Draft:Kimberly E. Kurtis

Kimberly (Kim) E. Kurtis is a Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, holding the Raymond Allen Jones Chair and a courtesy appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. She serves as the Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship in the College of Engineering.

Career
Dr. Kurtis joined the faculty of Georgia Tech in January 1999. She earned her BSE in Civil Engineering from Tulane University under a full-tuition Deans' Honor Scholarship, followed by an MS and PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a Henry Hilp Fellow and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellow.

Research Focus and Impact
With approximately US$20M in support over her career, Dr. Kurtis's innovative research addresses the multi-scale structure and performance of cement-based materials and has resulted in more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and four US patents. Her work is motivated the need for increasing innovation to address the global challenge of equitably meeting societal needs in the most sustainable and economical ways possible. Her research combines advanced characterization methods, novel synthesis and manufacturing approaches, and data science techniques to generate new understanding to enhance the design, utilization and performance of these ubiquitous but complex materials. Her work has informed both Georgia concrete design standards and national concrete durability guidance.

Professional Leadership Roles
Dr. Kurtis has served as Associate Editor of ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering and on the Editorial Board of Cement and Concrete Composites. As of 2024, she is North American Editor for the Cement and Concrete Research Journal. She serves on the Board of Directors for the minerals producer PureBase (Ione, CA) and on the Board of Advisors for the start-up Sublime Systems (Somerville, MA). She was Chairman of ACI Committee 236: Materials Science of Concrete from 2006 to 2012. She also served as Chair of the American Ceramic Society’s Cements Division from 2008 to 2009. As of 2024, and starting in 2019, she has been the North American representative on the Steering Committee for the International Congress on the Chemistry of Cement.

Dr. Kurtis has led a number of equity and inclusion initiatives at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in her technical community, and nationally. As an ADVANCE Professor, she spearheaded the Equity Diversity Excellense and Inclusion (DEI) Initiative, increasing visibility for faculty from underrepresented groups and promoting a culture of transparency and accountability. She led a 2020 Gordon Research Conference 'Power Hour' discussion. Nationally, she leads Georgia Tech's engagement with NextProf Nexus, NextProf Pathfinder, and the UCOP Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program - all professional development programs supporting diversification in higher education.

Educational Contributions
At Georgia Tech, Dr. Kurtis developed two graduate courses and also regularly teaches an undergraduate lab-based course. Having instructed over 2,000 students over her career, she was acknowledged with Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award and ASCE Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award.

She has served as thesis advisor for 38 Ph.D. students and for 12 M.S. thesis students and has supervised ten post-docs. Seventeen former students hold academic appointments at universities around the world, including four in academic leadership roles. Others are now researchers at national labs, engaged in engineering design forensic consulting or management consulting, and at start-ups.

Awards and recognitions
Dr. Kurtis has received numerous awards, including ACI’s Walter P. Moore, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award (2005), ACI’s Del Bloem Award for Service (2013), and ASCE’s Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (2013). She is a Fellow of both ACI and the American Ceramics Society. In 2019, Dr. Kurtis was awarded the ACI Anderson Medal, becoming the 2nd woman to receive that honor in its 50+-year history. In 2020, her work on the dissolution kinetics of entrained air in into cement paste, a fundamental concept governing durability of porous brittle materials in freezing environments, was recognized with a Le Chatelier Distinguished paper award from Cement and Concrete Research. Dr. Kurtis was elected to the University of California at Berkeley’s CEE Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 2021.