30 - Maria Juenger

Happy episode 30, Pod People! We hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr Maria Juenger. 

Dr Juenger studied and teaches about the materials that literally hold our built environment together, with an emphasis on chemical issues in cement-based materials. She's a professor at UT Austin (hook 'em!) and also the current present of the American Concrete Institute, where she helps to guide how industry uses the most common building material at a global scale. We chat about her work, how she infuses sustainability into coursework, and the importance of mentorship and organic connections. 

Resources and organizations mentioned: 

• American Concrete Institute 
  • Check this out for webinars, certifications (Fundamentals of Concrete), and technical documents (like ACI 323 Low Carbon Concrete code)
  • Students - membership is free! 
• American Cement Association 
  • Check this out for free and reliable educational content. 
  • This is the best starting point for beginners! 
• ACI 323 - Low Carbon Concrete Code 
• Carbon Leadership Forum
  • Check this out for free and reliable technical content. There are local chapters in most regions who host events and webinars, so see if you have a hub nearby adn get invovled here. 

Transcript

First Half

Aparna: [00:00:00] Hello Pod people. Welcome back. I am so excited for today's chat as we are joined by one of my favorite professors of all time, Dr. Maria Junger. She's been such a role model for me throughout my schooling at UT Austin and Northwestern. Hook them and go cats, and I think everyone's gonna love her energy and insights.

So for the introduction, Dr. J is a professor in the civil, architectural and environmental Engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Ernst Cockrell Junior Centennial Chair in engineering. She studies and teaches about the materials that literally hold our built environment together with an emphasis on chemical issues in cement-based materials.

She's a fellow of both the American Concrete Institute and the American Ceramic Society, and currently serves as the president of the American Concrete Institute. Helping guide the future of one of the most widely used materials on the planet. Dr. J earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry and Spanish from Duke, her PhD in Material Science and Engineering from Northwestern, and completed a post-doctoral [00:01:00] research at uc, Berkeley before landing in Austin.

to the show. We're thrilled to have you.

Maria Juenger: That's great. Thanks.

Aparna: Happy to hear, hear. So to start us off, we'd love it if you could walk us through how a chemistry and Spanish major found herself knee deep in the world of concrete. So feel free to highlight your steps along the way and

elaborate more on those experiences.

Maria Juenger: It's question a lot that, how did I end up here? It depends on how far back you want me to go, but I can, if I about thinking about high school, which you when we think about especially girls in STEM education, where do they start out and what kind of encouragement did they get? say that I was in high school in the stone ages where there was no internet and. If you wanted to know what engineering was, you had to ask your school guidance counselor, your teachers, and any other parents that you might find who might be engineers, which I could not find. So I was interested in engineering, but I couldn't get anyone to tell me what it actually was. So to be safe, did not [00:02:00] apply to engineering was interested in chemistry and when I was starting staying in chemistry. I realized pretty quickly that the aspects of chemistry that they had, they were teaching in school were things that were pharmaceutical or medical. Um, And I wasn't interested in those either. But I ended up, and this actually speaks to the sustainability aspect of things, I watched the, on TV that was some sort of special, say like 60 minutes or 2020, and it was about garbage. And I got really upset about garbage and realized, wait, you know, what I really wanna do is I wanna work in something that has something to do with recycling how can I turn chemistry? This chemistry that I'm studying into something that's recycling focused. I stumbled upon material science as a pathway for that, but Duke did not have a material science major, so I went and. Braved, the going to the professor office hour things, [00:03:00] which Aparna has done when she was in school here and braved coming to talk to me. But I went to talk to a professor and said, what do I need to do? Can I stay majoring in chemistry or do I need to change schools? And so he said, you can stay in chemistry, you can go to engineering graduate school.

This is not a problem. Our educational system is flexible. So I took a few engineering classes, went to material science and engineering graduate school, and then stumbled upon cement. Because you may be surprised to realize that of what's interesting about cement and concrete is chemistry related. And so we think about cement and concrete as being this big, bulky, physical material that we build buildings and roads out of, but it, the chemistry's actually really sophisticated, and so it gave me a channel to apply chemistry in a way that was just different than what other people were doing. It wasn't chemical and pharmaceutical, it wasn't medical. wasn't shampoo or food or other things like that. It was really highly [00:04:00] focused on that we use every day, the world's most used material really. Um, But the chemistry is really weird and cool. So it gave me that possibility.

