Dr Boulent Imam is an Associate Professor (Reader) at the School of Sustainability, Civil and Environmental Engineering in the University of Surrey and Programme Director for the MSc Programmes in Bridge Engineering and Infrastructure Engineering and Management.

His main area of expertise is the whole-life performance assessment of bridges. He has extensively researched in the area of fatigue of bridges with collaborations with national and European infrastructure owners and managers, such as Network Rail, Highways England, TWI. His research has contributed towards in-depth understanding of the fatigue behaviour of riveted railway bridges and developed methods for more reliable quantification of their remaining fatigue life including detailed historical rail traffic models, novel numerical fatigue assessment methods, probabilistic modelling and reliability assessment. Dr Imam’s work on fatigue also encompasses the development of fracture mechanics guidelines for the assessment of fatigue crack growth in steel bridge details towards the optimisation of inspection and maintenance planning in steel bridges.

Recently, Dr Imam’s research has expanded towards assessing the potential impacts of climate change on bridge deterioration and quantifying the resilience of bridge infrastructure against extreme events, including bridge scour and flooding. He has served as a member of prestigious international committees (IABSE, IABMAS) and within the editorial board of high-profile journals. He has delivered Keynote lectures and has participated in scientific committees of major international conferences.