2024 RILEM L'Hermite medallist

Each year, RILEM assigns the Robert L’Hermite Medal to a researcher under 40 years of age, who has made an exceptional scientific contribution to the field of construction materials and structures. For this medal, already being a member of the Association is not a requirement.

The medal jury for 2024 was composed of Prof. Enrico Sassoni (University of Bologna, Italy) as TAC Chair, Prof. Alexandra Bertron (INSA Toulouse, France) as Editor-in-Chief of RILEM Technical Letters, Prof. Hassan Baaj (University of Waterloo, Canada) and Prof. Pagona-Noni Maravelaki (Technical University of Crete, Greece) as Experts appointed by TAC.

For the 2024 L’Hermite Medal, five high quality applications were received from researchers working in 5 countries in 4 different continents.

The 2024 Robert L’Hermite Medal was awarded to Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras.

Dr Norambuena-Contreras is Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Bio-Bio (UBB) in Chile, where he leads a multidisciplinary Research Group focused on Advanced Bituminous Materials. Previously, he has held Scientific Positions at several prestigious Universities and Research Centres in Spain, Switzerland, and UK. The Robert L’Hermite medal was awarded to Dr Norambuena-Contreras in recognition of his research activity on self-healing bituminous materials for more sustainable and resilient pavement infrastructure.

His internationally recognized expertise and leadership are testified by a very strong publication record, his role as Principal Investigator in several publicly and privately funded research projects and his involvement in scientific committees and evaluation panels at the national and international levels. He has also been very active within RILEM by being a member of several technical committees and part of the Latin America Group “Lat-RILEM”. Considering his strong involvement in RILEM and his service to the scientific community, he has also been recently appointed as the new Regional Convener of RILEM for Latin America.

Dr Norambuena-Contreras is nowadays in the process of relocating from UBB-Chile, where he worked over the last 9 years, to the United Kingdom, where he will be appointed next June as Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Swansea University, with affiliation to the Materials & Manufacturing Research Institute.