Kiersten: Fantastic. So garbage, if I'm hearing right, is part of what spurred this change and focus into materials. I love it. Carrying on in that theme, something that really spurred, uh, your decision to weave sustainability into your 

Maria Juenger: Yeah, you know, I've been about that because when I first started working in cement and concrete, it wasn't sustainability focused. It was really science and answering interesting scientific questions. But the field was dabbling in sustain. I would say at that time, but it wasn't the focus that we have now.

I would say most of the research that's focused on the material science of cement and concrete is focused on sustainability in some way at the moment. Um, Even when it's looking at other aspects of performance, a slant that sustainability related, it's so important now, [00:05:00] but back when I was starting it was not. So I was doing a lot of scientific basic understanding type research. But one of the things that's interesting about being a professor. Is when you start an academic career, the entire mission or goal that you're given is to start a research program that's meaningful to you and that's important and that you can get funding for. so, And publishing and those kinds of things that matter in academia. so I started doing some work and doing the work that I was always doing and doing some new work. But then there's this grant called the NSF Career Award. The career award stand is basically intended to launch your career in a direction that you care about and give you a basis for establishing your research early on. So you get to apply in whatever topic you want. I remember sitting down probably in the same office where I'm sitting right now and thinking, wait a minute, these things I've been doing, what I really wanted to do was do recycling. [00:06:00] Why haven't I been doing that? And so this writing this proposal was really my way of saying, Hey, I'm not gonna do what other people are thinking is right for me, or what the field thinks.

It's right. It's what do I wanna do? And that to me, that. Career award really was the launching pad for my career. Thinking about doing things my way and what I wanted to work on. Looking at recycling, looking at low energy, low CO2 systems, and it gave me that freedom to work in that direction. kind of how I got into Um, Bringing that recycling full circle into my research career.

Aparna: Awesome. And I also do know you in a recycled context in our recycled Concrete Materials course, which was definitely one of my more memorable ones, and I still remember the award that Saif gave us for shiniest and best smelling concrete because we use lush water to make our recycled concrete mix.

Maria Juenger: Yes.

Aparna: Wow. What a lasting memory. I love that lush. Do you [00:07:00] guys wanna sponsor us too? Man, it's really cool to see that you had an idea and you've been able to execute so much on it. I'd love to hear too, you've been teaching classes for a number of years at Texas.

You now lead ACI. So how has this emphasis on recycling that you have manifested? Has it been mostly through classes? Have you been able to like really get in the weeds with research? Are other people being receptive to it?

Maria Juenger: mostly through research lesson classes, and so I, I bring it up as a topic in class, but the classes don't know. They have a specific topic of their own. They are defined. And so I bring it into the class, but I don't teach it only in the class in that sense. Um, But in research you really get to drive whatever direction you wanna go um, once you write a grant proposal and get it funded, which of course is the hard part. Um, Once you get funding from the grant proposal, you can drive it in a particular direction. And so having the industry and having funding agencies really support and get behind the concept of low carbon, low energy cements and [00:08:00] concrete.

Has been really helpful for me because it?

means that everyone is valuing the work that I'm interested in doing, and there's a lot of teams and people to work with to push in this same direction. So for me, it's the research that is driving the most in that direction. But I'm very happy that I'm not alone a wor, It's a global team that's really working together to improve

concrete

sustainability.

Kiersten: I think that flows really nicely into one of our next thoughts, which is sort of this concept that you research and you teach, and you're the president of the American Concrete Institute, so that might be one of the venues that you were referring to when you said we're. Not alone, but I'd love to know how do you structure speaking about climate and sustainability within those different kind of pockets, your research, your students, and your professional

Maria Juenger: Yeah. is, it is interesting. And then it's gonna, Since we've been talking about research, I'm gonna start with the research first. In research, word. the entire research enterprise is [00:09:00] focused on an engineering. getting up and giving talks, right? You get up, you've got a PowerPoint slide, and you give a talk to an audience. So that's a really clear, easy venue to speak about sustainability research because it's a built in format. Um, When you get to classes, it's a little different because you have to, again, fit into that structure of what the class topic is.

