. Earthquakes. Earthquakes. What else? Earthquakes. Okay. Sunamis. Sunamis. Sunamis. What else? Stamped. Stamped. Stamped. Stamped. You go to a place, public place where you have lot of people and then you never know. This stamped may cause so much of chaos, floods, droughts, any natural activity which is beyond a certain activity level can be termed as your that fires in jungles, all right. Recently there was a case in Australia where the jungle kept on burning for few months in New South Wales or somewhere. Now, this is where people have lot of interest in geotechnical engineering, information technology, artificial intelligence and expert systems though people have done lot of work in these areas, but still any example of expert systems AI, IT where you have correlations with the geotechnical engineering, ok. Something which is more to the point and concrete, soft computing in geotechnical engineering, civil engineering is gaining a lot of momentum, neural networks, is it not? Genetic algorithms, you agree? Anything where you need a decision, you may use these systems, IT, AI or expert systems to get information, you will find lot of databases are there which can give you the information about a soil in which you are interested by just locating it from the database. So, you need not to do the test, see a modern, most modern civilized society would be where I need not to perform any test on any soil. I do not want to spend 7 days doing a CD test, consolidated drain test which will take at least 7 days, what I want is I want all the parameters to be estimated as soon as possible. So, if I know the fundamental properties of soil like particle size distribution, its Atterbug limits, its volume mass properties and so on, there are few databases which are available, if I just feed the values there I should be knowing the parameters. Now, what is the algorithm behind these databases? These are nothing but expert systems. So, some of you might have done these are basically known as SQL's sequential query languages. So, you keep on feeding the commands in the system sequentially and you get the response or the answer. So, if I say that the given soil has this type of particle size distribution, what should be its shear strength parameters, the answer should come out by searching the database. So, this is where a lot of people are working. Any other good example of IT, AI and expert systems? The name is different which is known as data mining. So, your computer science friends must be using these jargons and you can use these jargons in your own profession. What is data mining? Data mining is again nothing but SQL sequential query language. So, you write a program in such a way that you have 5, 6 queries from a database and the database gives you an answer. The philosophy behind this is that everywhere in every continent, every country people are trying to characterize the soil, but ultimately can we dump all the data somewhere where this information can be used by anybody rapidly, without testing the soils physically. So, this is where the concept comes virtual laboratory, virtual computing and so on, virtual data analysis of the soil mark. So, it is a very new concept which is now gaining lot of momentum and people are trying to work on this. In my research also I use expert systems like soil vision which are very useful in giving you the information about the material properties. A very recent development is biogeo interface which is talking about the molecular mechanics. Last year in our Goa conference which we organized we had lot of papers in this subject about 25, 30 papers from across the world, where people are trying to interface biological concepts with the geotechnical engineering concepts. Any guess how they can correlate these two things? Something like that, yes that is right, basically when we talk about molecular mechanics, so clay happens to be the most active mineral and this is a still a nature's gift to man mankind and totally undiscovered I would say still even after so much of research has been conducted on this. You will agree with this fact that till now civil engineers have not given due to interaction of soils with anything living you know in nature, while this type of interaction goes on in nature quite a lot. Now based on this philosophy, in fact some people have started saying that where the role of civil engineering stops that is where the biotechnology takes up or takes over. A good example is that atomic energy is facing this problem quite a lot. If you want to cut off the atomic base completely from the biosphere, no leakage in terms of gases, no leakage in terms of liquids and no leakage in terms of solids you will not have here. I am sure you compact the soil to any extent still porosity remains, clear you load the soil as much as you can, but still porosity remains. That means under no circumstances if you are working with soils alone the system can become totally impervious or near impervious, well the answer was that people went for concrete, they adopted concrete in their designs and they came up with concrete valets, vaults and so on for isolation of the waste, but what happens is the concrete itself degrades because of the activity of hazardous space like radioactivity. Now this is where actually people have realized that we have to take help of the biotechnology. You grow some bacteria which can nourish themselves on radioactive waste and they can reduce the intensity of the radioactive waste, clear. So this is where I said that whatever civil engineers could not do that part has to be taken care of by nature and bioactivity happens to be a part of the natural phenomena. After this twin tower collapse in New York people have started talking about fire protection and engineering and this has become a very mandatory part of civil engineering. Earlier we never used to design structures for elevated temperatures, alright. So now this has become a new subject on which lot of research is going on, people are trying to understand how fire protection safety should be imparted to the structures. Another interesting trend in civil engineering is infrastructure engineering, it is a very big world what I am trying to connote to is the land creation. The best way we can create land is either from sea or from rivers or from lakes, alright. Of course this is against natural phenomena, natural activity, but still if you move across the all along the coastline of India, you will find that so many ports have come up in the recent time. Cochin port is a good example, Jawaharlal Nehru port trust is a very good example, these are all manmade ports. So majority of the work deals with land reclamation and when you say reclamation this is from the sea, alright. So basically what looks like sea today may be after 5 years, 10 years the tendency is to utilize it as a utility land. Similarly, lot of thing lot of airports have been developed in sea, they are floating airports. Changi airport is one of such type of airports which is basically has been reclaimed from the sea, Busan airport in Seol is also a type of this a type of airport and so on. So infrastructure engineering is picking up a lot and some of the IITs have already started a course on infrastructure engineering as a masters Karakor particularly and we are also in the