About Our Speakers

Assistant Professor
Texas State University

Dr. Xijun Shi, P.E., is an Assistant Professor of civil engineering at Texas State University (TXST), USA. He received his PhD and MS degrees in Civil Engineering, both from Texas A&M University (TAMU). He graduated from the “Mao Yisheng” Honors Undergraduate Pavement Engineering Program at Southeast University in China. After his PhD study, Shi worked as an Assistant Research Scientist/Postdoc at the Center for Infrastructure Renewal (CIR) of Texas A&M University and a Postdoc at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI). Shi is passionate about advancing sustainable, multifunctional infrastructure assets. His primary research interests lie in the areas of infrastructure materials and pavement engineering. Since joining Texas State University in Fall 2020, Shi has won 14 internal and external projects as PI funded by NSF, NASA, ACI Foundation, etc. At TAMU, Shi participated in several research projects on materials and pavements funded by NSF, DOTs, FHWA, etc. Shi has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications and was lead author of 20 of the papers published in prestigious journals. Shi serves on several professional organizations, including American Concrete Institute (ACI), Transportation Research Board (TRB), and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Notably, Shi is a main member of TRB AKP 20 Standing Committee on Design and Rehabilitation of Concrete Pavements and a voting member of ACI 555 Concrete with Recycled Materials, ACI 565 Lunar Concrete, and ACI 221 Aggregates. Shi chairs ACI 555-A and co-chairs Concrete Pavements Committee of World Transport Convention (WTC). Shi also serves on the editorial board for several international journals. In addition, Shi recently filed a patent about a sustainable, cost-effective cementitious material (called Plient Concrete) and won the 2021 TXST New Ventures competition and an NSF I-Corps grant for commercialization. In 2022, Shi co-founded a startup company called Circle Concrete Tech Inc (https://buildwithcircle.com/), which is centered upon innovation, like Plient Concrete, that markedly reduces the tremendous environmental impacts of the concrete industry. Shi is a recipient of 2021 USDA E. Kika De La Garza Fellowship and a member of ACI Class of 2022 Emerging Leaders Alliance. In 2022, Shi guided the TXST CaerusCrete team to the first prize at the 2022 NASA MINDS Undergraduate Student Design competition with a lunar geopolymer project.

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Utilization of Recycled Materials in Concrete to Promote Sustainability