Dr Dimitra Achillopoulou
- Lecturer in Structural Design (Infrastructure & Environment)
Biography
Lecturer in Structural Design, James Watt School of Engineering
University of Glasgow | FHEA
Dr Dimitra Vasilios Achillopoulou is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Structural Design in the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow. She is a Chartered Civil Engineer (GR) and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, with over 14 years of experience in structural engineering research and professional practice.
She holds a 5-year MEng-equivalent diploma in Civil Engineering, an MSc in Earthquake-Resistant Structural Design, and a PhD in the repair and strengthening of reinforced concrete structures, all from the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTh, Greece). Her doctoral research focused on interface mechanisms in strengthened RC members and was partly supported by Sika Hellas.
Prior to her appointment at Glasgow in 2022, she held academic and research posts in Greece (DUTh), Italy (La Sapienza), and the UK (University of Surrey). These included a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor at DUTh, postdoctoral research and teaching roles at La Sapienza University of Rome, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the University of Surrey focused on guided-wave-based monitoring of retrofitted bridges.
Her research expertise lies in structural assessment, repair, and retrofitting; non-destructive evaluation; interface behaviour in composite systems; and resilience and adaptation strategies for infrastructure life cycles. She has led and contributed to numerous international projects and has authored over 45 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
She is an active member of the Smart Infrastructure Group, serves as BEng Civil Engineering Discipline Co-ordinator, Students’ Recruitment Convenor, and EDI Champion for the Civil Engineering Discipline at the University of Glasgow. Her academic leadership includes service on the School’s Recruitment Committee, Learning and Teaching Committee, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
She is the Leader of TG4: Digitalisation of FRPs in the International Institute for FRP in Construction (IIFC) and founding member of the International Association for Multidisciplinary Resilience (IAMDR).
Dr Achillopoulou’s work combines advanced experimental methods, numerical modelling, and digital technologies to improve the safety, sustainability, and resilience of civil infrastructure.
Research interests
Her research lies at the intersection of structural diagnostics, retrofitting technologies, and infrastructure resilience, with a particular focus on the repair and strengthening of concrete and masonry structures through advanced, non-destructive methods. Over the past 14 years, she has led and contributed to projects that span from experimental investigations of shear transfer mechanisms and composite strengthening systems to the digitalisation of structural health monitoring.
Her work has established interface efficiency benchmarks for FRP-based retrofitting, explored the use of guided waves for early discontinuity detection, and developed resilience frameworks that integrate real and artificial data with AI for lifecycle-informed decision-making.
Dimitra is especially interested in collaborating across disciplines on the integration of monitoring technologies into smart materials, the development of code-informed retrofitting strategies, and adaptive infrastructure design under multi-hazard scenarios—including seismic, environmental, and climate-related stresses.
She welcomes partnerships that aim to advance predictive modelling, data-enhanced inspection methods, and sustainable rehabilitation approaches for existing structures including social, political and investment data.
Grants
Dimitra has been the coordinator, Principal Investigator and REsearch Fellow in several projects:
Interfos: Investigation of interface response of adhesively bonded CFRP to concrete substrates using fibre optics, James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Sika AG, University of Aston, University of Birmingham
Design with structural glass, ETAA, DUTh
Composites with enhanced interface response for retrofitting structural members, ETAA, DUTh
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Independent Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018) ‘Novel assessment of bridge retrofitting measures through Interface Efficiency Indices (InterFeis) using a Guided Wave-based monitoring method’, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/223811/factsheet/en
Project for Young Researchers, La Sapienza University of Rome, ‘Dynamic characterization of materials and 3D visualization of discontinuities in solid media.’
Dynamic characterization of materials and 3D visualization of discontinuities in solid media, Project for Young Researchers, La Sapienza University of Rome
Additional information
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3423-9317
