PROFESSORS
Prof. Daman K. Panesar, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering
University of Toronto
Daman K. Panesar, Ph.D., P.Eng. is a Professor with the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada. She studied at McMaster University (Canada) for her BEng. and PhD degrees, and Western University (Canada) for her MASc degree. Dr. Panesar’s research activities are focused on the sustainability and durability of cement-based materials and structures. Prior to academia, her industrial experience focused on: construction, commissioning, evaluation, repair and plant life management of power reactors. At the University of Toronto, she has supervised several undergraduate research associates, masters, doctoral and post-doctoral fellows. Some recent and current research projects her research team have focused on include: multi-axial stress on alkali silica reaction of concrete, coupled concrete degradation mechanisms, carbonation curing of reactive MgO cements, formulations and properties of graphene cement composites, durability of limestone cements, lower carbon construction materials and the impact of modelling assumptions. Outcomes from her research team are disseminated and published in peer-reviewed journal articles (>75), peer-reviewed conference articles (>50), book chapters (4), industry reports (>50). She is passionate about a low carbon future, responsible design and the education of complex yet practical, critical principles of life-cycle perspectives with application to building, transportation, underground, and power infrastructure.
Professor Panesar serves and has leadership roles on national and international committees, some highlights include: Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and she is Chair of CSA-N287.5 (since 2010); Member International Association Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT) and she is an Advisory Board Member (since 2019), International Scientific Committee (ISC) Division Chair (since 2011), Co-Chair (SMiRT-27) (since 2022) and will be ISC Chair (SMiRT28 to be in 2025); India-Canada Centre for Innovative Multidisciplinary Partnerships (IC-IMPACTS) and is a member of the Research Management Committee (since 2013); Member of the RILEM Technical Activities Committee (since 2018), Bureau (since 2020) and is a Member on TC-ARM (since 2021). She also serves on the editorial board for Cement and Concrete Composites (since 2013 and as Assistant Editor since 2022), Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering (since 2018) and RILEM Technical Letters (since 2021).
She has been the recipient of awards including: Early Research Awards (Ministry of Economic Development and Innovations Ontario (2012-2017); Erwin Edward Hart Professor in Civil Engineering (2016-2019) and has had a lifetime of three best paper awards received from the Netherlands, Canada and India. Since 2018, Professor Panesar has served as an invited external examiner on ~10 Ph.D dissertation committees. She has and currently serves on several national and international grant review committees, for example: Canada’s NSERC Evaluation Group 1509, Norway Research Council, Danish Council for Independent Research, Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Support Program, and South Africa National Research Foundation.
Prof. Dimitry Feys
Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Missouri University of Science and Technology Department of Civil
Associate Professor in Civil Engineering, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology. Ph.D. in civil engineering from Ghent University in Belgium, 2009. Works at Missouri S&T since 2013, and appointed associate professor in 2019.
Dimitri Feys instructs classes in the field of construction materials, fluid mechanics and rheology to undergraduate and graduate students. These classes include “Basic Construction Materials”, “Engineering Fluid Mechanics”, “Principles of Rheology”, “Understanding the Rheology of Cement-based Materials”, and “Building Materials Physics.” Supervised 10 graduate students. Contributed to organizing workshops and classes on rheology of cement-based materials at Missouri S&T, University of Reykjavik, Universite de Sherbrooke and Laval University.
Dimitri Feys’ research interests are in mix design, rheology and placement of high-performance concrete. He is particularly focused on measuring rheological properties, parameters affecting the rheology, how rheology controls placement and how placement can affect performance. He published 49 peer-reviewed journal papers, co-edited 2 books, delivered 19 keynote or invited lectures and contributed to nearly 100 presentations during national and international conferences.
Dimitri Feys chairs the RILEM TC on pumping of concrete and was the deputy chair of the recently closed RILEM TC on measuring the rheological properties of cement-based materials. He is active as a member on TCs dealing with workability, self-consolidating concrete, consolidation and 3D printing. He is also active on different standing committees, including RILEM’s development activities committee (DAC) and he chairs ACI’s student and young professionals activities committee (SYPAC).