process of loading this course. Preservation, restoration and rehabilitation of monuments and old structures, lot of geotechnics is involved in these type of activities where you want to preserve, restore and rehabilitate monuments and old structures. In India I think Ajanta caves and Ellora caves are under severe threat of you know deterioration. So this is where you they need your help from geotechnical engineers particularly in designing some systems which are leak proof. So that the paintings and the history of India does not get destroyed, when I visited them some 3, 4 years back I was associated with Ajanta caves and all in restoration process. I mean I just imagine that the entire caves have to be covered with some minerals and these minerals should be eco friendly. You are not supposed to use cement there, you cannot take the vehicles even there. So this is how actually these places are so sensitive. I do not know whether you have heard about Arctic soil mechanics cold region, there are many countries which have done very well in soil mechanics but truly speaking what they have what nature has given them as soil is nothing but permafrost, Norwegian countries, Scandinavish countries, Canada, some parts of US and so on where you will not get this type of soil per say this will be only frozen soil. So right now very conveniently you talk about three phase system soil, water and air. Now there could be a situation where any of these phase may get disappeared or may get added up to the model. So you are working right now with three phase system, you go to cold countries or partially cold countries there the call of the nature is to develop a four phase multi phase system, you agree. So this is how actually transformation of the knowledge which you have keeps on changing. Similarly lot of work is going on lunar soils, when I was a student I remember Maize professor, so he brought some sample of lunar soil and he wanted to characterize them at that time 1989. Now speaking of why any idea why people want to characterize lunar soil, what is the reason? They want to build it a house even on the moon. That is right there was some news that the booking is already on. So unless geotechnical engineers help, structural engineers cannot do much. Similarly lot of information is required on Martian soils and you know this explorers which had gone and they were trying to collect the soil data from the Mars. Right now these two I would say planetary sciences are coming in the preview of geomechanics, I hope you agree. Did you wonder that your soldiers remain in Kargil, how do they stay there and Tartica your scientist go, how they survive there, if you do not provide them good shelter. What type of foundation engineering you are doing, doing setting in IIT Bombay or setting in India, when you cannot provide foundations in Antarctica for your own scientist. So this is the biggest challenge, you have to provide foundations which can take the moments of the order of the wind speed which you expect in Antarctica and what is another challenge, the level of the foundation keeps on changing every day, why because of either snow, either it melts or it freezes, think of the situation where the science mechanics would be and where the foundation engineering would be if you take in account all these things, you agree or no, so it is a word full of complexities. What we have done is very conveniently we have taken out few concepts from the literature and we say that we are experts in this areas, the situation changes and we are handicap, you think of a antenna which is of 25 meter, 50 meter in diameter which is normally used for early warning systems, so you want to house this type of a antenna for scientific study as well as for strategic studies, so how these foundations are going to be designed for this type of system which is 50 meter in diameter and going to space the wind speeds of 150 kilometer per hour, so this is where lot of conferences are being done in different parts of the countries where people talk about cold region geomechanics. Of course, I am yet to see a dedicated conference on lunar and Martian soil mechanics, but I am sure by the time you became professional, you will find that such type of things will be in fashion and those of you are working in this area will be having a very high status in the society. Another interesting subject is forensic engineering. This is the very interesting branch of engineering which requires attention of any civil engineer I would say not only geotechnical engineer, why it is so? Most of the projects which are being executed are mega projects in civil engineering and unfortunately many of these projects fall in the category of what legal problems or legal situations. Now, this is where the court cannot decide anything in favor of anybody unless a professional like you goes there and helps the court to understand what has gone wrong and who should be penalized and who should not be penalized. Now, this is becoming a very good profession particularly for upcoming people and growing professionals like you guys. You can adopt this subject and you can become experts in what is known as engineering aspects of legal problems associated with any project. There are lot of concepts of civil engineering and geotechnical engineering are required. One good example would be even after doing band drains and ground modification settlements may occur alright. Now, why it is so? The cost involved in this treatment is very much. Now, your client is not going to leave you if you find that after spending crores of rupees even then the ground settles you agree or no, but unfortunately sometime it happens because the nature is so unpredictable and your practice of putting PVDs and pre consolidation or pre loading may not be so effective. So, these type of scenarios are actually becoming very very common in our profession these days. So, this is where I say that it to me it looks like that forensic engineering is going to be a subject of future. Any other example in city like Bombay every year one or two buildings collapse after the rains you must have heard in newspaper sometimes in Thane building will tilt somewhere the building two floor will become a basement sometimes the entire 17 story building will collapse in 10 minutes and so on. Now, who is going to solve these type of issues? If not you those who have done only law cannot take any decision on this. So, this is where actually forensics studies forensic engineering are becoming very very important in our profession. Sometimes I call them as post mortem of a project also. So, you start from the back end and do the forward analysis and find out what went wrong so that this type of disaster has occurred ok. So, I hope I have tried to give you some idea about where we can you know proceed further in our careers. Unfortunately, I am not sure that how many people are aware of so many upcoming field in civil engineering is basically the more you adopted to you the more and more questions and answers come to your mind. Any suggestions anything further you want to add here comes to your mind I have not included that is very good. In material science you can have new nanomaterials and recycle materials that is right ok. So, try to think of something more and you please include in this list.