About Bernadette Wichman

Dr. Bernadette Wichman is an expert and a leader of research projects in the field of geo-engineering and the engineering of water defences. She also gives practical advises that are related to this research. She has gained a broad experience as well as a profound understanding on topics as: consolidation of soft soil (PhD topic was the consolidation of gaseous dredged material in large scale disposal sites), modelling of groundwater flow, stability of dike revetments and ecological friendly dike design methods.

Bernadette started her carrier in applied physics and carried out a successful research on laser spectroscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy (nano-technology), that resulted in several research papers.

Currently, she is involved as an expert in large dike strengthening projects and monitoring, for dikes as the Afsluitdijk, Houtribdijk (both in the Dutch IJssellake region), Grebbedijk (at the river Rhine near Wageningen). She has collaborated with ecologists and hydraulic engineers on the design of an ecological friendly dike concept (using soft materials and vegetation), which is under consideration in the project “strengthening of the western Markermeerdijk”.

She also carries out a large research program on asphaltic dike revetments, see https://www.deltares.nl/en/pro.... Part of this research is a series of scaled wave attack experiments and numerical modelling.

Several years before, she was the leader of an innovative project: underheightening of road bodies, i.e. lifting the pavement by injecting light weight suspension under the road construction.

She was successful as a teacher at University (Master courses and Bachelor courses) and course leader. She has collaborated with several Universities, such as the University of Delft, Oxford University, University of Karlsruhe, Polish Academy of Sciences and the VU University in Amsterdam.