News

If you are a student in or graduate of the MIT Portugal Program, you are entitled to Affiliate status in the MIT Alumni Association, an organization that boasts more than 120,000 members worldwide. The granting of Affiliate status by the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors in the spring of 2009 reflects the continuing integration of MIT Portugal into the MIT community.

Maya Abou Zeid

By Maya Abou Zeid, Ph.D.

From 2007 to 2009, Maya was the lead MIT educational coordinator in MIT Portugal’s Transportation Systems focus area and worked with MIT and Portuguese faculty to organize and evaluate that group’s CTIS and PhD Programs. She earned her PhD in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the summer of 2009. Her thesis was on transportation modeling; specifically, developing methods to measure travel well-being. Maya is now on the faculty of her undergraduate alma mater, the American University in Beirut.

The MIT Portugal Program’s 2009–10 academic year has begun with numerous inaugural academic and team-building activities. Also, the start of classes for 143 new students.

One of the team-building activities for new students that marked the start of the new academic year

The new MIT Portugal students – who have embarked on Ph.D. and master’s studies in cutting-edge areas of bioengineering, advanced product design and manufacturing, and energy and transportation systems – reflect the truly international nature of the Program. In addition to 91 Portuguese students, many of whom claim international degrees or work/research experience, 52 (36 percent of the entering group) are international students who have arrived in Portugal from elsewhere in Europe, or from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, or the Americas.

A group of MIT researchers has accomplished something that has eluded other investigatiors: they have decoded the three-dimensional structure of the basic unit of cement hydrate. This noteworthy research was funded by the Portuguese cement manufacturer, Cimpor Corp., and was enabled through the MIT Portugal Program.

The findings were made public in a paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) during the week of Sept. 7, 2009.

In its work, the research team – which dubbed itself “Liquid Stone” – determined that concrete’s strength is a result of certain structural irregularities, rather than a neat geometric arrangement. It also found that the calcium-silica-hydrate in cement isn't really a crystal, as had been assumed; it turns out to be a hybrid that shares some characteristics with crystalline structures and some with the amorphous structure of frozen liquids, such as glass or ice.

One member of the MIT team, Franz-Josef Ulm, the Macomber Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said, "We've known for several years that at the nano scale, cement hydrates pack together tightly like oranges in a grocer's pyramid. Now, we've finally been able to look inside the orange to find its fundamental signature. I call it the DNA of concrete.”

According to Prof. Ulm, "Now that we have a validated molecular model, we can manipulate the chemical structure to design concrete for strength and environmental qualities, such as the ability to withstand higher pressure or temperature.”

This story draws on a more detailed account by Denise Brehm published on the MIT News Office website.