Prof. Dr. Robert J. Flatt
Prof. Dr. Robert J. Flatt
Deputy head of Institute for Building Materials
- Work phone +41 44 633 28 90
- phone +41 44 633 27 12 Secretariat(Sec.)
- call_made0000-0002-5609-8487
- contactsV-Card (vcf, 1kb)
Additional information
Research area
Robert Flatt's main research interests: physical chemistry of building materials with a focus on chemical admixtures, material science of built cultural heritage, applied colloid and interface science, rheology of particulate systems, and cement hydration in the presence of admixtures.
Robert Flatt has been a professor of building materials in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering since 2010.
He was born in Winterthur in 1969 and is a Swiss and British citizen.
He studied chemical engineering at EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne), where he obtained a Master’s in 1994 and completed a PhD at the Materials Science Department in 1999.
From 1999 to 2002 he was a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Before joining ETH Zurich, Robert Flatt was the principal scientist head of inorganic materials in corporate research at Sika Technology AG, a Swiss-based company internationally active in the areas of materials used for sealing, bonding, damping, reinforcing and protecting load-bearing structures in construction and industry.
Honours
Year | Distinction |
---|---|
2019 | Stephen Brunauer Award from the American Ceramic Society, for the best paper published by the Cement Division in 2017 |
2019 | Swedish Concrete Award (for extraordinary achievements within the fields of architecture and digital fabrication) |
2017 | Concrete Innovation Conference Award for “Mesh Mould” |
2016 | Sandmeyer award for industrial and applied chemistry from the Swiss Chemical Society |
2016 | Swiss Technology Award 2016 in the category «Inventors» for Mesh Mould |
2014 | Concrete Innovation Conference Awards both for “Smart dynamic casting” and “Climbing robot for corrosion inspection and monitoring” |
2014 | Elected Fellow of the American Ceramic Society |
2012 | Stephen Brunauer Award from the American Ceramic Society, for the best paper published by the Cement Division in 2010 |
2007 | Ross C. Purdy award from the American Ceramic Society for the most valuable contribution to ceramic technical literature during the prior year |
2003 | RILEM Robert L Hermite Medal for contributions to the understanding of admixtures in cement and concrete |
Additional information
Professor Flatt holds three patents.
Course Catalogue
Spring Semester 2024
Number | Unit |
---|---|
101-0603-01L | Chemistry for Civil Engineers |
101-0658-00L | Concrete Material Science |
101-6615-10L | Materials in Civil Engineering II |
Robert J. Flatt became Professor of Physical Chemistry of Building Materials at Institute of Building Materials, ETH Zürich in September 2010. While in this position, he also holds the following roles:
- Editor-in-chief of external pageCement and Concrete Researchcall_made
- Deputy director of the external pageSwiss National Centre for Competence in Research on Digital Fabricationcall_made.
- Member of the Design++ advisory board, the ETH center for augmented computational design in architecture, engineering and construction.
- Member of the ETH Research Commission
- Associate editor of external pageRILEM Technical Letterscall_made
Before joining ETH, Robert was Principal Scientist Head of Inorganic Materials in Corporate Research at Sika Technology AG. This is the R&D branch of external pageSika AGcall_made, a Swiss based company internationally active in the areas of materials used for sealing, bonding, damping, reinforcing and protecting load-bearing structures in construction and industry.
Prior to this, Robert spent two and a half years as postdoctoral researcher at the external pagePrinceton Universitycall_made in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with the materials group of external pageProf. G.W. Scherer.call_made
He studied at the external pageSwiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)call_made, where he obtained his masters in Chemical Engineering (1994) and a PhD from the Materials Science Department (1999). In 1995 he worked in the Stone Conservation Laboratory (EPFL) on a project dealing with the in situ conservation of the Roman mosaics near the town of Orbe in Switzerland.