Prof. Franco Zunino

Franco Zunino is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His research uses a fundamental materials science approach to develop sustainable cementitious materials. His specific areas of expertise include the time-resolved characterization of cement hydration, surface–polymer interactions in cement pastes, microstructural analysis via electron microscopy, and the optimization of manufacturing processes for clinker and supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs).

Professor Zunino’s research has received widespread international recognition. He is a recipient of the 2026 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, which follows a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Starting Grant in 2024 and an SNSF Ambizione grant in 2022. His honors also include the 2023 RILEM Colonnetti Medal, the 2022 American Concrete Institute (ACI) Wason Medal for Most Meritorious Paper, and the global Nanocem 2020 Prize for the best doctoral thesis in cement and concrete science.

Active in professional leadership and standardization, he chairs the ACI 240.0A subcommittee on calcined clays and Workgroup 5 within the ASTM C09.24 subcommittee on reactivity, and serves as secretary for the ACI 231 committee on early-age properties of concrete. He is a member of the RILEM Educational Activities Committee (EAC) and serves on the editorial board of Construction and Building Materials, as well as an Associate Editor for RILEM Technical Letters and the ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering.