UNSW research student wins innovation in concrete competition

Congratulations to CIES PhD student Hugh Miller for his well-deserved Concrete Institute of Australia (CIA) award.

The NSW branch of the Concrete Institute of Australia (CIA) recently hosted its inaugural Student Pitch Competition. The contest was open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students in NSW whose research relates to concrete materials and their applications. Each competitor delivered a three-minute presentation at The University of Sydney on Thursday, 27 September, 201

The competition was part of a seminar entitled Innovation in Concrete Technology and Practice, which featured keynote presentations by Dr. David McDonald (Associate – Materials Technology, BG&E) and Mr. Eamon Madden (Group Managing Director, Partridge). The seminar attracted a crowd of experts from academia and industry.

Eight student presentations were made, all by PhD students, and the winner was UNSW’s own Hugh Miller (pictured), for his research about surface treatment of fibres to create chemical bonds with a cementitious matrix. Hugh is in his final year of PhD study and is supervised by Professor Stephen Foster and Associate Professor Ali Akbar Nezhad.

The runner-up was Mr. Balbir Singh of Western Sydney University, for his presentation about lightweight concrete. The CIA awarded a prize of $500 to the winner and $250 to the runner-up, as well as a package of CIA publications for both.

The University of Sydney was the venue sponsor and ARCADIS was the event sponsor for the seminar. The CIA intends to repeat the competition on an annual basis.