Dr. Seyed Hamidreza Ghaffar is the Head of Engineering at the University of Birmingham, Dubai, and an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering. He is a Chartered Civil Engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (CEng, FICE). Before joining the University of Birmingham, he held the position of Reader in Civil Engineering at Brunel University London from 2017 to 2023. At Brunel, he completed his Civil Engineering with Sustainability degree in 2012 and earned his Ph.D. in Sustainable Engineering Materials in 2016, fully sponsored by the Industrial Cooperative Awards in Science & Technology. Over the years, he has taken on various academic roles, including Industrial Placement Coordinator, Admissions Tutor, and Senior Tutor for the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. He also serves as the Executive Editor for an Elsevier Journal, Results in Engineering. He is a Member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and has been appointed as an expert evaluator for the Dutch Research Council (NWO), the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF), the office of the Government of the Slovak Republic, and the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).