Mihai Marasteanu credits his success to good facilities and good collaborators

FACULTYPROFILE

Mihai Marasteanu, a professor of pavement materials in CEGE, was awarded the 2025 Richard P. Braun Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding leadership in research and innovation. During his 25 years at UMN, Marasteanu has focused his research on investigating and improving the performance of asphalt binders and mixtures, especially in low temperature environments.

Marasteanu credits his success to the support provided over the years by his colleagues in the department. It started with Professor Vaughan Voller, who mentored Marasteanu when he was a new assistant professor, and continued with Professor Joe Labuz, who introduced him to fracture testing methods and acoustic emission crack detection methods, and then with Professor Jia-Liang Le whose rigorous approach to fracture mechanics using size effect and probabilistic analyses elevated the level of research in asphalt materials characterization. Over the years, Marasteanu has forged a close friend-ship with Professor Ted Galambos, who he views as a true mentor and role model.

Marasteanu shares some thoughts about being a pavement materials researcher in CEGE.

CEGE: You joined the department in 2000. What were some of your first impressions?

MM: The department was a close match to my ideal university department. I especially appreciated that the CEGE faculty represented a range of experts including biologists, mathematicians, and physicists, as well as experts in a wide range of engineering specialties. That breadth of knowledge among the faculty enabled and encouraged innovative and interdisciplinary research.

I have always considered myself a lucky person to become part of CEGE, which has always prioritized intellectual merit, curiosity, and problem solving, and the unwavering commitment to providing our students with the best education possible based on strong science and engineering. And though this wasn’t a first impression, I am so appreciative of CEGE’s incredible staff for the support they provide and how important they are.

When I came here from Penn State, my colleagues asked me: why would you want to move to Minnesota where it is brutally cold and snowy 4-5 months a year? At my first interview in February, I enjoyed bright sun and temperatures in the 60s. I thought, these people from the east coast, they always have something to say about the Midwest.

My first year here, snow started in early November and temperatures fell below -10F in early December. My wife and I had to empty our garage in a big hurry and make room for the car. We also found out that the heating system in our car did not work well, which had not been a problem in Pennsylvania, but was clearly a problem here. We noticed the windshield started to freeze from the inside that winter.

Little did I know that the impact of cold weather on pavements would become my “signature” research for the next 25 years.

I have done research on projects ranging from low temperature cracking of asphalt pavements to the effect of tree shade on winter maintenance activities.

CEGE: Tell me more about some of your research projects.

MM: I have always been a strong believer in collaboration. Most of my projects have been done with colleagues from other areas, which has led to some of my most interesting projects. Now more than ever, I am convinced that interdisciplinary research is the only way to make progress in pavement engineering research. In one current project, I am working with Xue Feng [a McKnight Land-Grant Associate Professor in CEGE’s Environmental/Water Resources group]. Xue’s research focuses on trees in urban settings and the role of trees in the water cycle. Together we are investigating the effect of tree shade on pavement temperature and how that affects winter maintenance of the pavements. We measure the temperature of a pavement structure in sunny and shaded areas and evaluate the “shade factor,” which helps us understand the temperature effects of various canopies and tree types.

Another project uses pavement temperature as an indicator of pavement health. The idea was proposed by colleagues at the Office of Materials and Road Research (OMRR) at MnDOT. I am working with Ketson Dos Santos, a structural engineer in CEGE who specializes in stochastic engineering dynamics and mechanics, structural reliability, and risk-based optimization. Ketson is the Principal Investigator on this project, which involves a thorough investigation of pavement temperatures collected over many years at MnROAD. We are using complex computational tools developed by Ketson to determine if this idea will work.

In a recently completed project, I worked with my colleagues Raphael Stern (vehicle automation and transportation cyber-physical systems) and Qizhi He (computational mechanics, materials modeling, and scientific machine learning) on using electric vehicles’ onboard diagnostics data (OBD-II) to assess and manage pavement quality in Minnesota. The project was inspired by Denmark’s Live Road Assessment (LiRA) project. It addressed the critical need for cost-effective, continuous pavement monitoring to supplement the expensive, instrumented vehicle surveys that have traditionally been used by MnDOT.

I also worked on a number of projects with John Gulliver (now Emeritus) and Andy Erickson at the St Anthony Falls Laboratory studying de-icing materials. Our goal is to reduce the amount of salt put on the roads.

I have also collaborated with many universities around the world, but my longest and most enduring collaboration has been with colleagues from Italy. It started during my time at Penn State with Professor Ezio Santagata at Politecnico di Torino, continued with Gabriele Tebaldi at the University of Parma, and later on, I collaborated with Professor Francesco Canestrari from University of Ancona, Italy. Over the last ten years, he and I have collaborated on multiple projects, co-advised students in pavement engineering, and sponsored the cultural exchange of colleagues and students.

As you see, there is a wide range of pavement and materials research going on in CEGE.

CEGE: I understand that you also work a lot with the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

MM: I feel very lucky to be part of the larger transportation community in our state, which is a great forum for exchanging ideas and getting to know each other better. UMN Center for Transportation Studies (CTS) has played a critical role in bringing together this larger transportation community. The CEGE pavements program has benefited significantly over the decades from an excellent collaboration with the OMRR at MnDOT. MnDOT owns and operates an experimental road facility called MnROAD near Albertville, Minnesota. This one of a kind, world-renowned, instrumented facility allows field validation experiments that are not possible in other places. The continuous support from people like Ben Worel, Glenn Engstrom, and many others, has been critical in sustaining an innovative and exciting research program in pavement engineering.

CEGE: What courses do you teach at the University of Minnesota?

MM: I teach the required core class on civil engineering materials, which covers the basics of metals (steel and aluminum), wood and composites, as well as Portland cement concrete and asphalt paving materials. The course is required for all civil, environmental and geo- engineering students. The class has a strong laboratory component, because students need the practical skills to run experiments, along with a strong theoretical background.

I also teach an advanced course on Pavement Engineering. There, my goal is to educate students about the basics for understanding how pavements are designed, built, and maintained, and the most important pavement management tools for building safe and sustainable roads. The graduate students who have taken that course have moved into jobs at MnDOT, in private industry and in academic settings. I am very proud of all my graduate students, who now contribute to make the world a better place for everyone.

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