Friday 13 March 2026 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Seminar Room, Civil Engineering Building, University of Cambridge
About
The DRF Lunchtime Clinic is delighted to welcome Dr Christian Koch, Professor of Intelligent Technical Design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, and Mahsa Mirboland, PhD candidate at the ITD group, who will join us to talk about “Damage and Diagnostics Information Modeling for Real-Time Digital Twins.”
About the talk:
Building Information Modeling (BIM) has long been heralded as the ultimate enabler of digital transformation in the AEC industry. Yet, despite its widespread adoption, persistent challenges in data interoperability, process fragmentation, and human interaction have revealed its limitations in delivering truly holistic, lifecycle-aware and practical digital solutions.
This has catalyzed a paradigm shift toward Digital Twinning—a more dynamic, adaptive, and data-driven vision of the built environment. In this talk, we present the teaching and research activities of the Intelligent Technical Design group at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany, where we are actively addressing these challenges through innovation in education and both applied and fundamental science.
The talk highlights key research projects in Damage and Diagnostics Information Modeling, which serve as foundational steps toward the development of robust, real-time Digital Twins. Moreover, we emphasize the concept of "Humans in the Loop” as a core driver of future developments. We present a concept of human-centric Digital Twins that empower decision-making, foster collaboration, and ensure trust, transparency, and sustainability across the entire asset lifecycle.
About the speakers:
Dr. Christian Koch is Professor of Intelligent Technical Design at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. He is a Fellow of the CIT Lab of Prof. Brilakis, has been an Associate Professor of Building Information Modeling (BIM) at the University of Nottingham, the Programme Director of Digitial Engineering at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. His current research is on BIM and Digital Twin applications for sustainable decision-making in the built environment.
Mahsa Mirboland has a MSc in Structural Engineering from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and is a PhD candidate at the ITD group. She has been working on OpenBIM, Structural Health Monitoring, Intelligent Transportation Systems and Mixed-Reality applications in engineering. Her PhD research addresses the human aspect in Digital Twin systems to create human-centric solutions for sustainable and resilient civil infrastructure.