If it's a general materials class or a concrete class, you interweave it in to those concepts or like what? Aparna was referring to earlier with the lush, recycled lush water. In the concrete materials class, a a concrete competition where students compete to make. Reasonable concrete of reasonable strength in physical properties that have a maximum amount of recycled or reused materials in them. So we bring it into classes that way. With ACI, it's a little different because ACI is a very, very large organization that has a specific mission. However, last year, ACI developed a new strategic plan and it five pillars, one of which is [00:10:00] sustainability and resilience. And so because it's part of the strategic plan, given me an ability to speak about it in that context much more easily. The other thing that facilitates that is, of what I do in ACI. When I give talks is I talk about my research, sometimes when I'm representing them, I speak about their initiatives and what they're interested in. And what's nice about that too is last year ACI published what they're calling it's called ACI 3 2 3, the low carbon concrete code. So it is a building code designed to help people or help organizations?

Um, specify. for a low carbon concrete mixture design. so just to keep that in vague terms, so it it an a document that helps with that process.

And so I'm able to go and speak to people about this new code and it helps that it's new and exciting so that it's something that when you say, well, what's new at ACI, you can say. [00:11:00] tell you about the low concrete code, right? And so that can be a topic that I to to go into more depth on. Um, And I've done that recently, um, a virtual talk at a chapter I talked about what's new and then drilled in and focused on the low carbon concrete that's, that's been a beneficial for me to be able to highlight the things that I care

Aparna: Totally. That's such a good platform. It. And out of curiosity, when you're speaking to these groups, when you're getting in front of these large chapters, are there other people that are echoing your passions? Are there others that say, oh yeah, low carbon, concrete, fantastic. This is so good that we're finally doing this.

Maria Juenger: it in a small meeting in Australia and they said, oh, please tell me more. And I said, well, let me hook you up with the person who was chairing the committee, and then he can give a virtual presentation to your group. So that's an example of how I can give an introduction to the topic, but then I can. Let people go to the source to learn more information. But there is definitely support must a lot of what I've been doing [00:12:00] with ACI is global. It's not necessarily in the us though. Some of it is in the us. there's, there's certainly interest worldwide and in how different regions are doing things differently, right? So they may be interested in the same topic, but maybe taking a different pathway in another country. And so learning how the US is doing things and not that the ACI is really. Solely a US institution, but it is largely us in how the documents are developed. Um, Though they are used globally, so um, it's nice to be able to be the person who gets to link people together on topics

of similar

interest.

Cool. Could you elaborate a little bit on that and tell the How things are different like regionally in terms of countries with concrete, we don't have to get too technical if you don't want to, although I'm sure you're capable of it. But maybe just like a couple key differences that you would observe from

Yeah, that's an interesting question. What's funny and interesting is cement and concrete are still [00:13:00] the same things no matter what country you're in. They're pretty much made the same ways. The differences have to do with building codes and specifications and requirements, locally available materials. So Aparna is very familiar with the concept of local materials being used in civil engineering in general. If you think about civil engineering structures or infrastructure building projects from a sustainability perspective, you might think Civil engineering had it right all along because primarily from a structural engineering perspective, people are gonna use local materials first.

That's gonna be their first choice. And so that ends up being a more sustainable choice in terms um, transportation costs. But what ends up happening um, ma there's a lot of materials that get shipped around the world for other purposes, but the main structure often, especially if it's concrete, is local, locally made, locally sourced aggregates, which are rocks um, and cements, which are made, or at least barged shipped in to reduce [00:14:00] cost, which ends up reducing environmental footprint anyway.

But it's primarily a cost reduction. Concept. So the specifications have it so that most places are using relatively similar materials. They may be using them in slightly different ways, but a lot of things that differ are the standards that they use and the building codes that they use um, for construction um, with the minor nuances and what's locally available uh, making a

difference as well.

Kiersten: So regional specificity, I have to ask 'cause Aparna idea of using lush water as the liquid component caught on

Maria Juenger: The problem is it's just not We get all kinds of people suggesting things that you can put in concrete and, oh, isn't it gonna be such a good idea if, and the issue is scale. And so we're talking about 4 billion tons of cement made per year and 20 some billion tons of concrete made. Somebody asked me to put That in context once for Texas, and I was like, okay, I'll figure this out. And it was something like [00:15:00] covering this. of Texas with an inch of concrete, you know, or something, uh, every year or something like that. You know, I, I'm not sure that that analogy applies anymore, but the scale is huge and it is very difficult to get, well, certainly to get lush water recycled at any scale make any dent whatsoever. But there's a lot of materials that could be interesting. But scale to the scale of how much concrete we actually Is,

is super

challenging.

