The ACI Foundation Supports the Next Generation of Concrete Professionals

10/1/2025

As we prepare to gather for the ACI Concrete Convention – Fall 2025 this month in Baltimore, MD, USA, I’d like to take a moment to highlight some of the ways ACI supports student members. Over 600 students registered for the ACI Concrete Convention – Spring 2025 in Toronto, ON, Canada, which was more than 25% of attendees. We are looking forward to reconnecting with some of these students at the Fall Convention and welcoming new ones as well. Please engage with student attendees—they are our future leaders!

One of the ways that ACI supports student members is through the ACI Foundation, established in 1989 to “make strategic investments in ideas, research, and people to create the future of the concrete industry.” Many of us are familiar with the Foundation’s fellowship and scholarship program, which has supported over 400 students—more than 90% of whom have continued on to careers in the concrete industry. This is a remarkable return on investment! Part of the fellowship program’s success is that students are supported to attend ACI Concrete Conventions, where they gain knowledge, network, and receive mentoring. This program has been so successful that the number of annual awards given to students has more than doubled since 2017 (from 21 to 48).

The ACI Foundation also achieves its mission by supporting research. The research program is experiencing remarkable growth; the number of research projects supported has doubled since 2017. This year, the ACI Foundation has adjusted its approach to identifying and funding research and innovation projects to start with a solicitation of problem statements, which are then reviewed by a new steering group, the Strategic Innovation and Research Committee (SIRC). The ACI Foundation has also removed its 50,000 USD funding limit for projects, benefiting researchers and improving outcomes. For more information about the new process, visit www.acifoundation.org/research/solicitations.

We often think about research funding in terms of how it supports research outcomes, not in terms of how it supports people. However, the work “behind the scenes” on research projects is generally performed by students, so Foundation research and innovation funds are another mechanism through which ACI supports its student members. I recently spoke with two former student researchers whose careers in the concrete industry were shaped by ACI Foundation support.

Benjamin Worsfold, now an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, worked on an ACI Foundation-sponsored project “Benchmark Tests on Anchoring Columns to Foundations” when he was a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. His investigation of failures in full-scale testing led to the development of a new design methodology that was recently adopted into ACI CODE-318-25 (Section 25.4.11). Worsfold attended ACI Concrete Conventions through this work, presenting to ACI Committees 355, Anchorage to Concrete, and 349, Concrete Nuclear Structures; he’s now a member of both. The ACI Foundation’s support helped him transition from a student researcher to a concrete professional with continued involvement in ACI.

Benjamin Worsfold and his full-scale anchorage testing at the University of California, Berkeley

Zoe Lallas, who recently completed her PhD at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA, and is now a consultant at MJ2 Consulting, PLLC, in Bannockburn, IL, worked on the ACI Foundation-sponsored project “Evaluation of Early-Strength Development in Tension-Driven High Strength Concrete Formulations.” For this project, she and other students designed and prepared mixtures high in supplementary cementitious materials and used particle-packing concepts to create concrete with high tensile capacities within 24 hours. They scaled trial-batch mixtures to a full-scale reinforced concrete beam, maximizing strength relative to the economy of the sections. Lallas plans to attend the Fall Convention in her new consulting role and is looking forward to continued involvement with ACI.

Please join me in supporting students by donating to this year’s ACI Foundation Annual Appeal. Visit www.acifoundation.org/giving, or donate through the appeal letter that you will receive this month. Donations of any amount will be greatly appreciated. Thanks to ACI’s support of the ACI Foundation, 100% of your mission-directed donation will be used for the beneficiaries—students, research, and innovation.

Maria C.G. Juenger

Ask the President

Do you have a question for the ACI President? Email inquiries can be sent to askthepresident@concrete.org.