Garg wins the Stephen Brunauer Award

Professor Garg has been recently awarded the prestigious Stephen Brunauer Award from the Cements Division of the American Ceramic Society. The award was presented to Prof. Garg and Prof. Jørgen Skibsted (Garg’s former Ph.D. advisor at Aarhus University, Denmark) for their 2019 article titled “Dissolution kinetics of calcined kaolinite and montmorillonite in alkaline conditions: evidence for reactive Al (V) sites” published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

A graphic summary of the 2019 article that led to the award. Understanding factors influencing dissolution of calcined clays is important in our quest to develop the next generation of sustainable cements.

The announcement was made at the 11th Advances in Cement-Based Materials Conference held virtually last week (June 23-25, 2021). This award is given every year to the author(s) of the best-refereed paper published in the previous calendar year in the Bulletin or the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

This award honors Dr. Stephen Brunauer (1903-1986), a surface scientist and chemist, who is best known for his BET (Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller) paper on “Adsorption of Gases in Multi-Molecular Layers” published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1938. The BET method is one of the most widely used methods for measuring the specific surface area of porous as well as powdered materials. Dr. Brunauer also made significant contributions to our microstructural understanding of cement hydrates.

A list of previous awardees can be found below: