Talia da Silva Burke is a senior lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering. Her field of interest is geotechnical engineering, and after graduating from the University of Pretoria she worked for Jones & Wagener Consulting Civil and Environmental Engineers overseeing the design, construction, operation and rehabilitation of various hazardous and general waste disposal facilities and associated infrastructure. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge where she conducted centrifuge modelling to investigate how geosynthetic-reinforced soils respond to the formation of underground voids (e.g. sinkholes). She then worked as a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge for two years where she led the fieldwork research, conducted in South Africa, for the multinational collaborative WindAfrica project which aimed to develop performance-based guidelines for wind turbines in Africa. Talia’s research interests are specifically related to arching in granular soils, sinkhole deformation mechanisms, geosynthetics and fibre-optic monitoring. She is registered as a professional engineer under the Engineering Council of South Africa.