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First Round of Abstract Submission Ends: Dec 31, 2026
Extended Early Bird Ends: Jul 31, 2026

Plenary Speakers

Prof. Adnan Ibrahimbegovic
University of Technology Compiegne, France
Title: Synergy of mechanics and stochastics and digital twin technology in quantifying safety and durability of civil engineering structures
Professor Classe Exceptionnelle, Member Senior of IUF and Chair for Computational Mechanics at University of Technology Compiègne, an engineering school and a member of Alliance of Sorbonne Université. He has obtained his engineering education in Sarajevo, PhD at the University of California Berkeley, USA and Habilitation at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, France. He has held professorships and research positions at four different universities (including UC Berkeley, USA; EPFL, Switzerland; ENS-Cachan, France and currently UTC, France). He is the past Chairman of ENS-Cachan Teaching and LMT-Cachan Research Departments and Head of Master Program MaiSE. He has received: IACM Fellow Award, Humboldt Research Award for Germany, Research Award for Slovenia, International Fellow NSERC Award for Canada, ‘Claude Levy-Strauss’ Chair for Univ. Sao Paulo, Brazil, ‘Asgard’ Chair for NTNU, Norway, ‘Hôte Académique’ Award for EPFL, Switzerland. He has produced 10 textbooks and monographs and over 700 publications, including 250 papers in scientific journals; link: https://ibrahimb.pers.utc.fr/
Prof. Theodore Stathopoulos
Canada
Title: Will Update
Theodore (Ted )Stathopoulos is currently Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research in the area of wind effects on buildings and their codification has been influential in the development of codes and standards around the world. He has an extensive publication record with more than 500 articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings. He is a member of the ASCE 7 Committee on Minimum Wind Loads, the respective committee of the Canadian Code; and the convener of the ISO committee on wind loads on buildings. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers, and its Structural Engineering Institute. He is the Editor of the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics. He has been appointed Distinguished Professor in Building Physics, Urban Physics and Wind Engineering by the Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands; and Yang Hua Distinguished Chair Professor of the Southwest Jiatong University, Chengdu, China. He has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece; and another one from the Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Prof. Santiago Hernandez
University of Coruna, Spain
Title: Will Update
He is Emeritus Professor of the school of Civil Engineering of the University of Coruña (Spain) and has 45 years teaching experience at the Bachelor´s and Master´s level in structural analysis, dynamic of structures, bridge design and construction, aeroelasticity and multidisciplinary optimization methods. He was the founder of two wind tunnels in the University of Coruna (Spain) and has been in charge of both facilities for many years.

He has pioneered a multidisciplinary approach to bridge design under wind loads, integrating experimental and computational aeroelasticity, computer animations of digital models of bridges, and numerical optimization methods. He has published extensively on aerostructural optimization of this typology focusing on optimizing deck shape and size as well as the cross-section of the cable system under flutter, buffeting and aerostatic divergence. He has examined bridge decks with single, twin and triple box girders with deterministic and probabilistic formulations of optimization methods that address uncertainties in wind speed, turbulent flow properties, flutter derivatives obtained from wind tunnel tests, and bridge structural damping ratios. He has supervised 15 PhD and has been member of PhD Committees in several universities in Europe and Asia. He has more than three hundred publications and has co-authored three books: Linear and Nonlinear Continuum Solid Mechanics, Practical Applications of Design Optimization and Bridge Aeroelasticity. Sensitivity Analysis and Optimal Design. The latter is the first book fully dedicated to bridge aeroelasticity including the application of numerical optimization methods to aerostructural bridge design.

