David Ayala-Cabrera is an Ad Astra Fellow and Assistant Professor at the UCD School of Civil Engineering. He received his bachelor’s degree in Sanitary Engineering from the Universidad del Valle (Univalle, Colombia), He obtained a Master in Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering with distinction by the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV, Spain). He obtained a PhD in Water and Environmental Engineering by the UPV in 2015. The PhD degree has obtained the qualification of the “Cum Laude” mention, the “International doctor” mention and the “Extraordinary PhD Thesis Award 2017”. He obtained a Postdoc in Protection of Critical Infrastructures (Irstea, France) in 2018. His current research interests are focus on promoting the uses of non-destructive methods in buried asset assessment (e.g. ground penetrating radar), the analysis of complex systems, protection of critical infrastructures and the uses of intelligent data analysis. He has published a number of papers in high impact journals and participated in several international meetings.