News Detail

ACI Announces New Officers for 2015

4/16/2015

The American Concrete Institute (ACI) introduced its 2015-2016 president, vice president, and four board members during The Concrete Convention and Exposition in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, this month.

Sharon L. Wood has been elected to serve as president of the Institute for 2015-2016, Khaled Walid Awad has been elected ACI vice president for a two-year term, and Michael J. Schneider is now the Institute’s senior vice president, which is also a two-year term. Additionally, four members have been elected to serve on the ACI Board of Direction, each for three-year terms: JoAnn P. Browning, Cesar A. Constantino, Kimberly Kayler, and Roberto Stark.

Sharon L. Wood, FACI, is the Dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering and holds the Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering No. 14 at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). An ACI member since 1983, she serves on ACI Committee 318, Structural Concrete Building Code. She is the past Chair of the ETC Product Development Committee and had previously served as a Trustee for the ACI Foundation and as a member of the Financial Advisory Committee and International Advisory Committee. She is currently serving in her second term on the ACI Board of Direction and has previously served as Chair of the Technical Activities Committee and the Publications Committee. She was named a Fellow of ACI in 1994.

Wood has been a member of the faculty at UT since 1996. She was Chair of the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering for 5 years and Director of the Ferguson Structural Engineering Laboratory for 1 year. Prior to joining UT, she served on the faculty in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 10 years.

Early in her career, Wood’s research focused on studying the seismic response of buildings. She investigated building performance after earthquakes in Chile, California, and Turkey; conducted static and dynamic tests of reinforced concrete frame and wall systems in the laboratory; and investigated soil-foundation-structure interaction in the field. More recent research has focused on design and evaluation of reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges and development of passive sensors to detect the onset of corrosion in concrete structures.

Wood was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2013. She received the Joe W. Kelly Award and the Henry L. Kennedy Award from ACI, the Alfred Nobel Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Arthur J. Boase Award from the Reinforced Concrete Research Council, and she served as the Distinguished Lecturer for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.

Wood received her BS in civil engineering from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, and her MS and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a licensed professional engineer in Texas.

Vice President

Khaled Walid Awad, FACI, is the Chairman and Founder of ACTS, a leading material and geotechnical consulting firm based in Beirut, Lebanon. An active member of ACI, he is Chair of ACI Subcommittee 601-E, Concrete Construction Sustainability Assessor, and serves on the Task Group on Managing Translations of ACI Products and Services, Certification Programs Committee, and the International Certification Subcommittee, of which he is a past Chair. He is a member of ACI Committees 130, Sustainability of Concrete; and C630, Construction Inspector Certification; and ACI Subcommittees 130-E, Design/Specifications/Codes/Regulations; 130-F, Social Issues; and 130-G, Education/Certification. Awad is the past Chair of the Financial Advisory Committee and previously served as a member of the ACI Board of Direction and the ACI International Committee. He received the ACI Henry L. Kennedy Award and the ACI Chapter Activities Award in 2007, and the ACI Certification Award in 2011.

Recently, he founded Grenea, an investment firm advancing and providing technical assistance to eco-developments around the world. Prior to establishing Grenea, he was the founding Director of Property Development at the Masdar Initiative in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Masdar is a multifaceted initiative advancing the development, commercialization, and deployment of renewable and alternative energy technologies and solutions. He oversaw the development of emission-free Masdar City, the world’s first development aiming to become carbon-neutral.

Awad worked in the real estate and construction industry in the Arabian Gulf for more than 25 years. He was the Founder and CEO of various construction and real estate companies, dealing with the supply chain and information technology side of the industry, as well as the development of large-scale projects.

He received his BE in civil engineering from the American University, Beirut, Lebanon, and his MA in business administration from the Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon. Awad is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and ASTM International, and a Fellow of the UK Institute of Concrete Technology.

Directors

JoAnn P. Browning, FACI, was named the Dean and David and Jennifer Spencer Distinguished Chair of the University of Texas at San Antonio College of Engineering in August 2014. Previously, she served as Assistant/Associate/Full Professor from 1998-2014 and Associate Dean of Engineering from 2012-2014 at the University of Kansas (KU), Lawrence, KS. She was awarded KU’s Miller Award for Distinguished Professional Service twice (2004 and 2011) and was the 2012 recipient of the Henry E. Gould Award for Distinguished Service to Undergraduate Education. In 2015, she was named a Purdue Distinguished Woman Scholar.

Browning currently is a member of the ACI Technical Activities Committee (TAC) and the Faculty Network and serves on the Joint ACI-ASCE Committees Task Group, Session Review Task Group, and TAC Awards Task Group. She is a member of ACI Committees 314, Simplified Design of Concrete Buildings (past Chair); 318, Structural Concrete Building Code; 341, Earthquake-Resistant Concrete Bridges; 374, Performance-Based Seismic Design of Concrete Buildings; and Joint ACI-ASCE Committee 408, Bond and Development of Steel Reinforcement; and ACI Subcommittees 318-C, Safety, Serviceability, and Analysis; 318-SC, Steering Committee; and the T.Y. Lin Award Subcommittee.

