Associate ProfessorWill Gates

Associate Professor Gates leads the Sustainable and Durable Infrastructure Group at the Institute for Frontier Materials. The group seeks to improve the performance properties of industrial and engineered materials used in infrastructure, including:

• investigating alternative calcined clays as supplementary cementitious materials in fit-for-purpose concretes used in the construction industries
• valorising waste materials (industrial wastes, remediated & contaminated soils, mine tailings) as resources for low carbon concretes
• creating low embodied carbon cement formulations with enhanced durability & functionality
• defining chloride diffusion & binding in cements & concretes combining optical and electron microscopy with colorimetric and chemical analyses.
• enhancing resistance of low-carbon cements to chloride ingress and carbonation

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

• integrating calcium and carbon looping in the production of cement to reduce industrial emissions
• defining 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 methods to better evaluate and manage the fate of emerging contaminants (PFAS, POPs, microplastics) in urban environments
• developing bioactive, catalytic or functional clay nano-composites