Kiersten: That makes total sense though I am disappointed that I won't observe sparkly good smelling concrete. near

Aparna: Next time you're over, I have a little puck that we all made in that class here. Oh, listeners, you can't see it, but I do have it like next to my desk over here. So Kirsten, I'll show you. It's the smell I.

I don't know. It's placebo. I'm sniffing something, but

Maria Juenger: What's funny about that to me is education and in education in general, , everyone recognizes the interest in hands-on experiences, but being [00:16:00] able to give those to our students in the digital age especially of increasing online classes, but also in the age of trying to reach as many students as possible in a public institution. I have students who will break some concrete and then they're walking around carrying it in their backpack, right? Aparna, how many years later you still have your concrete sitting next to you. This is really impactful. Hands-on experiences and engineering are impactful and you know, if we wanna turn that to sustainability, how can we turn engineering education or in any education, sustainable experiences into something hands-on that's memorable. that's gonna be our challenge. One of the challenges, we have lots of challenges universities right now, but that's one of the challenges, is those things that people carry with them forever.

Aparna: Totally something that's gonna make enough of an impact. On you that you just keep thinking about it. Have you heard of that experiment? I, I'm gonna butcher whoever did it, but basically it's this experiment that someone ran where he carried all of his waste, like in a little tote bag [00:17:00] around for a certain amount of time.

Kirsten, I think you have the actual info on this, right?

Yeah. And then there was a separate man who carried it in a tote bag, but trash wearing man was pretty sick.

Kiersten: link it. I'm pretty sure his name is Rob, but I'll find it on Instagram and we'll put it in the show notes for you.

Maria Juenger: I'm really glad I didn't have that when I was in college. 'cause that would've made my garbage crisis a lot worse. You know?

Aparna: Yeah. It's just how do you make it tangible? How do you make it something that you can actually hold? Right? It's visualize the amount of waste on you to visualize what good concrete can look like and smell like.

Definitely important.

Maria Juenger: it still smell?

Aparna: Not to me, but I think it's like a little placebo where in my mind it smells like a bath bomb.

But , I'll go with yes. I think the professors and the people that are able to form these kinds of experiences, they put themselves into this mentor role, right? You're living your values, you're teaching your values, and you're also giving people these formative experiences that they can draw from for the rest of their lives.

So on the topic of [00:18:00] mentorship, I'm curious, did you have mentors that helped to shape your outlook as you came up in academia?

Maria Juenger: there's a lot of different kinds of mentors, people that are your professors, right, that work with you, not just in classes, but in the graduate programs. So I'm a big fan of graduate education. I was the interim dean of the graduate school here for a while and an associate dean in the graduate school for , a little while here. And it's because I really. Love the mission of graduate education. 'cause it lets students go deeper what you're getting in undergraduate education. You can really dive deep into a topic and explore. And I think for me, the mentors that I had, the advisors that I had as a graduate student and as a postdoc, were really impactful because they helped me think in different ways than I would've thought otherwise.

It's really about training and critical thinking and training about , how to work with others as a team, training in just ideas in general. I mean, academia?

in general is a creative [00:19:00] endeavor, and so having people who inspire you and give you creative ideas is really important. Yeah.

Aparna: All right. And I think with that listeners, we're gonna get some time to mult that over. Maybe think about a mentor of your own and we're gonna head into a very. Quick break.

Second Half

[00:00:00]

Aparna: Welcome back from the break everybody. Hopefully you thought of a couple of mentors and you can send them this episode once you're done listening to it. So Dr. Junger I, in my mind you'll always be Dr. J, Dr. Junger. One day I'll start to call you Maria, maybe,

Maria Juenger: me Maria.

I I, it's taken some time.

Aparna: I, in my mind, it's just this eternal Dr. J, and that's how everyone knows you in my life.

Maria Juenger: as well. It took me a long time. So my PhD advisor his name was Hamlin Jennings. We always called him Jennings.

Aparna: Yeah.

