Name:

Dr. Madura Pathirage

Title:

Assistant Professor

Department:

Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering

Describe your research in about 200 words.

As climate concerns grow, concrete, which is the most used man-made product in the world, is well-positioned to help society meet tomorrow’s challenges. While solutions that can adapt to the effects of climate change are already a reality in many industry sectors, the pathways for reducing carbon footprint in civil engineering and construction are still underdeveloped. Indeed, significant advances are required in the assessment of concrete deterioration in aging infrastructure, in formulating and characterizing sustainable building materials, and in developing performance-based standards for structural design. My goal as a researcher is to achieve these objectives with an integrated experimental and computational research program targeting multiple length and time scales.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

I truly enjoy interacting and working with students. I believe that students’ success is based on a proper guidance and encouragement from the teacher in such a way that they can gain confidence and motivation, and become self-organized.