João Pacheco

Biography

João Pacheco has a PhD and a MSc in Civil Engineering from IST, University of Lisbon. His research interests are 3D printing of concrete, structural testing, reliability analysis & structural codes and sustainable concrete development.

João started working at the CERIS research centre (February 2025) in the Structural Concrete group and is developing a research line on the structural behaviour of 3D printed concrete. In 2020 and after his PhD, João was the coordinator of the “Novel Cementitious materials and Innovation in Manufacturing” research area of c5Lab - Sustainable Construction Materials Association, a collaborative laboratory owned by IST, the Portuguese Laboratory for Civil Engineering, ATIC and the two Portuguese cement producers (CIMPOR and SECIL). This research area comprised 17 researchers and 12 internal projects, four coordinated by him (related to the industrial production of ready-mixed concrete and dry mortars with recycled aggregates, mortars for 3D printing, and the structural behaviour of 3D printed concrete elements, all in close collaboration with the industry). Concerning competitively-funded projects, João was the PI of c5Lab in DISCOVER, an Horizon Europe project on robotics and AI for optimized resource recovery of demolition products, and of the ERAMIN3 transnational project RECYCL3D, about fine recycled aggregates in mortars for 3D printing. João is a member of two national standardization task groups related to the Eurocodes (IPQ/CT115/GT04 and IPQ/CT115/SC2) and supported WG4 of CEN/TC250 in the development of the Technical Specification prEN 19101, co-authoring 11 chapters of its Background Report, six as a first author. With extensive involvement in the fib, João has co-authored an fib Bulletin (under review) within scope of fib Task Group 4.7 and served on the Organizing Committees for fib Symposium 2021 and fib Congress 2026, and contributed as a Scientific Committee member for two fib PhD Symposia and another international conference (CLBMCS 2024). João also co-chaired seven parallel sessions of international conferences.

His PhD thesis concerned the reliability-based adaptation of EN 1992-1 ULS formulae for the design of recycled aggregate concrete and his MSc dissertation, on the structural behaviour of recycled aggregate concrete, won a National Award for the best MSc dissertation in structural concrete. João has supervised three concluded Masters’ Dissertations and three PhD Thesis (one concluded, two ongoing), all of them about Structural Concrete, and has authored over 40 scientific papers indexed in the Science Citation Index (Scopus: over 1364 citations and h-index of 17). João was also the first author of the Science for Policy Report of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission: Use of recycled aggregates in concrete – Opportunities for upscaling in Europe.