Yasmina Shields graduated from Drexel University (USA) in 2017 with a Bachelor and Masters degrees in civil engineering. Between 2017 and 2020, she worked as a geo-structural engineer at Clark Foundations in the Washington, D.C. area, and was involved in the design and installation of earth retention and deep foundations projects. The scope of her PhD project within SMARTINCS is to develop an optimized vascular network for self-healing in concrete. Vascular networks for self-healing of concrete have been limited so far to linear configurations. The aim of this project is to further develop a network so that its topology is optimized for fluid flow. The network will be fabricated by 3D printing and embedded in a concrete element to test its crack healing efficiency. Numerical modelling will be used to simulate the full healing system and find optimal network designs.