Dr. Annan Zhou is a Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Throughout his career, he has secured two prestigious ARC Fellowships (ARC DECRA and Future Fellow) and brought in over $5 million in competitive research grants to RMIT over the past decade. His exceptional contributions to soil mechanics have been recognized with the John Booker Medal in Engineering Science from the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) in 2022, an honour awarded to only 20 leading scientists in Australia. Recently, he was named one of Australia's top 250 researchers for 2024 by Research Magazine, The Australian (the largest newspaper in Australia), and was acknowledged as the leading researcher in Environmental & Geological Engineering in Australia. His dedication to research excellence and supervision has earned him multiple accolades, including the RMIT Award in Research Excellence, the STEM College Peter Coloe Medal, and the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Supervision Excellence.