Department of
Civil Engineering
 

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John Owen

Faculty Director of Educational Development, Faculty of Engineering

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Biography

Dr John S Owen joined the University of Nottingham as a lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering in 1993, having completed his BEng (Hons) and PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol. He was subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer, now Associate Professor, and served as Head of the Department of Civil Engineering from 2009-2014.

Dr Owen is a past chairman of the UK Wind Engineering Society (2009-2012) and was chair of the 6th European and African Conference on Wind Engineering held in Cambridge in 2013. He was chair of the Association of Civil Engineering Departments for 2014-15 and was the ACED representative on the Engineering Professors' Council.

Dr Owen is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Member of the Institute of Physics and a Chartered Engineer. In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the Wind Engineering Society.

Dr Owen is also a member of the Centre for Structural Engineering & Informatics Research Group.

Teaching Summary

Dr Owen teaches structural analysis and structural design and has at different times taught all of the core structural engineering content in years one and two of the UG programme. Currently he… read more

Research Summary

Dr Owen's research focuses on the dynamic behaviour of Civil Engineering structures. His principal interests are in wind engineering, especially the dynamic response of structures to wind,… read more

Selected Publications

Dr Owen teaches structural analysis and structural design and has at different times taught all of the core structural engineering content in years one and two of the UG programme. Currently he contributes to a year three module on structural concrete design, a year four/MSc module on dynamics and wind engineering and an MSc project module on tall building design.

Dr Owen has a keen interest in the development of engineering education and the assessment for student learning. He led the Faculty of Engineering's TTP project on assessment and is working to develop the use of on line assessment tools to provide immediate formative assessment for students on his own modules. He has also received funding from the University of Birmingham/Nottingham Educational Partnership Fund to develop assessment in engineering. He currently serves as the Faculty of Engineering director of education development.

Dr Owen is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He was the External Examiner for the Civil Engineering programmes at Heriot Watt University from 2012-2017 and for the MSc in Structural Engineering and Practice at the University of Birmingham 2014-2018. He is currently the external examiner for Civil Engineering programmes at the University of Exeter and for the MSc in Structural Engineering at Newcastle University.

Current Research

Dr Owen's research focuses on the dynamic behaviour of Civil Engineering structures. His principal interests are in wind engineering, especially the dynamic response of structures to wind, application of vibration data to structural health monitoring and tubular structures.

Current projects include

  • Structural health monitoring of the Forth Road Bridge (In collaboration with NGI with funding from ESA)
  • The resilience of infrastructure during typhoons in Vietnam (In collaboration with Vietnamese German University funded by the Royal Society from the GCRF)
  • Structural health monitoring of the Phu My Bridge in Vietnam (in collaboration with Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology funded by Innovate UK through the GCRF)

Past Research

Recent projects have included:

  • Computational modelling of wind loads on tall buildings
  • Computational modelling of wind borne debris flight
  • Modelling damage and degradation in RC structures
  • Emergent modelling of crowd structure interaction on pedestrian bridges
  • Residual strength in post-tensioned bridge structures
  • Progressive collapse of flat slab structures

Future Research

Dr Owen's immediate research plans are to investigate the response of long span bridges under non stationary winds; to consider the resilience of communications and energy distribution networks under extreme winds; and to investigate how reliability methods can be used to improve the way extreme winds and pedestrian loading is considered in the design process.

I welcome enquiries from potential PhD candidates from Home, EU and international countries who are interested in the following research areas: wind effects on structures, structural health monitoring, wind loading design codes.

Department of Civil Engineering

The University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD


telephone: +44 (0) 115 95 14081