Maria Juenger: mean, I was probably far

position here at UT Austin. Before I called him Hamlin. It was a real stretch. Whereas my postdoc advisor, Paolo Montero, also a lovely

person and

Claudia Os, I was totally okay with calling them

and Claudia from the beginning. I don't know. I think something about being a professor in a class that makes it awkward. But if the mentors that I had in my postdoc, I didn't have that

problem

with at all. Yeah.

Aparna: [00:01:00] Yeah. So Dr. J, for the folks who might not know the difference, we're hoping that you can start us off this second section defining what concrete is and what cement is. 'cause we definitely wanna nip it in the bud for people who use them interchangeably.

Maria Juenger: And I can say this and people will still use them interchangeably, right? So I acknowledge that I'm gonna explain it and then people will still get confused. It doesn't help that they both start with the letter C. So cement is a component in concrete. Cement is a gray powder that you mix with water and rocks to make concrete, which is the hardened material.

And when I say that chemistry is important. The easiest way to think about that is, is that if you mix a bunch of powders with water and there is no chemistry, as soon as the water dries out, you're left with a bunch of powders. You're not gonna actually have a solid material. So the reason that concrete is a solid material that you can walk on. Because of the chemical reaction, it's not drying out, it's actually having a chemical reaction, [00:02:00] which interestingly we call hydration because it's hydrating just like you would hydrate your body. We are hydrating the cement to make the concrete, and it's that chemical process that makes it building material.

Otherwise, pile of rocks and powder on the ground, not gonna bear any weight at all. Yep.

Kiersten: We love a good reminder to hydrate. Listeners you can't see, but I did take a sip . Encourage you to do so too. You know, if you're listening we want everyone to be hydrated. Thank you for the definition, though. I certainly didn't know the difference. I will, I'll be the first to admit.

So hopefully listeners, you learn something to continue learning things. Are there any misconceptions other than perhaps that naming confusion about concrete versus cement in your industry that you would like to address?

Maria Juenger: So I was at this dinner recently. Where I met this new person, and when you meet a new person, you always have to say a little few things about yourself. this person was an architect and I mentioned something about [00:03:00] concrete, and he made a face like, oh yeah, that's a terrible material. And the misconception that I wanna address is. Concrete, gets a lot of bad press from a sustainability perspective, and I think this is a perfect platform to address this misconception that if you compare concrete to other building materials, is not worse from a sustainability perspective than using the alternatives. And it depends on the application you're talking about. If you're talking about paving like a road, alternative is asphalt and concrete and asphalt. I am not gonna go into the details, but you're not gonna say that concrete is a worse or less sustainable material than asphalt, which comes from the petroleum industry. If you're talking about making a building, you're talking about things like steel, aluminum, timber, and we think trees, oh, That's renewable. But it's not quite so simple and for a variety of reasons that I don't wanna get into [00:04:00] here. But the primary reason that concrete is a target. From the media or from people in general.

And part, the primary reason that I as an individual researcher, am researching sustainability in concrete and making more sustainable mixtures is not because concrete itself is not sustainable. because it is the world's most used material and the massive quantity of what we use dwarfs other materials so much that it is imperative we actually reduce its carbon footprint. And there's actual mechanisms of ways to do that. And so again, imperative that we explore those mechanisms, not because it's worse than other materials, because it is the best material to use in most cases from a structural perspective. So we should be. Trying to explore better ways to make it more sustainable.

So I think that's the biggest misconception. Concrete is not the enemy. The answer is choose concrete, just

choose better

[00:05:00] concrete for the

environment.

Kiersten: That's such a good misconception. I do have a follow up. You mentioned concrete isn't worse, and then you also mentioned the volume of concrete use. So I suspect there's a little bit of an absolute versus per something metric for the material.

So could you just elaborate on like are you talking about when you say not worse? Is it embodied carbon?

Maria Juenger: So I am not, I will admit that this, that is not my field of research. There's an entire. Academic and industrial discipline. Looking at environmental impacts of building materials and materials in general. However, there are different ways of looking at it. Often it's, like you said, embodied carbon, embodied energy.

Sometimes it's done on a mass basis, sometimes it's done on a basis of, for example, selecting a particular building element. So if you're gonna make a column, not just. Mass. But if you're gonna make a column that's gonna hold a certain amount of weight and you make it out of concrete versus steel versus timber, are gonna be [00:06:00] different shapes, different masses.

