Tess Ahlborn Brings Concrete Insights to India
Michigan Tech is fortunate to have professors who are passionate about their specialties and their research. Not only are they teaching students to create the future, they are creating it themselves and have been doing so for a while.
Take Tess Ahlborn, for example. She is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan Tech, as well as an alumna. In 2014, Ahlborn was elected a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute (ACI)—her second professional Fellowship. The other is from the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute.
Keynote Speaker in India
Last month, Ahlborn was also named as an ACI Ambassador to India. She flew to Kolkata, India, to attend and present at the Asian Concrete Federation Symposium on Ultra High Performance Concrete and the 4th Asian Conference on Ecstasy in Concrete, organized by the Indian Concrete Institute (ICI). As the keynote speaker at the 4th Asian conference, Ahlborn discussed advances in ultra-high performance concrete in the US concrete construction market.
“There was a dual purpose for sending me,” says Ahlborn. “As the chair for the committee on Ultra-High Performance Concrete, ACI saw it as beneficial to have me attend the symposium as well as being a representative for the conference. We want to build good relations with the ICI, so this was a great opportunity.”
Since this was Ahlborn’s first time in India, she wanted to dive into the culture fully, which included dressing in a sari. “I wanted to embrace culture there as any other professional woman would,” she says.
Concrete Industry
ACI has been sending experts across the globe to promote and unify the concrete industry. The ACI wants to continue building a relationship with the ICI and help develop the industry in India through education and training of the workforce.
Ahlborn brought her insights into India and its concrete industry back to the US, where she will share them in a discussion on strategic direction with ICI, at the ACI Convention in November in Denver, Colo.
Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
Comments