Juan Bernal-Sánchez

I started a BEng in civil engineering in the polytechnic university of Cartagena in Spain for a period of three years. At the same time, I worked as an intern student at the department of metallic structures for a year. Concretely, I worked in the process of amending and adapting the Spanish metallic structures code based on the Eurocode 3 (UNE EN 1993-1) with the project leader of the metallic structures department. As a recognition for attaining the best mark of my promotion, I was awarded with the class medal in civil engineering.

The grant received from the polytechnic university in Spain included the option of doing a student exchange with Edinburgh Napier University to study directly the last two academic years of the MEng in civil engineering. Therefore I accepted the opportunity and I moved to Edinburgh in order to complete the MEng specialised in Geotechnics, Structure and Transport for the period 2013-2015. After six months of studying, I decided to apply for a summer placement to gain more experience in the area of civil engineering and I was accepted by the IAESTE of the UK to go for a placement in Hungary. The placement consisted of working as a geotechnical engineer for Swietelsky Magyarország, one of the main construction companies in Hungary, during the summer of 2014. The valuable experience obtained during this placement in Budapest helped me to obtain the best mark of my promotion and thus I was newly granted with the class medal of the MEng in the last year of the course. Besides this, I was also awarded with the annual prize offered by the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) at Napier university in recognition of the dissertation project elaborated at Edinburgh Napier University.

Thereafter, the university offered me a scholarship to do a PhD in in the following three years. The main aim of the project seeks to enhance the resistance of the soil foundation against seismic events with the introduction of a mixture composed of recycled rubber tyres and sand particles. The next academic achievement took place when I was invited to present in the British Geotechnical Association’s 2016 Young Geotechnical Engineers being awarded with the best presentation in the symposium.