Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Two Illinois professors elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – University of Illinois professors Nigel Goldenfeld and Martin Gruebele are among 229 new members named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Nigel Goldenfeld, the Swanlund Endowed Chair and professor in physics, is an esteemed condendensed matter physicist who has expanded his interests to biophysics.

Nigel Goldenfeld, the Swanlund Endowed Chair and professor in physics, is an esteemed condendensed matter physicist who has expanded his interests to biophysics.

The academy, founded in 1780, is one of the longest-standing honorary societies in the nation. Fellowship honors outstanding leadership and scholarship in a variety of fields. Members join the ranks of Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and many others.

Goldenfeld, the Swanlund Endowed Chair and professor of physics, is an esteemed condensed matter physicist who has expanded his interests to biophysics in recent years. He focuses on two main areas of theory: dynamics and pattern formation, or how patterns evolve in time, and emergent states of matter, from superconductivity to the emergence of life. Goldenfeld received his doctorate in physics in 1982 from the University of Cambridge, England. He joined the faculty at the U. of I. in 1985.

Gruebele, the James R. Eiszner Endowed Chair in Chemistry and professor of physics, earned his doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley in 1988. Since joining the U. of I. in 1992, he has distinguished himself in chemical and biological physics with laser manipulation techniques and computational modeling that have increased understanding of protein folding, chemical bonds and molecular energy flow.

The academy has more than 4,000 Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members, including more than 250 Nobel laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize-winners.

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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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