Dr Cormac Reale is a Senior Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Bath. His research focuses on the reliability, resilience and long-term performance of geotechnical infrastructure under uncertainty. He works at the interface of soil mechanics, structural health monitoring and probabilistic risk assessment to support evidence-based infrastructure decision-making.

Before joining Bath in 2019, he held postdoctoral positions at Delft University of Technology and University College Dublin. He obtained his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from University College Dublin in 2015 and holds a First Class Honours degree in Civil Engineering from University College Cork.

Research Overview

Geotechnical infrastructure is increasingly exposed to ageing, climate change and extreme loading events. Cormac develops reliability-based frameworks to quantify degradation processes and propagate soil variability and uncertainty through soil–structure interaction, bridging advanced soil mechanics and decision science to enable risk-calibrated design and infrastructure asset management.

His work integrates:

• Field monitoring and instrumentation

• Advanced laboratory characterisation

• Data-driven modelling and probabilistic analysis

• Reliability-based decision frameworks

A major strand of his research examines railway earthworks and slopes, where progressive degradation and fatigue can compromise network resilience. By combining structural health monitoring with stochastic modelling, his work helps infrastructure owners prioritise maintenance interventions and optimise investment.

He also leads research into offshore foundations for renewable energy systems, including suction caissons and monopiles. This includes probabilistic modelling of soil stiffness variability, scour detection using natural frequency shifts, and risk-informed design for offshore wind and tidal turbines.

Across both domains, the unifying theme is infrastructure decision-making under uncertainty, moving beyond deterministic safety factors toward quantified risk and optimised resilience.

Interested in supervising students investigating:

• Probabilistic geotechnics and reliability analysis

• Spatial variability and stochastic soil modelling

• Monitoring-informed model updating

• Infrastructure asset management under uncertainty

• Climate and extreme event risk for geotechnical systems

• Offshore foundation performance and life extension