3rd Annual Gerald D. Holder Endowed Distinguished Lecture

Please join the Swanson School of Engineering community for the 2026 Gerald D. Holder Endowed Distinguished Lecture on Friday, October 16 at 10:00 a.m. in 229 Benedum Hall. The lecture series, which rotates annually between each of the school’s six departments, is this year presented by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and its Chair, Vikas Khanna. The 2026 Distinguished Lecturer is Paulo J. M. Monteiro, the Roy W. Carlson Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, who will present 2,000 Years of Concrete Technology: From Roman Concrete to Plasma Cement. Light refreshments will be served. Register Here Abstract The manufacture of cement is responsible for roughly 7% of global CO2 emissions; if the cement industry were a country, it would rank among the four largest emitters in the world. Decarbonizing concrete is therefore one of the major materials challenges of this century. This lecture examines that challenge from two perspectives separated by nearly 2,000 years. Synchrotron-based techniques are revealing how ancient Roman concretes developed long-term durability and continued to evolve over centuries, absorbing atmospheric CO2 and locking it into the binder as stable minerals. These observations point to mechanisms of durability and carbon uptake that can guide the design of modern cementitious materials. The lecture will then present microwave-induced plasma processing as a route to electrified, lower-carbon cement manufacture. Clinker-forming reactions that take hours in a conventional kiln are completed in seconds. Biography Paulo J. M. Monteiro is the Roy W. Carlson Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds the Ary Torres Chair at the Escola Politécnica of the University of São Paulo. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, he has received the ACI Wason Medal for Materials