Giatec announces the winner of the 2024 edition of the Best Paper Award for Sustainability in Construction to civil and environmental engineering professors, Kai Gong and Claire E. White.
OTTAWA, ONTARIO – Giatec is thrilled to announce the winners of the Best Paper Awards 2024 honoring research that is pushing the boundaries of sustainable construction. This year’s award goes to the outstanding article, “Development of Physics-Based Compositional Parameters for Predicting the Reactivity of Amorphous Aluminosilicates in Alkaline Environments,” authored by Princeton and Rice University professors, Kai Gong and Claire E. White.
The Best Paper Awards have been instrumental in furthering Giatec’s mission of bridging innovative academic research with real-world applications, driving sustainable practices across the construction industry. For the past six years, these awards have celebrated the critical contributions of civil engineering professors, students, and researchers across Canada and the U.S., empowering a new wave of sustainable solutions.
Professors Gong and White’s research offers an in-depth examination of the reactivity of amorphous aluminosilicates in alkaline environments—a study especially relevant for their application in blended Portland cement. The paper presents two innovative, physics-based compositional parameters for assessing reactivity, supported by molecular dynamics simulations and topological constraint theory. Their findings show that these parameters outperform current compositions, marking a substantial advancement in our understanding of sustainable cementitious materials.
The Best Paper Awards are judged by Giatec’s research panel, recognizing research that challenges traditional approaches and provides sustainable solutions to construction’s most pressing challenges. In addition to the winning paper, the panel also acknowledged two outstanding runners-up: “Novel Multi-Scale Experimental Approach and Deep Learning Model to Optimize Capillary Pressure Evolution in Early Age Concrete,” by Armin Jamali (Northumbria University), Afshin Marani (University of Toronto), James Railton (Northumbria University), Moncef L. Nehdi (University of Guelph), Brabha Nagaratnam (Northumbria University), Michael Lim (Northumbria University), and Joao Mendes (Northumbria University); and “A Thermodynamic Perspective on Wind Turbine Glass Fiber Waste as a Supplementary Cementitious Material,” by Deborah Glosser (Western Washington University), Eli Santykul (Western Washington University), Eric Fagan (University of Maryland), and Prannoy Suraneni (University of Miami).
Giatec congratulates the winners and runners-up for their exceptional contributions. Their dedication and innovation are setting the stage for a more sustainable future in construction, one groundbreaking discovery at a time. To read the 2024 winning article, click here.
About Giatec
Founded in 2010, Giatec is a global company revolutionizing the construction industry by bringing smart testing technologies and real-time data collection to the forefront of every jobsite. Giatec’s suite of hardware & software products has leveraged advanced technologies such as; Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT), including; wireless concrete sensors, mobile apps, and advanced non-destructive technologies (NDT) to drive innovation throughout concrete’s lifecycle and reduce concrete’s carbon footprint. With this technology, they have helped the construction industry redefine business models and value propositions by turning concrete testing into a process which speeds up construction, rather than slowing it down. As a result, their products have won numerous industry awards and have been used in over 13,500 projects worldwide, across 85 countries.