Dimitri Feys is a fellow of the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures (RILEM) and a member of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and the American Ceramics Society (ACerS).
Prof. R. Douglas Hooton
Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering
University of Toronto
Dr. R. Douglas Hooton is Professor Emeritus and still holds the title of NSERC/Cement Association of Canada, Senior Industrial Research Chair in Concrete Durability and Sustainability in the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto where he taught for 35 years and where he continues to supervise graduate students and a post-doctoral fellow. He is also President of Concrete Durability Associates Inc. in Toronto consulting on concrete durability and sustainability related issues. He is a Professional Engineer in Ontario.
He is an Honorary member of American Concrete Institute (ACI), and also an Honorary member of RILEM, The Institute of Concrete Technology (UK), as well as of ASTM Committees C01 & C09. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, the Engineering Institute of Canada, and ASTM.
He is also an Honorary Professor of Nanjing University of Technology in Nanjing.
He is a member of over 60 technical committees and subcommittees of ACI, ASTM, CSA, RILEM and fib. At ACI, he chairs Committee C201 (Durability), C130A (Sustainability of Materials) and serves on the steering committee of C321 (Durability Code). In Canada, he chairs CSA Committee A23.1/A23.2 (Concrete Materials and Methods of Construction) and is a past chair of CSA A3000 (Hydraulic Cements). At ASTM, he chairs Committee C01 (Cements) and C09.48 (Performance of Cementitious Materials and Admixture Combinations).
He currently serves on the editorial board for Journals: Advances in Cement Research, and Magazine of Concrete Research.
His academic and professional research over the last 49 years has focused on concrete sustainability and the fundamentals of cementitious materials as well as sustainability and durability performance of concrete including fluid transport properties, sulfate resistance, freezing and thawing resistance and avoiding alkali-aggregate reaction, as well as on developing related durability performance tests and specifications for cement and concrete. He has published over 300 journal and conference proceedings papers and has authored or co-authored 15 book chapters.
Prof. Jason Weiss
School of Civil and Construction Engineering
Oregon State University
Jason Weiss is the Edwards Distinguished Chair in Engineering. Before joining Oregon State as the Head of the School of Civil and Construction Engineering (2015-2020) he was a faculty member at Purdue University for over 16 years where he held the position of the Jack and Kay Hockema Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Pankow Materials Laboratory. He earned a B.A.E. from the Pennsylvania State University and a MS and PhD from Northwestern University in 1997 and 1999 respectively. He is actively involved in research on cement and concrete materials specifically focused on early age property development, cracking, transport in concrete, and concrete durability. Specifically, he is known for research his group has performed in the areas of shrinkage and cracking reduction, the use of the ring and dual ring test, use of electrical resistivity and the formation factor, salt damage and oxychloride, use of internally cured concrete, and concrete pavement durability.
Dr. Weiss has taught courses in civil engineering materials, concrete materials, service life, building envelopes, repair, and non-destructive testing. His primary research interests are in early age shrinkage cracking and mitigation as well as service life sensing and prediction.
He is also a primary author of the durability tests for the Performance Engineered Mixtures/Performance Related Specifications programs underway at FHWA. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the American Concrete Institute’s Journal of Materials, Associate Editor of the Transportation Research Record, and is the former editor in chief of the ASTM journal of Advances in Civil Engineering Materials and the RILEM journal Materials and Structures.
Dr. Weiss has authored over 450 publications with over 240 peer-reviewed journal articles. He is recipient of the NSF Career Award, the RILEM L’Hermite Medal, the ACI W. P. Moore, ACI Young Member, ACI Philleo, and ACI Wason Best Paper Award, ACI Arthur Anderson Award, the ESCSI Erskine Award, the TRB Burgraff, AFN040 section award, and Mather Awards for outstanding research and publications, the ACPA Knutson award, and the ASCE Huber Award. He is a fellow of ACI and RILEM and is also the recipient of the Wansik, Munson, Buck, and Burke award for outstanding teaching/advising in the School of Engineering, the Potter award for outstanding teaching in the College of Engineering, the University Murphy Award for undergraduate teaching, and has been inducted into the Purdue Teaching Academy.