He is Fellow of ASCE (2007) and IABSE (2016), Associate Fellow of AIAA (2009) and received the Distinguished Service Certificate of the Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Technical Committee of the AIAA (2013). He has the Medal of Professional Achievements of the Spanish Society of Civil Engineers (2015).
Prof. Faiz Shaikh
Australia
Title: Development of lithium refinery residue based geopolymer binder for sustainable concrete
Prof. Faiz Shaikh received his Ph.D. degree in civil engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2005. Since 2009, he has been with Curtin University, Australia. He is a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng.) of Australia, Fellow of Engineers Australia (FIEAust) and a member of the Concrete Institute of Australia. Among many research interests, the sustainable use of various industrial by-products in low-carbon concrete and fibre reinforced cementitious composites, industrial by-products based geopolymer binder, pavement material, etc. are the research areas where he has contributed in terms of research publications, industry collaboration, training/mentoring of young engineers and success in research funding. He has completed various research projects on the utilization of fly ash, blast furnace slag, ferro-nickel slag, lithium refinery residue and silica fume as partial replacement of cement in concrete; construction and demolition wastes, recycled glass aggregates, waste tyres crumb rubbers, copper heap leach residue as aggregates in concrete; and development of geopolymer concrete using fly ash or fly ash-slag blend or lithium refinery residue-fly ash. He has supervised 14 PhD and 3 MPhil students and is currently supervising 3 PhD students. He has about 233 refereed publications including two books published in Springer and Elsevier, six book chapters, 223 reviewed journal papers in his credit. He also holds an h-index of 73 and total citations of about 17,000+ according to Google scholar.
Prof. Pinnaduwa Kulatilake
Christian Brothers University, USA and Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona, USA
Title: Current Status of Rock Mass Strength
Dr. Pinnaduwa H.S.W. Kulatilake is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the Christian Brothers University, USA. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, USA. He is a recipient of 2024 International Society for Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering (ISRM) Science Achievement Award. Currently, he serves as the Chair of the ISRM Commission on “Estimation of Rock Mass Strength and Deformability”. Since October 2022, he has been serving as the president of the Sri Lankan Society of Rock Mechanics and Engineering. His Ph.D. degree is in Civil Engineering with a Geotechnical Engineering specialty from the Ohio State University, USA. Recently he served as a Distinguished Professor of Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering for three years (May 2019 - May 2022) at a University in China under the Distinguished Foreign Expert 1000 Talent Program funding from both the Chinese Government and a Province in China. Prof. Kulatilake has over 45 years of experience in rock mechanics & rock engineering and applications of probabilistic, statistical, and numerical methods to civil, mining, and geoengineering.

His teaching has gone beyond the universities he has worked at. He has taught 56 short courses to both practitioners and academicians in 17 countries covering all 6 continents. He has organized and run four successful international conferences as the Chair (two in Sri Lanka, one in the US, and the most recent one in Peru in Dec. 2024). The two most recent ones (Dec. 2023 and Dec. 2024) were ISRM Specialized Conferences. Currently, as the Chair of the Conference, he is organizing the Second ISRM Commission Conference on Estimation of Rock Mass Strength and Deformability to be held in Sri Lanka during July 9-11, 2026.

He has performed research with 95 graduate students and visiting scholars to earn worldwide recognition for his research. He has published more than 280 papers. These papers have resulted in more than 9365 Google Scholar Citations with an H-index of 56 and an I10-index of 120. He has co-authored a book on “Rock mass stability around underground excavations in a mine” He has edited five conference proceedings and served as the Guest Editor for two special issues in an international journal. All those activities led him to deliver more than 40 invited keynote lectures and 50 other invited lectures throughout the world. He is a recipient of more than 10 prestigious awards including two Peter Cundall Awards.

His research accomplishments resulted in securing invited and elected positions on the editorial boards of several journals. He receives invitations from more than 30 geoengineering journals to review technical papers. He has been a research proposal reviewer for many US and international granting agencies. He has been a Visiting Professor/ research fellow at several top geomechanics institutes in the world. He is a registered professional civil engineer. He has served for over 20 years as the primary or sole examiner for the geological engineering professional exam conducted by the Arizona State Board of Technical Registration. He has served as an external evaluator for promotion and tenure applications of faculty for several universities in the USA as well as outside the USA. He also has served and as an examiner for foreign Ph.D. Dissertations for several countries.
Prof. Larry W. Mays
Arizona State University, USA
Title: From Ancient Water Technologies to Present Day Water Technologies to Future Water Technologies
Professor Mays’ academic career spanned over a 43 year time-period, starting at the University of Texas in Austin in 1976, followed by the 30 years at Arizona State University (ASU) where he was a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering since August 1989, and then the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment. He served as Chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department from August 1989 until July 1996. Prior to that, he was Director of the Center for Research in Water Resources at The University of Texas at Austin. He retired from academia (ASU) in 2019.

