The best global PhD in cementitious materials 2024 stays at the University of Malaga. The young scientist Shiva Shirani, postdoctoral researcher in materials science and X-ray imaging at the Faculty of Sciences of the UMA, has been awarded the Innovandi NanoCem PhD Prize.

Awarded by the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) from London, which represents 80 percent of the global cement industry outside of China, this award for doctoral theses defended between 2021 and 2023, and worth $5,000, recognizes exceptional contributions to research in this field of study. In this edition, the paper of the doctor of the UMA has been selected from more than 30 papers submitted, coming from twenty different countries.

Shiva Shirani (Iran, 1993) defended her thesis last year at the UMA, under the supervision of Professor Miguel Ángel García Aranda –who has won this year the prestigious ‘ERC Advanced Grant’ from the European Research Council– after a 4-year FPI Postdoctoral Grant. Previously, he had completed a master’s degree at the Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic). Since 2019 she has been part of the Cement Science Group of the Malaga institution.

Towards a low-carbon cement

Under the title ‘Advanced quantitative synchrotron X-ray imaging of cement micro- and meso- structures’, in her PhD she investigates how to optimize alternatives to Portland cement, which has a huge carbon footprint –up to 8 percent of the annual human-produced CO2 comes from this process– using advanced synchrotron imaging techniques.

“So far, low-carbon alternatives are not as durable as the type of cement that hardens fast and strong. The goal of my PhD is to determine how this cement is formed in order to develop more eco-friendly materials,” says Shirani.

“This prize reaffirms my belief that a doctoral thesis can be a beacon for solving key challenges in cement science,” assures the scientist, who has also received recently the Best Spanish PhD Award in Synchrotron Radiation(AUSE) for this paper, in recognition of the innovative techniques she uses.

Innovation in the field of radiography

The synchrotron uses advanced X-ray nanotomography, a state-of-the-art imaging technique to create 4D nanoimaging of cement. This allows to visualize the cement hydration at nanometer scale and capture the evolution of the particles over time without altering the sample. According to the researcher, this information is crucial for low-carbon cement to compete with Portland cement, as it shows how these particles can accelerate the hydration process.

In short, the researcher at the University of Malaga, as she herself says, works to reduce CO2 emissions from cement through innovation and research in the field of radiography.