Prof. Konstantin Kovler
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Professor at the Faculty of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Head, Dept. of Building Materials & Technology, National Building Research Institute. Ph.D. in Structural Engineering (State Univ. of Civil Engineering, Moscow, 1986). Since 1991 works at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Teaches numerous graduate and undergraduate courses, such as “Building Materials”, “Advanced Chapters in Cementitious Systems”, “Durability of Building Materials & Structures”, “Non-Destructive Testing of Concrete”, “Radiation Safety in Construction”. Contributed to organizing and teaching at several Ph.D. Courses in Australia, China, Denmark, Mexico, Northern Macedonia, Russia, Slovakia, Israel.
The research interests of Prof. Kovler include high-performance concrete; shrinkage & creep; gypsum; pozzolanic materials; recycling of industrial by-products; non-destructive testing of concrete; radioactivity of building materials and radon mitigation. Has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in international journals, and more than 80 papers in proceedings of international conferences, authored/edited more than 30 books and book chapters, authored six patents and patent applications.
Prof. Kovler chaired three expert committees (“Non-destructive Tests of Concrete”, “Radioactivity of Building Materials”, “Lightweight Aggregates”) and three technical committees (“Concrete Materials & Products”, “Steel for the Reinforcement of Concrete”, “Ecological Aspects of Construction”) in the Israeli Institute of Standards. National representative in the Technical Committee of International Standardization Organization (ISO) on Radiological Protection, member of the group “Radiation Measurements”. In 2013 coordinated the academic consortium to create National Research Center on Recycling of Materials by the call of the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection.
He edits two international journals (Materials & Structures, Cement & Concrete Composites). Edited Special Issues of Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, and Construction & Building Materials. Fellow and Honorary member of RILEM – International Union of Laboratories & Experts in Construction Materials, Systems & Structures, Co-Chair of the Working Group “NORM in Building Materials”, ENA – European NORM Association, and member of ACI – American Institute of Concrete.
Prof. Kovler combines teaching and research with consulting for the industry and governmental ministries. Consulted on strengthening technology and materials durability of the 20-km dike under brine attack (Dead Sea Works Ltd., Israel), on concrete technology of high-strength concrete (first time in Israel) for 54-storey building in Tel-Aviv, Sarona Project, official consultant of Israel Electric Corporation and Port Authority on concrete technology. Advisor of the National Coal Ash Board and Nesher – Israel Cement Enterprises, and consultant in the lawsuit against the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection related to the uses of coal fly ash.
The research proposal “Alternative binders & eco-friendly building materials from Moroccan/Israeli phosphogypsum: reduction of environmental & health hazards within Circular Economy approach” Prof. Kovler lead as a Principal Investigator, jointly with the Moroccan colleagues, has been selected in 2024 for funding by USAID – The United States Agency for International Development.
Prof. Ole Mejlhede Jensen
Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering
Technical University of Denmark
Professor and DSc in construction materials and civil engineering. He has held several guest and full professorships inside and outside Denmark.
Tutor and speaker at a number of courses at BSc and MSc level including continued education within construction materials, cement and concrete technology and material physics since 1991. Founder of the RILEM Educational Activities Committee and through this been involved in sponsorship and supervision of more than 100 educational activities at doctoral level (doctoral courses, books etc.). Since 1999 tutor, speaker and organizer at doctoral courses on advanced cement-based materials in numerous countries.
The research interests of Ole Mejlhede Jensen include high-performance concrete, shrinkage, hydration kinetics, supplementary cementitious materials, and measurement techniques. With a Web of Knowledge H-index of 27 he has published books, book chapters, papers in peer-refereed scientific journals and conference proceedings, authored patents, research reports and other technical publications.
Ole Mejlhede Jensen is member of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences and has been chairman, deputy chair and member of a number of RILEM committees including administrative committees. Honorary president of RILEM 2016 and Fellow of RILEM. Organizer of more than 10 international, scientific conferences, reviewer and editorial board member for numerous scientific journals and conferences with editorial handling of more than 500 submissions.
