Biography: Dr Zongjin LI is Chair professor at University of Macau. He received his B.E. from Zhejiang University in 1982 and obtained both his M.S. and PhD from Northwestern University, Chicago, in 1990 and 1993, respectively. He was a fellow of American Concrete Institute, Chair of China Group of RILEM and Founding President of ACI China Chapter. As the chief scientist, he has led a China Key National Basic Research Project (973), ‘Basic study on environmentally friendly contemporary concrete’ that promoted the concrete research in China to a world-class level. He also founded the Gordon Research Conference, ‘‘Advanced Materials for Sustainable Infrastructure Development’ in 2014.

He is pioneer in noncontact resistivity/impedance measurement for cement-based materials and lead the research activities in this area for about 20 years. He also developed cement-based piezoelectric and opened a new direction for civil engineering. The methodology he developed to utilizing the in situ polymerization of monomer during cement hydration process has shown a strong effect in enhancing flexural strength of cement-based composite. He has published 5 technical books, in which ‘Advanced Concrete Technology’ published by John Wiley has been collected by many national libraries and major university libraries  and used by many universities as text or reference books for civil engineering. He has also published more than 400 technical papers with a Google Scholar citation of 22859 and H-index of 83. He has also been awarded eight US and twenty Chinese patents. Three of his patents have been developed into commercial products. 

He received the Arthur R. Anderson Medal from American Concrete Institute in 2017 and Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Award from British Royal Academy of Engineering in 2014.