Professor Mays received the B.S. (1970) and M.S. (1971) degrees in civil engineering from the University of Missouri at Rolla, after which he served in the U.S. Army, (1970-1973) stationed at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. He received the Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1976.

His research in the area of hydrosystems engineering has focused on the application of optimization and risk/reliability analysis to the design, management and operation of water infrastructure systems. The mentoring of graduate students has also been a major focus having supervised to completion 38 Ph.D. students and many master’s degree students. His research has been published in many refereed journal publications, proceeding papers for national and international meetings, invited book chapters, and many chapters in the books that he was the editor-in-chief. Professor Mays is the author, co-author, or editor-in-chief of 22 books including the well-known textbooks Water Resources Engineering; Groundwater Hydrology; Applied Hydrology; Hydrosystems Engineering and Management; Ground and Surface Water Hydrology; and handbooks such as the Water Resources Handbook; Water Distribution Systems Handbook; Hydraulic Design Handbook; Stormwater Collections Systems Design Handbook; and others.

His interests for over the last 20 years have expanded to the visiting many archaeological sites around the world photographing and studying ancient water structures. He has published several articles on this topic and has edited the book, Ancient Water Technologies. More recently he has been a co-editor of the new book, The Evolution of Water Supply Through the Millennia, published by the International Water Association. Professor Mays has performed volunteer work for organizations such as the United Nations UNESCO-IHP in developing the book, Integrated Urban Water Management in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions. Other professional activities have included serving as a consultant to various government agencies and industries and serving as an expert witness in several litigations concerning flooding and other water-related issues.

He is a registered professional engineer in several states in the US, a registered professional hydrologist with the American Institute of Hydrology, and a member of several professional associations. Throughout his career he has also obtained considerable expertise in litigation as an expert and consulting witness on several types of large-scale litigation related to water. He has also consulted on an international basis for such organizations as the UNDP, the World Bank, UAE University, and many others, and as a consultant to many government agencies and municipalities such as the State of Texas Attorney General’s Office, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, American Water Works Association, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, etc., and many insurance companies and law firms. Professor Mays is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the International Water Resources Association (IWRA), and the International Water Association (IWA). He has been a representative to the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR) and has served on the Board of Directors of UCOWR and also as President.

He received the Engineer of the Year in Education Award from the Arizona Society of Professional Engineers in 1992. He received the Quentin Mees Research Award from the Arizona Water and Pollution Control Association in 1993. He has been elected a Diplomat of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers. In 1999 he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Department of Civil Engineering Alumni Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2013 he was awarded as a Lifetime Member of ASCE. (2013). In June 2014 he received the ASCE Julian Hinds Award given to recognize the author or authors of a paper judged to make the most meritorious contribution to the field of water resources development. In December 2014 he received the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulazizz International Prize for Water – Surface Water Prize for comprehensive work in surface water hydrology and water resources engineering culminating in three leading and innovative textbooks in the field and the development of optimization models I practical hydrology for current problems. In June 2015 he received the Warren A. Hall Medal presented by the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR). The award honors exceptional accomplishments and distinction of an individual in the water resources field. It is presented to those who have demonstrated a career-long commitment to exemplary interdisciplinary scholarship and academic excellence in water resources. He was elected to Fellow of the International Water Association in 2015. In April 2016 he was inducted into the Academy of Civil Engineers of the Missouri University of Science and Technology (MUST). In May 2016 he received the ASCE Ven Te Chow Award. The Ven Te Chow Award was established to recognize lifetime achievement in the field of hydrologic engineering. In May 2020 he received the ASCE Arid Lands Hydraulic Engineering Award. The Arid Land Hydraulic Engineering Award recognizes original contributions in hydraulics, hydrology including climatology, planning, irrigation and drainage, hydroelectric power development, navigation specially applicable to arid or semi-arid climates or contributions to the understanding and development of new technology in river basins.

