Keynote Speakers
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Bernard Hofko
TU Wien, Austria
Keynote lecture:
Bituminous Material – New Ways to Uncover some Hidden Facts
Bernhard Hofko is Professor for Road Engineering and Head of the Research Unit for Road Engineering at Vienna University of Technology (TUW). Currently, he is also Head of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Chemo-Mechanical Analysis of Bituminous Materials. Together with his team, Prof. Hofko dives into the micro- and nano-world of bitumen attempting to enhance our knowledge on how microstructural features, the chemical set-up and mechanics of bituminous materials are linked. In the past years, new methods have been developed by his team to simulate aging of bitumen and asphalt mixtures in an efficient, yet more realistic manner. Other fields of research include the ecological assessment of road materials and roads, developing solutions for a post-carbon era of road infrastructure and increasing the resilience of transport infrastructure to climate-change induced effects. He is an active member of the RILEM community and was named a RILEM Fellow in 2025.
Kamilla Vasconcelos
University of São Paulo, Brazil
Keynote lecture:
Asphalt Sustainability: From Recycling and Biomaterials to Policy-Making for Decarbonization
holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from the Federal University of Ceará (2002), a Master’s degree in Transportation Engineering from the same institution (2004), and a PhD in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University (2010). She completed postdoctoral research at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (USP) in 2010 and earned her Habilitation (Livre-Docência) from the Department of Transportation Engineering at USP in 2017.
Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Transportation Engineering at the Polytechnic School of USP, where she coordinates the Pavement Technology Laboratory and serves as the Vice-Coordinator of the EMBRAPII CICS POLI Unit for Eco-Efficient Construction. She is an ad-hoc consultant for the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). Additionally, she serves as an editor for the journals Transportes, Road Materials and Pavement Design (RMPD), and the International Journal of Pavement Engineering (IJPE).
Within RILEM, she coordinates the "Degree of Binder Availability" Working Group of the Technical Committee "Performance-Based Asphalt Recycling" (TC PAR) and the "Recyclability" Working Group of the Technical Committee "Alternative Paving Materials - Sustainability" (TC APS). She is also Director-at-Large of the International Society for Asphalt Pavements (ISAP). Her research expertise lies in Transportation Infrastructure, with a focus on Paving Materials, Sustainability, and Resilience.
Luca Valentini
University of Padova, Italy
Keynote lecture:
The impact of Sourcing Raw Materials for the Built Environment:
Is it Just About CO2?
Luca Valentini is an Associate Professor in applied mineralogy and materials science at the University of Padua. His research interests range from the characterisation of supplementary cementitious materials based on industrial side-streams, to the formulation of alternative binders and their possible implementation in extra-terrestrial construction. He is currently Deputy Chair of RILEM’s Technical Committee “Upcycling Powder Mineral Wastes into Cement Matrices”, Associate Editor of Materials and Structures, and member of the Advisory Board of RILEM Annual Week 2026. In 2025 he was selected by SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies) as a member of the working group on Advanced Materials mandated by the European Commission.