So doing it on a per mass basis may not be fair. You may be using more mass in one case or less. achieve the same end effect. And so the people who do study these things take all those things into account. So it's not necessarily always on a per mass basis, per volume, it often is on a per use basis. But the general result of these types of studies is that concrete is not worse than the others.

Aparna: I think that's great to hear. And also something good that we can both spread around in our circles, right next time someone brings it up. Or if we're in. Event and someone starts smack talking concrete, we can say, actually, did you listen to episode 30 of our podcast?

Kiersten: Imagining with you, your little

Aparna: I know. I'm like, this is recycled.

Maria Juenger: look this up, right? And the problem with looking it up is we have this way too much information out there and how do you filter what's a legitimate source or not. Peer reviewed scientific literature [00:07:00] is always, I'm gonna say that as an academic, right?

Recognizing that most people are probably gonna go to AI and look at it, right? Or they're gonna get some sort of summary. But there is information out there that is if somebody wants to do a deeper dive to learn more. Yeah.

Aparna: Fantastic listeners, we will link a couple cool resources, maybe some CLF documents, maybe some research papers, but definitely check out the show notes and we'll have some goodies in there. So keeping up the trend of sustainability concrete. Kind of the future and changing opinions. Are there any emerging trends or innovations that are exciting to you?

Maria Juenger: I would say the thing that makes me most excited right now, although you know, time will tell how it plays out, Is that there's a really interesting startup. Culture in concrete right now, which you would never think 'cause it's such an old traditional industry and there's a lot of companies trying to make low CO2 . Cements to make load CO2 concrete blocks to make different products that are using [00:08:00] CO2 to carbonate the concrete to be a sink for CO2. So there's a lot of really interesting creativity out there. I joke that time will tell how it plays out because you know, will there be a market for this? Will the technology play out?

The biggest question in my mind is always scalability. Can you make enough of it? But the fact that we even have the traction. To have a startup culture in concrete, to me, is really exciting. It means that there's interest and there's interest in the venture capital world. There's interest in the. People who are doing this type of work. It's not an old, you know, stuffy industry. It's got interesting creative people who are pushing forward and it's also means that, yeah, we have interesting creative people who are joining our industry, actually have good ideas and are willing to take risks to explore them.

So to me, that's the thing that I'm most excited about and never really would've predicted happening in 2026, is that we have so many of these companies. Basically pushing new ideas [00:09:00] forward.

Aparna: Do any of those companies out of curiosity, partake in the self-healing concrete space?

Maria Juenger: do work in that space. I'm not sure if any of those off the top of my head. I don't think any of those are actually in the US that I can think of. There are companies in Europe, startup companies in Europe that I think are doing that. Self-healing concrete is a bit of a tricky business, I would say, because most of what people are doing from self-healing is putting something in the concrete like bacteria or some sort of additive. When you make the concrete with the idea that if a crack happens to happen, it'll run into this. Additive and that additive will then take action to heal the crack. So like the bacteria that precipitate calcium carbonate. There are other ways to do self-healing too. But I would say most of the research has been in that type of space?

There are companies that'll try to apply those post concrete too, but here's the fundamental problem that most of the industry has with [00:10:00] this is a money. Money's always the fundamental problem. Because you have to think ahead of time to put the additive in. But B, and this is gonna be kind of snarky, but if you're putting the additive in, you're basically admitting that your concrete is gonna crack. And we all have this phobia of not admitting that we plan to fail. So it is in an ideal scenario, the concrete will heal on its own without an additive. That's what I'd like to see. We've played with that. So the self-healing work that we've done has been in oil well cementing, so down hole, with a certain types of cement that we call geopolymer, that if the crack is pretty small. It forms, it'll just self-heal on its own. You don't have to do anything or add anything to it. I would love to see that in a construction cement level. I haven't been able to see that yet, because nobody wants to admit before you make something that it's gonna fail. It's gonna crack later, and therefore you need to put a preventive measure in place that is extremely [00:11:00] tricky, but. It does happen. We have a lot of protective mechanisms in place for corrosion of steel reinforcement and other things because the industry does acknowledge that cracks will happen. And so planning for those cracks by putting in steel reinforcement in areas that are particularly susceptible to corrosion is important. So we already do that. It's next level to take it to putting the bacteria and the concrete. I would love to see that

get more

traction.

