Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Deaths

Teena M. Beason, 74, of Kankakee, Illinois, died May 13 at Presence St. Mary’s Hospital in Kankakee. She was employed for many years at the university. Visitation will be from 9 to 11 a.m. Monday, May 22, at Joines Funeral Home, 401 W. Gillogly St., Newman, Illinois. Funeral services will be held immediately after. Attendees are asked to wear orange and blue.

Lorena J. Dorsey, 98, of Champaign, died May 11 at her home. She worked in the university’s housekeeping department for many years, retiring in 1980. Memorials: Champaign County Humane Society, 1911 E. Main St., Urbana, IL 61802.

Joann T. Hower, 85, of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, died May 14. She worked as an administrative assistant in the math department at the university, retiring in 1999. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 20, at First Presbyterian Church of Champaign. Memorials: Alzheimer’s Association.

Scott Maclaren, 57, of Champaign, died May 9 at Presence Covenant Medical Center in Urbana. He served as senior staff scientist at the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at Illinois. Memorials: Orpheum Children’s Science Museum or the Vasculitis Foundation.

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Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Nishant Garg, center, is joined by fellow researchers, from left: Yujia Min, Hossein Kabir, Nishant Garg, center, Chirayu Kothari and M. Farjad Iqbal, front right. In front are examples of clay samples dissolved at different concentrations in a NaOH solution. The team invented a new test that can predict the performance of cementitious materials in mere 5 minutes. This is in contrast to the standard ASTM tests, which take up to 28 days. This new advance enables real-time quality control at production plants of emerging, sustainable materials. Photo taken at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Researchers develop a five-minute quality test for sustainable cement industry materials

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

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