[Image above] Jeff Chen, ACerS’ Cements Division chair and program manager, oil & gas at LafargeHolcim (right) presents a certificate of appreciation to past chair Kyle Riding (left). Credit: ACerS
Manhattan, Kansas is affectionately known as the “Little Apple”—a city full of rich history and unique culture in the heart of the Midwest. It’s also home to Kansas State University where, on July 20–22, ACerS’ Cements Division held their 6th Advances in Cement-based Materials meeting.
By all accounts, the meeting was a success, reports ACerS staffer Marcia Stout, who was there. The July 20th tutorial on service life modeling, presented by Jacques Marchand, president & CEO at SIMCO Technologies (Quebec, Canada); Gianluca Cusatis, associate professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.); and Nick Santero, senior consultant at thinkstep and lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, drew a packed house. The meeting’s annual poster session (which includes the student poster competition) followed.
Winners of the student poster contest were also recognized, and include Daniel I. Castaneda, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Kai Gong, Princeton University; Joshua Hogancamp, Texas A&M University; Morteza Khatib, Oklahoma State University; Sakineh Ebrahimpourmoghaddam, Rice University; Ghazal Sokhansefat, Oklahoma State University; and Lori E. Tunstall, Princeton University.
Student poster winners, pictured first row, left to right: Kai Gong, Joshua Hogancamp, Morteza Khatib, and Ghazal Sokhansefat. Back row, left to right: Daniel Castaneda, Matt D’Ambrosia (meeting co-chair), George Scherer (standing in for his student Lori Tunstall, who won). Credit: ACerS
Student Sakineh Ebrahimpourmoghaddam stands by her winning poster. Credit: ACerS
July 21–22 was devoted to nine sessions on topics that included everything from cement chemistry/hydration, to modeling, to nano/microscale material characterization, among many others.
Claire White, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University in New Jersey, presented a keynote talk in the geopolymers session called “Elucidating the kinetics and thermodynamics of alkali-activated materials using high- energy X-ray and neutron scattering.”
Dimitri Feys, assistant professor of materials engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Rolla, Mo.) gave a keynote talk in the meso/macroscale material characterization session titled “A Powerful Tool to Predict Concrete Pumping Pressure.”
The 2015 Della Roy Award was presented in memory of Hamlin Jennings, adjunct professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.) who passed away shortly before he was to give his award lecture at the meeting. To honor Jennings, the attendees watched a moving video that included numerous tributes to Jennings from his former PhD students and colleagues. The tribute was followed by a reception and banquet dinner sponsored by Elsevier.
At the annual division business meeting, the officers presented certificates of appreciation to past chair and meeting co-organizer Kyle Riding, assistant professor at Kansas State University. The meeting’s other organizer, Matt D’Ambrosia, senior engineer and project manager, materials and mechanics at CTLGroup.
Jeff Chen (center), ACerS’ Cements Division chair, presents certificates of appreciation to meeting co-chairs Kyle Riding (left) and Matt D’Ambrosia (right). Credit: ACerS