Prof. Pedro Castro Borges
CINVESTAV-IPN Unidad Merida
Dr. Castro works at CINVESTAV-IPN Unidad Merida, Yucatán, México since 1986 where he is researcher. He is Civil Engineer and M. Eng. from the Yucatán Autonomous University, he has a PhD in Engineering from the National Autonomous University of México and a postdoctoral stay at the Torroja Institute of Construction Sciences from Madrid, Spain. His main areas are corrosion, durability and sustainability of reinforced concrete. Dr. Castro has won several national and international awards. Some of them are the Herbert Uhlig award from NACE International, the Honor Medal Juan Miguel Castro Martín, the Heberto Castillo award for Latin-American researchers, Award of The Yucatán State for Civil Engineers (Society of Civil Engineers), the Giraldilla Award from the government of Cuba, the NACE Mexican Chapter Award for National Trajectory, the international trajectory award from Alconpat, the National Award Nabor Carrillo Flores of the Mexican council of civil engineers, the award Oladis Troconis de Rincón of the Association for Materials Performance and Protection (AMPP), and the award for the best paper in CORROSION Journal. He has authored or coauthored more than 500 publications in indexed journals, national and international congresses, book chapters, books, review and diffusion articles and reports. He has given more than 100 conferences as invited professor in several Institutions as well as in national and international events. He is or has been member of the international board of editors or referee of specialized Journals in Argentina, Brasil, Chile, México, Portugal, United Kingdom, USA and Venezuela. He is member of AMPP, RILEM, ACI, ALCONPAT and other important academic associations. He is member of the National Research System (SNII) and of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. Dr. Castro is past president of the Mexican Section of NACE, ALCONPAT (Latinamerican association for quality control, pathology and repair of constructions), and past honorary president of RILEM. He has been chairman of important series of prestigious conferences like CONSEC, GORDON Conference, and Rilem Annual week. Dr. Castro is fellow of NACE and Alconpat, as well as honorary member of IBRACON and Alconpat. He is also Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Alicante, Spain.
Prof. Alejandro Duran Herrera
Facultad de Ingeniería Civil
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León
Dr. Duran Herrera is a Civil engineer with a PhD in materials engineering from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon (UANL), and was a visiting postdoctoral scholar at the University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
He has more than 30 years of practical experience in the area of Concrete Technology. Since 1998, he has taught Concrete Technology to undergraduate and graduate students at the Facultad de Ingenieria Civil at UANL, where since 2004 he is the advisor to the ACI-FIC-UANL Student Chapter as well as the Head of the of Concrete Technology Department of the Civil Engineering Institute, and since 2013 he was also entrusted with the Internationalization Affairs Coordination.
He is a member of technical associations such as the American Concrete Institute (ACI), of the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures (RILEM for its acronym in French), of which he was its Coordinator for Latin America from 2018 to 2023, of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), of ALCONPAT, the Mexican Society of Structural Engineering (SMIE), and of the Northeast Mexico Chapter of ACI.
He has received different recognitions, including the one awarded for his outstanding contributions in the broad area of concrete technology in Mexico, received in Milan, Italy, on July 13, 2022, by the scientific committee of the 13th international conference on superplasticizers, and other chemical admixtures for concrete, and the 15th international conference on recent advances in concrete technology and sustainability issues, the one awarded by CONACYT as National Researcher Level II of its National Researchers System, the one awarded by the Mexican Academy of Engineering as Academic Holder in the Specialty Commission of Civil Engineering, those awarded by the American Concrete Institute (ACI) as fellow member (2006) and member of its Board of Directors (2013 – 2017).
From 2012 to 2016 he was a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Scientific Journal “Construction and Building Materials” of Elsevier, a Journal of which he has been Editor since March 2016, and since its creation in October of 2020 he is the Technical Editor of the Revista Concreto Latinoamerica, a journal devoted to translate from English to Spanish the technical articles published in the ACI Concrete International Magazine.
His research interests include: high performance concrete, self-compacting concrete, volumetric stability of concrete, internal curing of concrete, use of fly ash in concrete production, evaluation of the performance of fibers in concrete, NDT testing for concrete and concrete durability.