Dr Majid Sedighi

Joining Date: 13/02/2015

Majid is a Research Fellow at the Geoenvironmental Research Centre (GRC). He is a Civil Engineer with an MSc in Geotechnical Engineering. He joined the GRC in 2007 to read for a PhD on coupled THCM processes in unsaturated soils with emphasis on hydro-geochemical behaviour of clays, after receiving the UK Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS).

Prior to his PhD at Cardiff, he worked for a period of five years (2002-2007) in three consulting engineers as a design engineer. During this period he was responsible for the design of structures and foundations and co-ordination of geotechnical investigations in various industrial and petrochemical projects.

He has conducted theoretical and experimental research in physical and chemical processes in soils and rock. His main research expertise and interest lie in modelling the sub-surface reactive flow of chemicals and gas. His research works aims at providing a better integration between chemical/geochemical processes and flow processes in soil and rock.

As part of his doctoral work, he developed a reactive transport model under coupled THCM formulation by coupling the GRC’s THCM model (COMPASS) with the geochemical model, PHREEQC version 2. He then applied the newly developed model COMPASS-PHREEQC to study the thermo-hydro-geochemical behaviour of compacted swelling clays in relation to geological disposal of high level radioactive waste.

He has conducted a research on prediction of microstructure evolution in compacted swelling clays based on a chemical approach. Majid has also studied the interaction between clays and heavy metal contaminants. He has published the results of his/joint research studies in several peered reviewed journals and conferences. Among those a top hottest article in Applied Clay Science in 2006 and a Highly Commendable Paper in the 4th International Conference on Problematic Soils in 2012.

He joined the Sustainable Earth Energy project (Seren) in 2010 as a Research Assistant conducting research on carbon dioxide sequestration in coal and coalbed methane recovery.

He has been a UNESCO Research Fellow provided by the GRC’s UNESCO Chair in Development of a Sustainable Geoenvironment since January 2012. He is responsible for day-to-day co-ordination/co-supervision/management of the scientific developments of several research programmes including Seren project (ground source heat, carbon dioxide sequestration in coal and geoinfomatics). He is also the leader of the “Advanced Computational Modelling” work package in Seren project.

He also works on projects related to geological disposal of HLW in GRC including SAFE Barriers to study the behaviour of compacted bentonite at elevated temperatures. and Petrus III. He has worked closely with POSIVA Oy on two projects dealing with the rock thermal data analysis and inverse modelling as part of two projects funded by POSIVA.