Aleksandra Radlińska, Ph.D.

2007 Recipient

Dr. Aleksandra Radlinska is a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at The Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Radlińska’s 2007 Fellowship was on “Preliminary Comments on Shrinkage and Shrinkage Cracking Behavior of Cement Systems that Contain Limestone” under Professor Jason Weiss at Purdue University. Because shrinkage relates to cracking potential, it’s important to understand how concrete mixtures shrink and the role cement plays. Uncalcined limestone is added to cements to improve construction sustainability, but if shrinkage leads to cracking, it can affect concrete durability. Ms. Radlińska and her colleagues noted that researchers had studied limestone-containing cements for strength, hydration, and workability, but research on their shrinkage potential was lacking. They proposed investigating the shrinkage behavior of cements at two different interground limestone contents (5% and 10%) compared to a reference cement mixture. They found that shrinkage performance for the limestone-containing cements was comparable to that of the reference mixture, indicating that cracking should be no more of an issue for cements with limestone than for portland cements without limestone.

Dr. Radlińska’s current research focuses on developing innovative materials and construction methods to enhance infrastructure durability and reduce CO2 impact for terrestrial and extraterrestrial applications. Her work to date has focused on mechanisms and mitigation of shrinkage and carbonation in alkali-activated concrete, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and on predicting and reducing the probability of early-age cracking in concrete, supported by several awards from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). She has researched cement solidification in the microgravity environment (funded by NASA), pyrrhotite reactivity in concrete (funded by NSF and NIST), 3D printing of concrete (funded by NASA and DARPA), and Nontraditional and Natural Pozzolan-based Supplementary Cementitious Materials or Inorganic Polymers for Transportation Infrastructure (funded by FHWA). Dr. Radlińska is Chair of the newly established American Concrete Institute (ACI) 565 Lunar Concrete Committee, past chair of the Concrete Research Council, which helps transform academic research into industrial applications, and past chair of ACI Committee 123 Research and Current Developments. She served as Chair-Elect of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS) Cements Division in 2017 and as meeting chair in 2018, when the meeting was held on Penn State’s University Park campus. Dr. Radlińska is an ACI Fellow and an incoming member of the ACI Board.