Meet the Team

Rui Vasco Silva is a Researcher at CERIS R&D Unit (IST-ID) and Invited Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Georesources at IST, University of Lisbon, Portugal. He completed his PhD on the use of recycled aggregates derived from construction, demolition and excavation waste in the production of structural concrete. He has experience in several state-funded and is now the Principal Investigator of the research project EXPL/ECI-EGC/0288/2021 - Carbon capture: Performance enhancing CO2-based curing of fully recycled alkali-activated concrete. He is the author of several publications concerning sustainable construction and is currently researching other approaches that can further decrease the environmental impact of concrete, namely reactive magnesium oxide, alkali-activated materials, municipal solid waste incinerator bottom ashes and electric arc furnace slag. He is the author of 50+ publications in WoS/Scopus databases, 20+ in conferences, 15 book chapters, and 2 international books (h-index of 32/26 in Google Scholar/Scopus with total citations of 5688/4028, respectively - 30/01/2024).

António P. C. Duarte, a native of Lisbon, Portugal, holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Structures) from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) - University of Lisbon (UL) and an MSc in Civil Engineering (Structures) from the same institution. Currently serving as a Post-doctoral researcher at CERIS-IST-UL (Civil Engineering Research for Innovation and Sustainability), he is also an Invited Assistant Professor at Escola Superior de Tecnologia do Barreiro – Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal.

His primary research interests encompass the thermo-mechanical behaviour of fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites, materials science, eco-efficient building materials, and the mechanical behaviour of steel, concrete, steel-concrete (composite construction), and FRP structures. Notably, he serves as the Co-Principal Investigator of the project ‘ECO2Alkrete: Carbon capture: Performance enhancing CO2-based curing of fully recycled alkali-activated concrete’ (EXPL/ECI-EGC/0288/2021), funded by the Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology - FCT.

António's journey in research includes his tenure at CERIS-IST-UL and IDMEC-IST-UL, where he significantly contributed to projects such as ‘Recycling and Seismic Protection: Sustainable High-Performance CFST Columns for Seismic Areas.’ His Ph.D. thesis, supported by a scholarship (SFRH-BD-97176-2013) from FCT, delves deep into the experimental, numerical and analytical mechanical cross-sectional behaviour of rubberised concrete-filled steel tubes under compression and under cyclic bending combined with compression.

An accomplished author, António has published 21 papers in scientific peer-reviewed journals and presented over 25 communications at national and international conferences. His publications boast an h-index of 10 and 491 citations on Scopus, with a comparable h-index of 10 and 579 citations on Google Scholar (as of 24 November 2023). In addition to supervising two Ph.D. theses and 16 MSc dissertations, he has contributed as a reviewer for prestigious journals, including Thin-Walled Structures, Engineering Structures, Structures and Buildings – ASCE, Journal of Building Engineering, and Composite Structures.

António actively engages in scholarly activities, having participated in the organisation of the Eighth ICASS 2015 and CMN 2015 in Lisbon, as well as being a member of the organising committee for ICTWS 2018. He serves as a Co-guest editor for two Special Issues in Materials at MDPI and holds membership in the Portuguese Association for Steel and Steel-Concrete Composite Construction (CMM). In recognition of his outstanding contributions, he was honoured with a diploma in the 'Prémio Inovação Valorpneu 2014' for his work in the 'Recycling and Seismic Protection' project and his Ph.D. thesis.

Ghandy is a proficient Civil Engineering researcher and a laboratory investigator focused on environmentally friendly alternatives to ordinary Portland cement. He has participated in several experimental research studies on CO2-cured alkali-activated concretes. His doctoral work at Instituto Superior Técnico focuses on developing an innovative, cement-free, and eco-friendly concrete mixture as a contribution to civil engineering in the fight against climate change. Industrial solid materials such as municipal solid waste incinerator bottom ashes, electric arc furnace slag, and waste glass rejects are the primary potential binders he is investigating with the aim of completely replacing Portland cement and reducing its environmental impact.

In March 2022, Ghandy received the Advanced Specialisation Diploma in Civil Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico upon completing the coursework for his PhD program. Previously, in January 2020, he earned a Master degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Greenwich in London, United Kingdom. Furthermore, in January 2019, Ghandy completed a 5-year Bachelor's degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Beirut Arab University, a highly reputable national university ranked first in Lebanon and 11th in the Arab world (Times Higher Education, 2022).

To date, he has published three articles in Web of Science-indexed international journals. Ghandy has also made two presentations at a national conference at the Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil in Lisbon, in November 2022, and published two articles in the conference journal 6as Jornadas Portuguesas de Engenharia de Estruturas. Furthermore, in September 2023, Ghandy presented two papers at an international conference organised by the University of Coimbra and published two articles in the conference proceedings. He has also authored nine technical reports for the scientific project ECO2Alkrete (EXPL/ECI-EGC/0288/2021), where he has worked as the lead researcher since February 2022.

Additionally, Ghandy has completed 1.5 years of postgraduate training as a construction site supervisor to apply the skills acquired during his education. He has also successfully obtained certificates from courses such as Cement Chemistry and Sustainable Cementitious Materials offered by École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne (EPFL), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper from École Polytechnique À Paris, Understanding Research Methods from the University of London, Using Python for Research from Harvard University, Academic and Business Writing from the University of California, Berkeley, Contract Law: From Trust to Promise to Contract from Harvard University, Introduction to Project Management from the University of Adelaide, and Structural Materials: Selection and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Furthermore, Ghandy has been a member of the Order of Engineers in Portugal since February 2023, and the American Concrete Institute since May 2022. He is a trilingual academic writer (English, French and Arabic) with professional English writing skills and a confident research presenter with the ability to explain complex information to audiences of all levels. Finally, Ghandy was awarded a prestigious doctoral scholarship from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in 2023, demonstrating a continued commitment to excellence in research and academic achievements.