Prof. Dr. Ueli Angst

Mission

My mission is to develop new and fundamental understanding of corrosion mechanisms in order to enable better assessments and predictions of the performance of engineered materials and structures across disciplines. I am mostly concerned with corrosion of metals in porous media, such as steel in concrete or metals in soil. A particular aim is to improve the safety, sustainability, and durability of civil infrastructures.

Short Biography

I obtained my degrees in civil engineering from ETH Zurich in Switzerland (MSc) and from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, in Trondheim, Norway (PhD, 2011). From 2011 to 2016, I held a part-​time position as Postdoc at the Institute for Building Materials at ETH Zurich, and simultaneously I held a part-​time position as a corrosion consultant at the external pageSwiss Society for Corrosion Protectioncall_made, which is the leading agency in the field of corrosion in Switzerland. My combined professional experience as scientist and consultant gave me many opportunities to see the relevant problems in engineering and to identify the related scientific questions that need to be addressed. 

Since January 2017, I am an assistant professor at ETH Zurich, establishing my own research group thanks to a professorship grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation (2016) as well as an ERC Starting Grant (2019). We use experimental and computational methods covering corrosion science, electrochemistry, materials science, porous media and reactive mass transport, and civil engineering. We are committed to provide mechanistic insight into corrosion mechanisms and its effects on structural behavior, develop methods and sensors for monitoring purposes, robot-assisted inspection methods, and corrosion mitigation strategies.

Since 2017 I am the president of the external pageSwiss Society for Corrosion Protectioncall_made (SGK). 

Committee work and society memberships:

I am a member of external pageRILEMcall_made, the international union of laboratories and experts in construction materials, systems and structures. I am engaged in the following technical committees (TC):

• Chair of RILEM technical committee external page262-SCIcall_made “characteristics of the steel/concrete interface and their effect on initiation of chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion” (since 2014).

• Chair of working group 5 “Effect of carbonation on corrosion of concrete with SCMs” of RILEM TC external page281-CCCcall_made “Carbonation of concrete with supplementary cementitious materials” (since 2018).

• Member of TC external pageCCHcall_made “Stress corrosion cracking and hydrogen embrittlement of reinforcing steels”.

Previous RILEM committee memberships:

• TC external page235-CTCcall_made “corrosion initiating chloride threshold concentrations in concrete”. I hosted two of the committee meetings in Zurich, Switzerland, and contributed very actively to the TC.

• TC external page248-MMBcall_made “methods of measuring moisture in building materials and structures”

Other organizations and committees:

• Since 2019, I chair the external pageworking groupcall_made “Korrosionsschutz im konstruktiven Ingenieurbau” of GfKORR, the Association for Corrosion Protection of German speaking countries (Gesellschaft für Korrosionsschutz, Frankfurt, Germany).

• I am a member of the German Society for Non-Destructive Testing (external pageDGZfPcall_made) committee preparing a recommendation on corrosion monitoring of concrete structures (“Merkblatt Korrosionsmonitoring bei Stahl- und Spannbetonbauwerken“)

• I am a member of the American Concrete Institute (external pageACIcall_made)

• I am a member of NACE international – the worldwide corrosion association (external pageNACEcall_made)

Editorial work

2017 I became a member of the Editorial Board of the open access journal RILEM Technical Letters

2014 I became a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the journal Materials and Structures

2012 Guest editor for a special issue of the journal Materials and Corrosion (vol. 63, issue 12).