Muhammad Afzal is currently working as a Research Fellow at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering-NTNU. He has more than 06 years of professional experience and expertise in the field of digitalization in the built environment, including both applied research and industrial experiences. 

During the next couple of years, he will be working on the research project "Digital twin for smart buildings in a positive energy district (PED)." The research project is part of one of NTNU's strategic initiatives for the green shift in the built environment, i.e., "Green2050". 

Very recently, before joining NTNU, he was part of the EU-funded II-level specialization program, i.e., Master's in Building Information Modelling (BIMA+) at the consortium of Politecnico di Milano (Italy), University of Minho (Portugal), and University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). His research thesis developed a guidance document for the intelligent execution of digital twin technology in the built environment practices. Earlier, he had also worked full-time as a scientific assistant at the Technical University of Munich (Germany) during the year 2020. He worked on a DFG-funded research project that aimed at the modularization (early design conceptions) of facetted structural elements made of carbon-reinforced ultra-high-performance concrete using digital tools combined with artificial intelligence.

Muhammad Afzal did his M.Phil. (a research-based degree) in Civil Engineering from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where his research (funded by HKCIC) was striving after developing a systematic framework for automated detailing design optimization of reinforced concrete structures using BIM and metaheuristic algorithms. Besides, he completed his B.Sc. in Building and Architectural Engineering from Bahauddin Zakariya University (Pakistan) in 2014.