Dr Hunt obtained both his MEng (Hons) degree and PhD from Birmingham in 2000 and 2005 respectively. His globally cited PhD looked at improving predictive methods for ground movements associated with multiple tunnel construction.
From 2003 to 2012 Dr Hunt worked on a number of multi-million pound Interdisciplinary, Multi-disciplinary and Trans-disciplinary grants progressing through the ranks of research associate, research fellow, Senior Research Fellow, Research Investigator, Co-Investigator to Principal Investigator. In 2011 he secured a Marie Curie scholarship for visiting scholar Nikolai Bobylev.
In 2012 Dr Hunt was awarded a Birmingham Fellowship (equivalent to a Stewarts’ scholarship) allowing him to continue his research work for a further four years progressing to full-time Lecturer in 2016. He currently specialises in the areas of Underground and Sustainable Construction.
Dr Hunt has been active in the field of “Sustainability” and Underground’ (in their broadest sense) since 2003, having undertaken research within and published on a range of relevant themes including but not limited to: Energy, Water, Materials, Transportation, Asset Management, Utility Infrastructure, Sustainability Assessment, Tunnel Construction, Urban (and aspirational) Futures, Urban metabolism and Waste.
Dr Hunt has authored > 120 publications (>50 in refereed international journals – winning both the Trevithik and Asset Management Awards for best paper in journal), this includes a BRE publication on Designing Resilient Cities and a series of Little Books. His h-index is 23 with i-10 index of 44, with a number of papers amassing >100 citations each. This includes papers in high citation journals (e.g. Global Environmental Change – IF = 10.46) Altogether, he has been cited >1700 times (Google-Scholar) with 70% these occurring in the last five years, this is accompanied by >50,000 views of his research work on Research Gate and 45,000 views on Mendeley.
He is on the Editorial Board of two journals (Sustainability and Civil Engineering), and has organised and presented at national / international conferences and workshops. Additionally he has delivered invited Talks and is a regular referee for 14 international journals including but not limited to:
- ICE- Water management;
- ICE- Sustainable Engineering;
- ICE- Urban Design and Planning;
- ICE - Asset management;
- Sustainability;
- Water;
- Local Environment;
- Journal of Environmental Engineering;
- Global Environmental Change;
- Environment and Planning B;
- Journal of Mountain science;
- Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology (TUST);
- Canadian Geotechnical journal;
- Geotechnique.
Dr Hunt was awarded ‘Outstanding Reviewer’ Status for TUST (top 10th percentile in terms of the number of reviews completed two years running) in 2015. Dexter is an excellent communicator having honed these skills over many years rearing his children, tutoring, teaching and from research interaction with and between many students, academics and stakeholder audiences from multiple disciplinary backgrounds. Dexter regularly presents and leads panels at national / international conferences and workshops.
Dr Hunt has a total of 18 (mostly externally funded) doctoral students (10 having completed) and has examined 20 higher degrees (2 as external at UK institutions and 18 as Internal). In addition he has five years of experience leading both BEng and MEng Final Year Research Modules.
Dr Hunt teaches on and has been module lead for a number of courses at UoB this includes: Underground Construction, Sustainable Construction, Geotechnics, Geotechnical Asset Management and Materials 1 and 2.