Dr. Thomaida Polydorou holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2014) in the field of Structural Engineering and Materials from Kansas State University (KSU), USA. Originally granted an athletic scholarship to attend KSU as an Undergraduate student (BSc in Civil Engineering-2009), she continued her studies in the field of structural engineering and materials (MSc in Civil Engineering-2011), and was awarded a sponsorship by the Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) for her doctoral studies to investigate the bonding characteristics of prestressing steel in concrete and cementitious mortars, for determination of acceptance criteria for prestressing strand in pretensioned applications.

In 2017, Dr. Polydorou was awarded with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship for the research project SAFER, under the Horizon 2020 Grant Agreement No. 748600. The project involved the investigation of Steel Fibre Reinforced Rubberised for the development of Concrete Barriers using End-of-life tyre products, as Forgiving Infrastructure. Now a postdoctoral research fellow at the ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence, Dr. Polydorou’s research interests include: Concrete engineering, prestressed concrete structures, ultra-high performance concrete, experimental evaluation of materials, evaluation of bond between concrete and various reinforcements, rubberised concrete, steel fibre reinforced concrete, construction sustainability and circular economy.

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