Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Nele De Belie

President of RILEM
Ghent University

Nele De Belie is the current President of RILEM, where she plays a key role in shaping international research agendas and fostering collaboration in the field of construction materials and structural engineering.

She is Professor of Durability of Cement Bound Materials at Ghent University (UGent) and Director of the Magnel-Vandepitte Laboratory for Structural Engineering and Building Materials. In addition, she leads the Concrete and Environment research group, focusing on durability, sustainability, and environmental interactions of concrete.

Her research covers sustainable and smart concrete, circular economy and life cycle assessment, concrete durability in aggressive environments, and concrete–microorganism interactions. She has coordinated more than 60 national and international projects and has published over 350 peer-reviewed papers. Since 2022, she has been a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.

Jan Wörner

Technical University Darmstadt
European Space Agency (ESA)

Professor Jan Wörner is a German civil engineer and university professor for structural engineering who served as Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) from 2015 to 2021. He was President of the Technical University of Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt) from 2007 to 2014 and later Chairman of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), where he played a key role in strengthening international research cooperation and interdisciplinary orientation. Prof. Wörner holds a doctorate in structural engineering and is Professor emeritus at TU Darmstadt. He is also President of acatech, the German National Academy of Science and Engineering.

Prof. Wörner is internationally recognized for his contributions to science management, higher education policy, and European space strategy. During his tenure at ESA, he strongly promoted international cooperation, innovation, and the integration of space activities with societal and industrial needs. He has served on numerous advisory boards at national and international level and is widely respected for bridging academia, large research organizations, and policy-making.

Viktor Mechtcherine

CARE – Climate-Neutral and Resource-Efficient Construction

Viktor Mechtcherine has been a Professor and the Director of the Institute for Construction Materials at TUD Dresden University of Technology in Germany, since 2006. He is a member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering and the Science Academy of Saxony.

Prof. Mechtcherine is also Editor of the Journals “Cement and Concrete Composites” and “Sustainable Cement-Based Materials” as well as Speaker of the Cluster of Excellence “CARE – Climate-neutral and resource-efficient construction” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Furthermore, he is a RILEM Fellow and has been honored with the Wason Medal for Materials Research by the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and Innovation Awards from both bauma and fib.

Claudia Hedwig van der Laag

OsloMet

Claudia van der Laag is a Full Professor of Urban Analytics at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), TKD-BE. She is an architect and urban planner with recognised expertise in transport and land-use planning, focusing on people’s behaviour in cities. Her work integrates advanced analytical approaches, including method and tool development at the forefront of virtual and computational urban modelling. With a background as a project consultant, she excels at translating theoretical innovation into practice-oriented solutions and has contributed to numerous international research and applied projects.

In 2015, she was awarded the prestigious Michael Breheny Prize for her work on multiscale and multifractal urban planning models. Claudia serves on the editorial board of Springer’s The Urban Book Series and acts as a reviewer for national research funding agencies across Europe and the Middle East. She holds a PhD in Architecture from TU Wien, bridging architecture, urban planning and computer science, and a PhD in Geography and Regional Planning from Université de Franche-Comté (nowadays known as University Marie-and-Louis-Pasteur), specialising in complexity-based modelling. Her work is dedicated to advancing sustainable cities and regions.

Sophia Villmow

Heidelberg Materials

Sophia Villmow is a Research Scientist in the Scientific Coordination team within the Global Research & Development and Innovation department at Heidelberg Materials.

Her work focuses on the development of innovative low‑carbon binder systems, CCUS technologies, and collaborative research initiatives with academic and industrial partners. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in applied Mineralogy from Friedrich‑Alexander-Universität Erlangen‑Nürnberg, where she graduated with her master’s degree in 2020. During her PhD at FAU, she specialized in circular economy concepts and CO₂ utilization through mineral carbonation, with a particular emphasis on carbonation hardening in emerging binder systems.

Anna Braune

DGNB – German Sustainable Building Council

Dr. Anna Braune studied Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin, where she completed her diploma thesis on life cycle assessments of wastewater treatment plants in cooperation with the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. She subsequently worked for several consulting companies in the fields of sustainability and building services engineering.

From 2004 to 2007, she was a research associate at the University of Stuttgart, at the Institute of Building Physics, Department of Life Cycle Assessment. She was the initiator and, until the end of 2008, the founding managing director of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB).

Afterwards, she joined the sustainability consulting and software company PE International, which was renamed thinkstep in 2014. As Principal Consultant, she was responsible for the “Sustainable Building” team within the consulting division. Since September 2015, Anna Braune has been working again for the DGNB as Head of Research and Development.

Dr. Anna Braune is an experienced DGNB auditor and was for many years a member and head of the DGNB expert group on life cycle assessment. As an environmental engineer, she possesses extensive expertise in the ecological impacts of human activities.

Bassem Andrawes

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Bassem Andrawes is a Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and an Excellence Faculty Fellow. He is also the Founding Director of the TRANS-IPIC University Transportation Center, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

A licensed Professional Engineer and Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Prof. Andrawes received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2011. He earned his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 2005.

With more than 28 years of experience in engineering, education, and research, his work focuses on earthquake engineering and resilient infrastructure systems. He is internationally recognized for pioneering research on the application of Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) in civil infrastructure. He is the author of the book Shape Memory Alloys in Civil Engineering and the founder of SMA CORES, Inc., the first U.S. startup focused on developing SMA-based solutions for the construction industry.
Prof. Andrawes has contributed extensively to the field with over 175 journal papers, conference papers, books, technical reports, and patents.