News
Honored with the 1st Place Craig F. Bohren Best Student Presentation Award at SPIE NDE
March 28, 2026
Presentation Award: Our research group presented recent developments on the structural performance of Engineered Biopolymer Composites at the SPIE Smart Structures + NDE conference in Vancouver, taking home first place honors for student presentation.
AI-Powered Non-Destructive Testing Published in Communications Engineering (Nature Portfolio)
Feb 2026
Paper Published: We introduce an AI-driven, non-destructive sensing approach for biopolymer-bound soil composites that detects defects during the wet stage. This moves us closer to scalable, smart manufacturing of carbon-negative building materials by allowing early quality control interventions before waste occurs.
Solvent Selection Enables Sustainable and Affordable Lignin Biocomposites
Jan 2026
Paper Published: Our study in Cleaner Materials highlights how solvent selection plays a critical role in enabling scalable, low-cost lignin biocomposites for cement-free construction, lowering environmental and ecosystem impacts.
New Work on Recycling Lignin-Based Biocomposites in Resources, Conservation & Recycling
May 2025
Paper Published: Our new paper outlines circular economy approaches for infrastructure materials, specifically looking at techniques for recycling lignin-based biocomposites to improve overall lifetime sustainability while enhancing ultimate material strength.
Presented BioSys Quality Control System at ACM BuildSys 2024 in Hangzhou
November 2024
Conference Presentation: We introduced BioSys, an efficient, non-destructive quality control framework designed to perform defect detection, monitor desiccation, and optimize the manufacturing processes of biopolymer composites while they are still in a salvageable wet state.
Development of Biopolymer Composites Using Lignin Published in Cleaner Materials
August 2024
Paper Published: Our research assessing lignin utilization as a sustainable binding technology for civil engineering applications has been published in Cleaner Materials, focusing on technology execution pathways to foster a green transition in infrastructure.
First PhD Publication: Life Cycle Assessment and Design of LignoBlock
March 2024
Paper Published: New research on the life cycle assessment and structural design of LignoBlock, a cement-free, potentially carbon-negative biopolymer composite, has been officially published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.