Kimberly Kurtis
Bio
Dr. Kimberly (Kim) E. Kurtis is Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship in the College of Engineering, where she manages the reappointment, tenure, peer review, and selection processes for the College’s faculty and researchers, leads faculty development initiatives, and assists with management of faculty hiring strategies and inclusion programs. She is the Raymond Allen Jones Chair and Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, serving as interim Chair in the school (2017-18) and as the College’s ADVANCE Professor (2012-14), and holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Dr. Kurtis joined Tech’s faculty in January 1999. She earned her BSE (1994) in Civil Engineering from Tulane University under a Deans Honor Scholarship and her MS (1995) and PhD (1998) in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a Henry Hilp Fellow and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellow. Dr. Kurtis’s innovative research on the multi-scale structure and performance of cement-based materials has resulted in more than 200 technical publications, as well as three US patents. Her group is particularly recognized its use of emerging methods and novel approaches to provide new fundamental insights into the behavior of cement pastes, mortars, and concretes necessary for improving their early age behavior and long-term durability. She has held three leadership positions – Chairman of ACI Committee 236: Materials Science of Concrete (2006-2012), Chair of American Ceramic Society’s Cements Division (2008-2009), and North American Editor Cement and Concrete Research (2019-present) – central to advancing science-based research on cement-based materials. Dr. Kurtis has served as Associate Editor of ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering and on the Editorial Board of Cement and Concrete Composites. Currently, she is Editorial Board member for Cement and Concrete Research and serves on the American Concrete Institute’s Board of Directors. She has been honored with ACI’s Walter P. Moore, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award (2005), ACI’s Del Bloem Award for Service (2013), Outstanding Senior Undergraduate Research Mentor Award at Georgia Institute of Technology (2013), the ACI James Instruments Award for Research on NDE of Concrete (2008), Award for Outstanding Article in ASTM’s Journal of Testing and Evaluation (2010), ASCE’s Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (2013), and ACI’s Anderson Medal (2019). Dr. Kurtis is Fellow of the American Concrete Institute and the American Ceramics Society.
KeyNote
Multiscale Characterization of Cementitious Systems: Recent Advances in Imaging, Scattering, Spectroscopy and Machine Learning-based Approaches
Abstract
Recent progress in methods used in multiscale characterization of cementitious systems is reviewed. The review focuses on advances in imaging, scattering, and spectroscopy for characterization of cementitious materials, and also includes relevant applications of and development in machine learning and other data analytics approaches to enhance characterization. Developments in imaging via light and electron microscopy as well as x-ray (or synchrotron) methods are summarized, and include updates on scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), as well as holography and tomography. A critical overview of spectroscopy (e.g., MAS NMR, Raman) and scattering (e.g., neutron, lab and synchrotron x-ray) methods is provided, and the intersection of these with imaging is developed (e.g., Raman imaging). Additionally, the paper summarizes recent developments in and implementations of state-of-the-art of machine-learning algorithms and data analytics methods for automated, systematic, and/or quantitative analyses of image data sets. The review considers but is not limited to the application of these methods for the investigation for the hydration and microstructure development of cement phases, low-energy cements (e.g., limestone calcined clay cements, LC3), environmental interactions (e.g., ASR) and model systems. Thus, the present work provides a critical presentation of advances in characterization methods that link together composition and multiscale structure of cementitious materials.