PhD Vanessa Giaretton Cappellesso

On the 10th of January 2024 Vanessa (ESR11) successfully defended her PhD “Self-Healing Concrete in Aggressive Environments”. This has earned her the titles of Doctor of Civil Engineering from Ghent University and Doctor of Engineering technology from KU Leuven. The jury was impressed by the extensive experimental work which she carried out on different self-healing technologies and their application in frost & salt, marine, chloride and sulphate environments. Most notably, her work resulted in a comprehensive matrix that can be used as a guide to select the most optimal self-healing technology based on the environment of the application.
This was a proud moment for her family, friends, promotors (prof De Belie, prof Gruyaert, and prof Van Tittelboom) and her SMARTINCS colleagues.

PhD Yasmina Shields

Yasmina Shields (ESR1) defended her PhD entitled “Self-healing concrete with a 3D printed ductile-porous vascular network” on the 15th of January, right after the defence of Vanessa. Yasmina started her research work on brittle vascular networks. However, she was able to convince the jury and the audience of the added benefits of using ductile porous networks instead of brittle ones. At the end of her PhD she was even able to test these networks in a large-scale demonstrator together with our partner Besix. Yasmina received the title of Doctor of Civil Engineering from Ghent University.
Her family, friends, promotors (prof. De Belie, prof. Van Tittelboom, and prof. Jefferson) and her SMARTINCS colleagues happily shared in this joyous occasion.

Well done Yasmina!