07 – The 8th RILEM International Conference: My First Scientific Publication

Hey crew!

I have great news for you: I published my first scientific paper! Yep, guys that’s amazing!

It happened last week, during the 8^th RILEM International Conference on “Mechanisms of Cracking and Debonding in Pavements” in Nantes (7-9 June, 2016).

It is about part of the work I did in EMPA for my Master Thesis. For this reason, I’d like to say thanks to my ex-Supervisors Prof. Gabriel Tebaldi - who was my Professor in Italy when I was studying at the Università degli Studi di Parma – and Dr. Martin Arraigada, Dr. Christiane Raab and Prof. Dr. Manfred Partl - who were supporting me during the internship.

The title of the paper is “Influence of SAMI on the Performance of Reinforcement Grids” and you can find it here if you want to have a look on it.

The paper was presented by Dr. Christiane Raab at the beginning of the afternoon session during the first day of the Conference.

What about the first real academic conference I participated to?

It was an awesome experience guys! I’ve never got so many scientific inputs in one week. To be fair it was a bit tiring, yes, but I got the possibility to share ideas, knowledge and opinions about materials, road conditions measurements and road transport topic in general. It was a very good training week for me.

RILEM is an International organization founded in June 1947, with the aim to promote scientific cooperation in the area of construction materials and structures.

RILEM is the acronym of “Réunion Internationale des Laboratoires et Experts des Matériaux, systèmes de construction et ouvrages” (from French) which emphasizes the dominant focus of the organization on people and its activities covering about 70 countries worldwide.

Very interesting keynotes lectures were performed by some of the most important Professors in Road Pavements Materials. From Prof. A.A.A. Molenaar, to Prof. G. Paulino, Prof. M.N. Partl and Prof. R. De Beer among many others from the most important Universities from all over the World (you can have a look to a detailed copy of the program here).

During the poster session of the second day I had the possibility to talk with Prof. Dr. Karim Chatti. Yep, crew, I already mentioned him before. Basically, Dr. Chatti and his ex-PhD student (now Doctor of Philosophy) Dr. Imen Zaabar treated the influence of road pavement conditions on vehicles operating costs (with fuel consumption among many other parameters). It is almost the same topic of mine but they used a slightly different approach. I think I already explained you what’s the difference between my project and the previous ones.

With Prof. Chatti we talked about data I have, about the impact that different variables have in the problem, about my idea of data analysis and possible issues and solutions I could find on my way. And obviously I asked for suggestions, hints and tips about the topic. It was actually a nice dialogue and I really hope we can continue sharing ideas in the next few months or during future collaborations.

And what about Nantes? What about the city? The food, etc.?

Oh crew, believe me, Nantes it’s a beautiful city. It is in the North-West part of France and it is located just on the Loire River. With about 900’000 habitants it is the 6^th most populated city in France and it is approximately 385km from Paris (2h and 30mins by high speed train).

Nantes is full of gardens - in fact it received the European Green Capital award in 2013 – and modern and medieval architectures are well combined through the city. It is not such an extended city and you can visit the majority of its attractions just walking (public transports are anyway available and they work pretty well). If you walk through Nantes just follow the “green line”. It is a proper green line drawn on the ground which allows tourists and people which loves arts and history to go around the city following a well-defined circular path. Personally, I found it very useful and in my opinion it is a good idea for other cities to introduce. It is much easier than following directions on a map.

Food and wine as well known in France are really nice. Both tasty and good looking plates were served to us during the conference and in restaurants as well.

In few words: it was a very nice experience. I suggest you to have a try. Les Machines de l'île? They are amazing. You have to see them at least once in your life.

Personally, I think France in general is very nice. I mean: if you are so lucky to participate to a RILEM conference there, it’s even better.

Last week (16/06/2016) the second TRUSS ITN meeting took place in Santander. Unfortunately, I was not able to participate this time due to sickness. My flight was set on 14/06 from London but I was not able to make it because of high fever. Yep, crew: so unlucky, but my colleagues told me that the meeting was a success. Actually, I think that the other fellows will tell us how it was. In fact, as I probably already explained to you, just changing the number “13” in the main web address for a number between 01 and 14, you can access the other blogs. Yep, that’s really cool!

For example: esr13truss.blogspot.com    becomes:

esrXXtruss.blogspot.com

where XX can be 01, 02, 03, 04, …, etc. till 14. Have a look to them in the next few weeks and we will be able to find information about the meeting.

That’s all for the moment crew!

Cheers and forza Azzurri!!

www.tuttosport.com

One more time: stay tuned!

FP13