U.S. Department of Energy Selects Grad Student for Fellowship

Kathryn Jones is named a DOE IBUILD graduate research fellow.

Aug. 2, 2024 - Civil and environmental engineering doctoral student Kathryn Jones is one of eight individuals elected nationwide by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as an Innovation in Buildings (IBUILD) research fellow.

The DOE Building Technologies Office chooses IBUILD fellows based on their demonstrated research excellence and contribution to the program’s mission of building decarbonization. The fellowship aims to strengthen the pool of doctoral scholars equipped for research-intensive careers in building technologies. It covers tuition and fees, provides financial support for research and offers a travel stipend for fellows to attend program workshops and outside conferences.

“Kathryn’s recognition exemplifies our UCI students’ outstanding and highly impactful research that contributes to infrastructure sustainability, decarbonization and advanced manufacturing,” said Mo Li, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and Jones’s adviser.

Jones researches additive manufacturing of sustainable, high-performance cementitious materials. While preparing graduate applications in 2020, Jones discovered Li’s design and development of wind turbine towers built from 3D-printed concrete and was fascinated. She joined her lab shortly after, conducting life cycle assessments of the additively manufactured, ultra-tall wind turbine towers and foundations. Her research has resulted in two publications in the Journal of Cleaner Production and the Wind Energy journal.

Jones, pictured third from left, researches the potential to replace elements of concrete mixtures with recycled materials.

Since then, Jones began exploring the potential to incorporate recycled materials into the development of high-performance concrete materials for additive manufacturing of structures. She hopes to establish novel pathways and standards for using recycled materials in 3D-printed concrete to minimize the environmental impact and to increase energy efficiency of concrete structures.

Jones said that the IBUILD workshops and meetings will allow her to share her research and network with peers and national lab scientists. After graduating, she hopes to work at a national lab.

 “I was elated to find such a perfect meshing of my interests at UCI,” said Jones. “It's an honor to hear that my research has garnered the interest of the DOE and that they'd like to support its continuation.”

– Lilith Christopher

 

 

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