Opening & Muir Wood Lecture
The ITA World Tunnel Congress commences with an official Opening Ceremony that features the distinguished Muir Wood Lecture, delivered by a leading figure in the tunnelling field, alongside keynote presentations addressing current challenges and innovations in underground construction.
The Muir Wood Lecture named in honour of Sir Alan Muir Wood (1921–2009), one of the founding figures of the ITA and a highly respected civil engineer who made major contributions to tunnelling and underground construction worldwide.
MUIR WOOD LECTURE 2027
Professor Eivind Grøv
From Breaking Barriers in Tunnelling to Pushing the Limits and Challenging the Technology Frontiers in Underground Use
This year’s lecture examines how the global tunnelling community can adapt to urgent societal and environmental demands:
Expanding Technical Frontiers: Pushing the boundaries of rock mass engineering, materials performance, and subterranean construction to unlock complex geological environments.
Strategic Underground Development: Positioning underground space as a vital resource for sustainable urban planning, climate resilience, and critical infrastructure protection.
Preserving Surface Assets: Demonstrating how underground solutions mitigate surface congestion, preserving surface land for nature, people, and future generations.
Global Best Practices: Leveraging international cross-continental lessons to address emerging global challenges with safe, sustainable, and forward-thinking solutions.
Professor Eivind Grøv
is Chief Scientist at SINTEF, Trondheim. Grøv graduated from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in 1983 with a degree in Geotechnical Engineering. He worked as a consultant from 1984 to 2005, including international assignments and on-site project roles. In 2005, Grøv joined SINTEF and was appointed Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in 2009.
Grøv has spent his career working in the tunnelling industry, covering underground applications for many purposes like oil/gas storage, hydropower, road/railway tunnels and subsea tunnels in rock. His experience includes providing expert services to a wide range of projects in more than twenty countries.
He has been an invited lecturer and keynote speaker at numerous international conferences and authored more than 150 papers. Grøv has supervised and co-supervised many PhDs and MSc-students. He has managed several large and important industry research projects.
Grøv served as President of the Norwegian Tunnelling Society and is Honorary Member of the Society. He is also former President of the Norwegian Tunnelling Network. He served as Vice President of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA), completing a six-year term on the Executive Council (ExCo), he was also a member of the first Governance Council in ITA and is an Honorary Affiliate Member of ITA.
During his term as ITA Vice President, Grøv was among the ExCo members who, in 2009, decided to establish the Sir Alan Muir Wood Lecture following Sir Alan’s passing. The Council appointed Professor Einar Broch as the inaugural lecturer. Nearly two decades later, Grøv has the honour of delivering the Sir Alan Muir Wood Lecture himself, marking a special connection to a tradition he helped establish.