October 2024
Congratulations, Doctor Aurélie Van Wylick!
On October 28th, Aurélie Van Wylick successfully defended her PhD research on “Towards fungi-mediated self-healing concrete: An interdisciplinary explorative study on the survival and biomineralization of fungal species in cementitious environments”. This PhD research was supervised by prof. Lars De Laet, prof. Eveline Peeters and prof. Hubert Rahier and was financed by Research Foundation Flanders.
Concrete is the most used construction material worldwide due to its abundant availability, structural characteristics and inherent ease of manufacturing and application. However, the material bears several drawbacks such as the high susceptibility for crack formation, leading to reinforcement corrosion and structural degradation. Extensive research has therefore been performed on the use of microorganisms for biologically mediated self-healing of concrete by means of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) precipitation. Recently, filamentous fungi have been recognized as high-potential microorganisms for this application as their hyphae grow in an interwoven three-dimensional network which serves as nucleation site for CaCO3 precipitation to heal the crack. This PhD project expanded the limited state-of-the-art by exploring various parameters and conditions in a laboratory environment, tackled knowledge gaps and provided insights to the field. Ultimately, the research covered multiple key aspects for the fungal species Trichoderma reesei and Neurospora crassa.
Thanks to the interdisciplinary nature of this research, combining architectural, biological and chemical perspectives, the foundations of the state-of-the-art were reinforced and new ones were built.
Congratulations Aurélie!