She received ACI’s Young Member Award for Professional Achievement in 2008 and was named a Fellow of ACI in 2009. In addition to ACI, Browning is active in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute (CRSI), and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI).

Browning’s research interests include structural engineering, earthquake engineering, engineering materials, and reinforced concrete design and analysis. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, and her PhD in civil engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.

Cesar A. Constantino, FACI, is Director, Business Development, for Separation Technologies LLC, a Titan America Business. His responsibilities include creation of long-term value with customers, markets, and relationships with a focus on supplementary and alternative supplementary cementitious materials. Formerly, Constantino was Vice President, Corporate Engineering, and led a team devoted to operational excellence achievement in all Titan America businesses. Prior to Titan America, Constantino consulted as a structural, materials, and concrete construction expert in the United States and Panama. While in Panama, he was appointed to various executive positions in the Ministry of Public Works and was an Adjunct Professor in the Engineering Graduate School at the Technological University of Panama, Panama City, Panama.

Constantino serves on several ACI committees, including 130, Sustainability of Concrete; 228, Nondestructive Testing of Concrete; 239, Ultra-High Performance Concrete; 308, Curing Concrete; and ACI Subcommittee 308-B, Curing-Specifications. He is also a member of the Certification Programs Committee, Educational Activities Committee, International Project Awards Committee, Marketing Committee, and International Conferences/Conventions Subcommittee.

He publishes technical papers and articles, reviews manuscripts intended for publication in industry journals, and delivers presentations and lectures at conferences and workshops in the United States and throughout Latin America. He participates in technical committees in the areas of sustainability, resilience, and innovation with other industry associations, including American Coal Ash Association (ACAA), ASTM International, Federación Iberoamericana del Hormigón Premezclado (FIHP), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Concrete Sustainability Hub, National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA), Portland Cement Association (PCA), and the RMC Research & Education Foundation. He is a member of the University of Miami Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Advisory Board and the Florida International University’s Civil Engineering Industry Advisory Council.

Constantino received his master’s degree in structural engineering and his PhD in construction materials from The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. He is a licensed civil engineer in Panama.

Kimberly Kayler is President and Founder of Constructive Communication, Inc. (CCI), Dublin, OH. A marketing professional with extensive experience serving technical industries, Kayler started CCI in 2001 to serve the needs of professional service and business-to-business technical firms. In her role as President of CCI, Kayler helps clients define strategy and develop marketing action plans. CCI’s client list includes more than a dozen concrete-related organizations.

Kayler chairs the ACI Marketing Committee and is a current member of the Construction Liaison Committee and the Membership Committee. She also chairs the Global Marketing Plan Task Group and is a member of the 2030 Outlook Task Group. She has also served on the Branding Task Group and the Task Group on Communication Platforms for Delivery of Services and Products, and participated in ACI’s 2013 Strategic Planning effort.

Kayler is a Co-Founder of the Women in Concrete Alliance (WICA) and leads efforts to create networking programs for women in the concrete industry. In this capacity, she represented WICA on the U.S. Secretary of Transportation’s Women in Transportation Roundtable.

Kayler was recently elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the Construction Writers Association as Second Vice President. She has authored more than 2000 articles and is the co-author of Leading with Marketing, a handbook for marketing and business development professionals. She has given presentations at World of Concrete and for many organizations, including Concrete Foundations Association (CFA), Construction Specifications Institute (CSI), National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA), National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), and Tilt-Up Concrete Association (TCA).

Since 2009, Kayler has served as an Adjunct Professor in the Integrated Marketing Communications Department at Columbus State Community College, Columbus, OH. She received her BA in journalism/English from The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, and her MS in organization and management with an emphasis in leadership from Capella University.

Roberto Stark, FACI, is the President of Stark+Ortiz, S.C., a consulting firm based in Mexico City, which provides structural design services for urban and infrastructure projects throughout Mexico. Stark is a member of ACI Committee 318, Structural Concrete Building Code, and ACI Subcommittees 318-D, Members; 318-L, International Liaison; and 318-S, Spanish Translation Task Group. He also serves on ACI Committees 369, Seismic Repair and Rehabilitation; 374, Performance-Based Seismic Design of Concrete Buildings; the International Advisory Committee; and the ISO-TC 71 Advisory Committee.

Since 1979, Stark has been a Professor at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico, and was Head of the Graduate Department of Structural Engineering from 1988 to 1992. He has given seminars on different topics related to concrete and seismic design in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, and the United States. He received the Gabino Barreda Medal for the highest Academic Achievement in 1981.

Stark served as the Mexican delegate on ISO-TC 71 from 2005 to 2012. He received his BS in civil engineering from UNAM and his MS and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Photos of the new officers can be obtained at ACI's Media Room, or by contacting Julie Webb at Julie.Webb@concrete.org or 248-848-3148.

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For more information, contact:
Julie Webb
Marketing Communications Specialist
248-848-3148
Julie.Webb@concrete.org

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