Kiersten: Fantastic. And listeners, you should know that Dr. Junger does research on this too. So feel free to look up her and peer reviewed research papers. As a professional In academia and. The concrete industry, what does your day-to-day look like? If we followed you around, what sort of tasks would we see you doing?

What type of people do you interact with? Obviously students, but outside of that tell us a little bit more. If we were a fly on the wall.

Maria Juenger: So it's funny that you ask that because several years ago I was at a college reunion and I talked to a friend who was a doctor. And we just kind of laughed completely [00:12:00] about how different our days were because I said, well, what does your day look like? And she said, well, I go to the office and I see patients all day, and she has patients scheduled at intervals and. That is her day and I, and she said, what does your day look like? And I said, every single day is different. Every morning I wake up and I look at my calendar and I say, well, what's gonna happen today? And so obviously if we have a class, the classes are scheduled. Those schedules happen on a very regular basis. Everything else is extremely. Erratic. So I have research meetings, collaborations. A lot of increasingly the research meetings and collaborations are virtual because they're across institutions in the US and in Europe. So it's more common than not to have a research meeting, be virtual because you're working with people from other universities. Have meetings with students. You have meetings. A lot of what we do in university is what we call service, so committee meetings within the university to do [00:13:00] university business. ACI meetings, thankfully, I'm traveling, most of those are virtual. On most days I have some sort of ACI related meeting.

I had one to start my day today that was virtual and what I love though about our post COVID world that's starting to come back at universities is that right now my office door's closed. Generally it's open and people stop by. So I saw a student today that I hadn't seen In a long time who had been here as an undergraduate, and he came back for graduate school and I ran into him in the hallway twice and was able to talk to him.

So just those spontaneous interactions with students and faculty something that I really value because you learn something from that. So I like to have space in my day where I'm not booked. Solid with meetings and classes so that I can have those spontaneous interactions. Because at the end of the day, that's who we are.

We are, and mentors and teachers, and there's a degree of spontaneity that's necessary for that. 'cause that's how I get ideas is by talking to [00:14:00] people and that's how I can help them is by not having everything be so scripted.

Aparna: In a way, or blocking out time for creativity and blocking out that time for, spontaneity, which is necessary. If you have eight hours of meetings in a single day, you're not getting anything done. You're feeling to feel drained by the end of it, so

why not insert, enjoy, and schedule that out.

Maria Juenger: I think from a faculty perspective, that is the drain that people feel that there are people who I've seen their calendars and they block out time for writing. And they block out time for thinking. And I have a colleague who was in history, she would block out, I can't remember whether it was Saturday or Sunday, but an entire weekend day was her creative thinking writing day, because the days during the week do get packed with meetings and scripted activities if you're not careful, and some days more so than others.

So. a creative endeavor to be a faculty member and I value the ability to create space for them.

Kiersten: that was a fantastic answer. Being a [00:15:00] partner and I, I know we enjoy different organization schemes and have certainly explored like blocking calendars for certain focus times. . Same mechanism, different intent at the end. following up on that, now that we know a little bit more about what your day-to-day looks like. someone was like, wow, that's what I want my day today to look like. I want a mixture of, you know, stakeholder engagement from around the world via virtual meetings or speaking to students to stay excited and seeing fresh perspectives and ideas. If they wanted to do exactly what you do, . How would you recommend they get started? Are there any skills or certifications that you feel are especially important?

Maria Juenger: as I mentioned earlier, I'm a big proponent of graduate education, so graduate education is a good springboard to have a day like I have and. I often have conversations with people because there is, , as you know, there's an attack on education, higher education in the us. and so we find ourselves in a position of defending it. And a lot of the defense that I give of it is having [00:16:00] education allows you not to get a better job, but to get a job where you have more freedom and creativity. So you may not be paid more, but you may be given more freedom, responsibility, and creativity and more autonomy and ownership of how your day is managed.

So to me, in my job, that was the pathway to do that was a PhD and then a postdoc, which is kind of a job kind of education. But you know, there's other pathways certainly to do that. But that's what I see is that the higher education isn't necessarily giving you a skill, it's teaching you critical thinking skills. And again, those kind of interactions, the connections, the ways, the way to see the world on a bigger level your courses, through your research, through your interaction with colleagues and other people that help you broaden your perspective, that help you achieve a job that gives you more autonomy.

