Associate ProfessorWill Gates

A/Prof Gates currently leads the Sustainable and Durable Infrastructure Group at IFM. The group seeks to improve the performance properties of industrial and engineered materials used in infrastructure, including:

• valorising waste materials (contaminated soils, mine tailings, industrial wastes) as resources for low carbon concretes
• investigating alternative calcined clays as supplementary cementitious materials
• creating low embodied carbon cement formulations for enhanced durability & functionality
• defining chloride diffusion & binding in cements & concretes
• enhancing resistance of cements to chloride ingress and carbonation

As a clay mineralogist A/Prof Gates also has expertise and interest in:

• developing methods to better evaluate and manage the fate of emerging contaminants (PFAS, POPs, microplastics) in urban environments
• definging mechanisms of hydration reactions of clays & clay minerals using neutron scattering spectroscopy
• developing alternative methods to measure the micro-porosity and meso-porosity of materials
• investigating reactivity of bentonites used in geosynthetic clay liners under extreme conditions
• developing bioactive, catalyitic or functional clay nano-composites