Dissemination

Education & Teaching

  • CEE 300: Behavior of Materials (Undergraduate Course, 4 credits): Students are taught macroscopic mechanical behavior in terms of phenomena at the nanometer and micrometer levels for the three types of engineering materials (metals, ceramics, and polymers) with emphasis on specific construction materials used in civil engineering such as steel, glass, clay, asphalt, aggregates, wood, and concrete. Theoretical lectures are supplemented by weekly lab sessions where students conduct performance testing on various engineering materials and document their results via lab reports. This course is offered every semester, and Prof. Garg teaches it typically in the Fall semester.

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    Photos from the implementation of a Virtual Reality game developed by Garg Group in CEE 300. Left image shows an interactive 3D model of a crystallographic plane and the right image shows a student playing the VR game which helps visualize crystallographic basics for undergraduates. More details on the game and results can be found in our 2024 publication in Journal of Chemical Education.



  • CEE 502: Advanced Cement Chemistry (Graduate Course, 4 credits): Students are taught advanced topics in the manufacture and reaction chemistry of the traditional Portland cement as well as alternative, sustainable cements. Students learn to synthesize pure clinker phases in the lab at the gram scale, followed by a field trip to a local cement plant where they learn about cement production at the ton scale. This course is offered once a year, and Prof. Garg teaches it typically in the Spring semester.


Left video shows the students synthesizing a pure cement phase (belite) in the lab at the gram scale and reporting their synthesis via a 1-minute video. Right slideshow shows pictures from previous field trips to a cement plant in Missouri where students learn about cement manufacture at the ton scale.



Media Coverage

  • October 2025: Ongoing work with Meta & Amrize on using AI to optimize concrete mixes and forecast strength was recently covered in a story, “Recipe for Success”, by the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
  • September 2025: The Amrize, Meta, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign team collaborating on deploying AI-optimized concrete mixes for data centers won the Most Innovative Partnership Award at the 2025 Building Innovation Awards, UK.

  • August 2025: Our recent work with Meta & Amrize on deploying AI-optimized concrete mixes at the Rosemount, Minnesota data center was featured in a story via the Amrize Newsroom. This story was briefly mentioned in a New York Times article covering the ongoing spending on new data centers.
  • July 2025: Garg Group’s ongoing collaboration with Meta on utilizing AI to optimize & deploy lower-carbon, higher-performance concrete mixtures for their data centers was featured on Meta’s Engineering Blog and Amrize press release, and covered via Business Wire and local news. This $800 million data center in Rosemount, Minnesota, spans 715,000 square feet and is scheduled to open in 2026 (see construction visuals on Youtube). The AI model and dataset is open-source and can be publicly accessed via GitHub. 
  • February 2025: Garg and his team’s patent-pending work on the development of the UR2 test – a novel, 5-minute quality test for supplementary cementitious materials was featured by the Illinois News Bureau and The Daily Illini.

  • October 2024: Garg and his team’s work on non-proprietary Ultra High Performance Concrete (UHPC) conducted with the Illinois Department of Transportation was featured in a news article by Illinois Center for Transportation.

  • April 2024: Garg was interviewed by the Daily Herald for a news story on lowering carbon dioxide emissions of cement. The story is available here.

  • November 2023: Garg participated in the podcast “Engineering Greatness” sponsored by the American Concrete Institute where he talks about his career and research. Recording is available here.

  • September 2023: Garg presented a research webinar to ~60 alumni from the CEE department at the University of Illinois. Recording of the webinar, titled “Three Tiny Tales from the World of Construction Materials”, is available here.

  • August 2023: Garg was interviewed by Civil Engineering Student Organization at National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India – interview available on Youtube.

  • July 2023: Our recent work on rapid estimation of cementitious sorptivity was covered by the Illinois News Bureau.

  • December 2022: An article titled “Crystals in Trash” was published in the newsletter of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr).

  • November 2022: Garg was interviewed by the Illinois Public Media on his work on reducing embodied carbon of concrete. The story is available here (Garg’s interview appears after the 8:23 mark.)

  • May 2022: A story featuring our team was released in the morning edition of NPR.

  • April 2022: Our recent research work with Meta (formerly Facebook) where we designed low-carbon concrete recipes (low OPC and high SCM) and deployed them in a Facebook data center in DeKalb, Illinois was covered by media outlets such as ENR, Engadget, and CNET.

Public Outreach

Garg Group regularly disseminates knowledge via outreach to the local public and K-12 institutions. Every summer, the group participates in the WYSE summer camp organized at University of Illinois for high-school students.

Professor Garg giving an invited lecture to a class of young kids at an elementary school (Next Generation School, Champaign IL) about construction materials.