From Dec. 22^ndto December 27th, a series of academic lectures on "sustainability and resilience of road materials" were successfully organized and held by the Department of Road and Railway Engineering of the School of Civil Engineering on the Tencent meeting platform. These lecture series were sponsored by the by the “111” Innovation and Talent Introduction Base program for Intelligent Construction and Safety of Geotechnical and Underground Engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU). Associate Professor Dr. Ellie Fini of Arizona State University (ASU) was invited as the keynote speaker, and assistant professor Dr. Ali Rahman presided over the meeting. More than 100 teachers and students from different universities and related majors participated in the lecture series.

Dr. Ellie Fini is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University, an Invention Ambassador at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a Fulbright Scholar of Aalborg University of Denmark, a Senior Sustainability Scientist at the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, and Director of the Innovation Network for Materials, Methods and Management. Dr Fini serves as the editorial board of internationally renowned journals such as ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering (IF=3.266) and Resources, Conservation and Recycling (IF=10.204). Her research mainly focuses on the production, characterization, and atomistic modelling of sustainable novel materials for use in construction. In addition to more than 200 scholarly publications and numerous invited talks, her research has been featured by BBC Women in STEM, Science Nation, Wired Magazine, and CNBC. This lecture series was divided into three sessions as follows:

1) Use of End-of-life Plastics in Bituminous Composites

2) Do All Rejuvenators Revitelize Aged Asphalt?

3) Mechanism of Moisture Damage in Asphalt

In the first session, Dr. Fini vividly demonstrated ASU’s research progress in the field of waste plastic modified asphalt to our teachers and students, including rheological properties, microscopic test, chemical component analysis and molecular dynamics simulation of waste plastics modified asphalt. In view of the current development status of sustainable material modified asphalt and road industry, the opportunities and challenges of sustainable road materials were explained.

In the second session, Dr. Fini compared the action mechanism of different rejuvenators through laboratory tests and molecular simulation and proposed the mechanism that rejuvenator molecules can prevent accumulation and promote the depolymerization and peptization of oxidized asphaltene molecules, The effect of rejuvenators on aging asphalt is better understood from the perspective of molecular simulation.

In the last session, Dr Fini discussed the moisture damage mechanism of asphalt and asphalt mixture through contact angle test, molecular dynamics simulation, Hamburg rutting test and explained the influencing factors on asphalt and asphalt mixture moisture damage. The session led to the conclusion that the addition of biological modifiers can effectively improve the water stability of the asphalt mixture.

This lecture series broadened the academic vision of teachers and students, promoted students' in-depth understanding of asphalt material analysis and characterization methods. At the same time, it also showed the innovation and development of Highway and Railway Engineering discipline and promoted the internationalization of School of Civil Engineering at SWJTU.