He received the ASCE Environmental & Water Resources Institute 2024 Seminal Paper Award for “Battle of the Network Models: Epilogue.” Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Volume 113, Issue 2, 1987. In 2024 Received a Certificate of Appreciation for 50 Years of Service to the Engineering Profession from the State of California Board of Professional Engineers.
Prof. Amin Hammad
Canada
Title: AI Applications in Construction Engineering and Management
Dr. Amin Hammad is a Full Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He is the Director of the Cyber-Physical Construction and Infrastructure Systems Lab and the Associate Director of the Center of Innovation in Infrastructure Engineering and Management (CICIEM) at Concordia University. Before joining Concordia, he held faculty and visiting positions at Nagoya University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Tokyo. His research is recognized internationally in automation in construction and infrastructure management systems using advanced methods in remote sensing, simulation, optimization, machine learning, and robotics. Hammad has several successful collaborative research projects with the industry. He has edited one book, published eight chapters, and written about 350 papers in top peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He has supervised over 75 graduate students and PDFs at Concordia and at Nagoya University in Japan.
Prof. Konstantin Kovler
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Title: Low-contaminant” construction materials made from industrial by-products: How low is low enough
PhD in Structural Engineering from Moscow State University of Civil Engineering (1986). Has been affiliated with the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology since 1991. His research focuses on durability of building materials, recycling of industrial residues in construction, and the radioactivity of building materials including radon mitigation.

He has served as editor for two international journals: Materials & Structures and Cement & Concrete Composites, and has guest-edited special issues for the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity and Construction & Building Materials. Fellow (2006) and Honorary Member (2022) of RILEM – the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures. He also serves as Co-Chair of the Working Group “NORM in Building Materials” under the European NORM Association (ENA).

Has organized several international conferences, including Early Age Concrete (EAC’1 in 2001 and EAC’2 in 2017), and Concrete Durability & Service Life Planning (ConcreteLife-2006, ConcreteLife-2009, and ConcreteLife-2020). Co-organized the symposium “Use of By-Products in Construction: Dealing with Natural Radioactivity” (Rome, 2017), and has actively participated in multiple European concerted research actions related to construction materials and environmental sustainability.

Prof. Kovler has lectured in PhD courses across Australia, China, Denmark, Mexico, North Macedonia, Russia, Slovakia, and Israel. Chaired six standardization committees within the Israeli Institute of Standards, and serves as Israel’s national representative to the ISO Technical Committee on Radiological Protection.

In 2013, he coordinated an academic consortium aimed at establishing a National Research Center for Recycling of Materials. He is the author of seven patents, 124 peer-reviewed journal articles, 102 conference papers, and 36 books and book chapters.

Prof. Kovler combines teaching and research activities with consulting for the construction industry and governmental ministries. Consulted on strengthening technology and materials durability of the 20-km dike under brine attack (Dead Sea Works Ltd., Israel, 2011-2012), on concrete technology of high-strength concrete (first time in Israel) for 54-storey building in Tel-Aviv, Sarona Project, (WXG Ltd., Israel, since 2013). Official consultant of the Israeli Port Authority on concrete technology for marine structures and durability in Hamifratz Port Terminal, Haifa, and Hadarom Port Terminal, Ashdod (since 2012), and of Israel Electric Corporation (since 2019). In 2018, together with experts from the Israel Society of Radiation Protection, he publicly criticized a proposed national radiation law, contributing to its withdrawal from parliamentary discussion. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Airovation Technologies (https://www.airovation-tech.com/) dealing with carbon capture utilization and storage enabling methane based low carbon hydrogen production in synergy with hard-to-abate industries such as: fertilizer, concrete and steel.