Aparna: I love that. Thank you so much. And folks, if that resonated with you, please do. Follow in Dr. J's steps. They're some [00:17:00] very good ones, can recommend, and she's been able to make such an impact. So why? Why wouldn't she follow along? And speaking of impact, legacy, you really have touched the lives of so many students, of so many professionals in this space, and now also so many chapters of ACI and just a lot of different parts of the university.

So what kind of a legacy are you hoping to leave behind through all this work?

Maria Juenger: that question on your list of questions you might ask me, and I thought about that and I've thought about it recently in the context again, of these spontaneous conversations with people where this person was mentioning their academic legacy and what they wanted to leave as a legacy.

And it was products like software codes and books. But I don't think that way at all. I think about the people, like you mentioned Aparna. I consider my life's work good. If I have helped people do the work that they love doing and have an impact with their work, [00:18:00] especially 'cause I'm at an educational institution, I joke that. research in universities isn't about getting the right answer to an interesting question.

It's about training people so that they can learn how to get. right answer to a question. And if you train them on irrelevant questions, you're training them to waste time. So from my perspective, the reason university researchers have to work on important problems is not to solve the problem, it's to train the people to work on important problems and how you solve those.

Does that make sense? that's what I think my legacy is, is getting people to think and work and answer interesting questions in a creative way.

Kiersten: I feel like that might be our quote for socials to be honest. that was a great one. It makes complete sense. you've shared a lot today. And we all have learned how pervasive concrete is. If we somehow didn't know, it would be hard to, to not know that fact. Maybe not, cement [00:19:00] versus concrete, but. That it's all around us. So if someone has been inspired by all you've said but doesn't necessarily wanna go into that as their job, do you have any advice for them about how they can encourage the greening of concrete or otherwise interact with it aside? Just from amongst it?

Maria Juenger: , I think it depends on what their profession is and what their is. And we all see concrete everywhere. So you can appreciate it. Now you can look at it and now you know, you can see a crack and you can say, I wonder if somebody expected that crack to be there or not. Because sometimes they are expected, sometimes they are intentional cracks and sometimes they're not. Don't know. I think that there, there are ways to encourage that in the sense of we all make decisions. People have influence in their homeowners associations or they have influence in their communities about decisions. And I think part of it is, don't. Read the news and say, concrete's bad and make a decision that concrete's [00:20:00] bad. it?

give use critical thinking skills when you're making decisions about what to use in your home when you're making and go and get information about things. , We have so many tools now to learn about materials, about science, about other things that . you're interested in, use critical thinking skills when trying to do that type of learning and make decisions on the basis of data And information. So I think that, to me, that's the big takeaway. If you wanna learn more, the resources are there, but we do exist in a world where there's too many resources. So use them judiciously and try to go to reputable sources.

Aparna: And speaking as a very reputable source yourself. I would love to hear if you have resources, maybe some books, documentaries, anything like that that you'd recommend if someone really wants to be involved in this sustainability shift , and learn more about sustainability in concrete.

Maria Juenger: to say ACI has [00:21:00] resources. The problem with ACI there's a paywall so you have to be an ACI member. But if any of your listeners are students. Students are free members of ACI can get a free membership. You don't have to be studying engineering.

You just have to be a student. So students have free membership in ACI and they can get access to webinars. There's a certification you can get on Fundamentals of concrete, that you can get through a webinar series. So there's a lot of that type of information available through ACI. A lot of information that scientific literature is also paywall, right?

I mean, this is the way things are when you're looking at that, but there are resources, the American Cement Association has a website that has a lot of really good fundamental information out there for free, , on concrete and ons sustainability. So that's probably where I would go to first. It's a trustworthy source.

It represents all of the cement industries within the us so I think it's cement.org. It's got a great name. So for me, honestly, if you wanted something free, I would go there first. If you wanna go deeper or if you can get a student [00:22:00] membership, the ACI resources are deeper, I would say.

Kiersten: Uh, cement that in our brain, if you will.

Maria Juenger: you know, acis website is concrete.org, so there's that between cement.org and concrete.org. I think we've got both of them covered and they're both good resources. So if you can't remember the

difference,

you're, you're

good.

Kiersten: A hard material, but maybe not hard to find material. . Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Junger. It was really cool for me to meet someone that Aparna has spoken so much about, and I know for a fact that the listeners will have learned something listening to your perspective and the information that you shared, so we really appreciate it.

Maria Juenger: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure for me. It's fun.