Ben is a Professor of Computational Hydrodynamics and civil engineer.  His research focuses on the fundamental development and application of novel simulations of free-surface flows, hydrodynamics and multi-phase mixing phenomena. 

Ben read Engineering Science with first class honours at the University of Oxford and then stayed on for a D.Phil. under the supervision of Professors Alistair Borthwick and Paul Taylor. In 2002, he moved to the US to work with Professor Robert A. Dalrymple at the Johns Hopkins University on coastal engineering research and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). He then spent a year at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland working with Prof. Marc Parlange on LES flows over hills. In 2005, he moved back to the UK to continue working on SPH with Professors Peter Stansby and Dominique Laurence at the University of Manchester where he was an RCUK Research Fellow (2007-12), Senior Lecturer (2012-14),  Reader (2014-18), and Professor (2018-) as Chair of Computational Hydrodynamics.

He is a founding member of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics rEsearch and engineeRing International Community (SPHERIC), the international organisation representing the development and use of SPH. He has been a member of the Steering Committee since 2005, ran the website from 2005-2015 (http://spheric-sph.org), led SPHERIC as the Chair (2015-2021) and is now Vice-Chair.  Ben is also a core developer of the leading open-source SPH codes, SPHysics, SWE-SPHysics (http://www.sphysics.org) and DualSPHysics (http://www.dual.sphysics.org).  He is the leader of the SPH Specialist Group 'SPH@Manchester' in Manchester.

His research activities include:

numerical simulation and experimental investigation of free-surface flows, water waves and coastal hydrodynamics, shallow water equations (SWEs), natural hazards modelling (flooding and tsunamis), specialising in the use of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and finite volume methods (FVMs) accelerated using novel low-energy hardware such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and massively parallel high-performance computing (HPC) systems.  New applications of SPH are also being explored such as high-temperature and multi-phase simulations including laser processing, intumescent paints, sludge flows, etc.

Scopus: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57208381722

Web of Science (ResearcherID): https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/1674405

Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=tN6_jWcAAAAJ

DualSPHysics YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/DualSPHysics

SPH@Manchester: https://sph-manchester.weebly.com/

MAJOR LEADERSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES

Internal:

• Director of Postgraduate Research (PGR) Studies, School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, 2013-2018
• Senior Mentor, Depts of (i) Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, & (ii) Fluids and the Environment, 2020-2024
• Acting Head of Department of Civil Engineering and Management 2025-2026

External:

• Chair (2015-2021) and Founding member (2005) of SPH rEsearch and engineeRing International Community (SPHERIC), Webmaster 2005-2015, Vice-Chair, 2021-2026
• Editor-in-Chief, Engineering and Computational Mechanics (Proc. ICE)

• Free-surface hydrodynamics, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), Shallow Water Equations (SWEs)
• Numerical methods
• Multi-phase flows
• Wave breaking
• Flooding
• Tsunamis
• Novel hardware, GPUs
• ExaScale computing