SOURCE: ACI | May 31, 2025
It is such an incredible honor to have a monthly platform to address the concrete community. I hope to make the most of this opportunity to share information about activities and priorities at ACI and topics of interest to me that have an impact on our shared work. We have a diverse community of members and volunteers at ACI with different backgrounds, expertise, and goals. What we have in common is an interest in sharing knowledge about concrete to improve concrete practice. As an academic, my work for the past 25 years has been dedicated to building new knowledge about concrete and helping others to understand, appreciate, and develop knowledge themselves. University professors are not just classroom teachers and laboratory researchers; we have the privilege of inspiring the next generation of the workforce to come up with new and better ideas and to think critically about, well, everything.
I came to a love of concrete first from an interest in chemistry. As an undergraduate chemistry student, I was lucky to find summer research programs that got me into the laboratory, taught me technical writing, and exposed me to researchers in a variety of fields and industries. I quickly learned that I enjoyed research, but I wasn’t satisfied with chemistry as a field of study. I turned to materials science and engineering with the intention of working on something “solid.” Cement and concrete were attractive because of the complex chemistry, the large number of open questions, and the ability to do a lot of experiments relatively inexpensively—at least on the small scale. At the time, the Center for Advanced Cement-Based Materials (ACBM), based at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, was an incubator for researchers across fields and institutions to take a new approach to cement and concrete research. When I was a graduate student, I didn’t see a home at ACI for the cement chemistry and materials science research I was doing. I have since learned that if ACI doesn’t have a home for you, you can create one!
In the late 1990s, Geoffrey Frohnsdorff at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created ACI Committee 236, Material Science of Concrete. David Lange, FACI (ACI Past President), was the inaugural Chair and hosted a session at the 1999 ACI Concrete Convention in Chicago, IL. I gave a talk at this session, and it was my first introduction to ACI and ACI Committee 236. When I returned to ACI as a faculty member in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA, I was pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome I received from ACI Committee 236, which now has grown to about 150 members.
Many of us have similar stories of finding our “homes” at ACI—places where we feel we can talk openly with our colleagues, share knowledge, and give and receive mentoring. As our experience and interests grow, we join more committees and communities. Right now, I especially appreciate the community of ACI Past Presidents, specifically Charles Nmai, Antonio Nanni, and Michael Paul, who have been a great team to work with during my 2 years as ACI Vice President.
The concrete industry is constantly changing, and the pace of change right now is rapid in some areas. As the volunteer members of ACI, it is our responsibility to keep advancing along with the field, which can mean changing the way we work in our committees, forming new committees and task groups, and how we welcome new members with fresh ideas. The new ACI Strategic Plan has “Enhance the ACI Experience” as one of the strategic goals, encompassing the member experience, attracting and supporting new members, and fostering a welcoming and inclusive community. To achieve this goal, we will need to revisit how we work together, how we communicate, and how we embrace new people and ideas. I’m looking forward to enhancing the member experience in my year as ACI President and sharing knowledge and ideas with you.
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