Hossein Kabir received his bachelor's degree in 2016 from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, his master's degree in 2019 from the University of Toronto, and his PhD in 2025 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) — all in civil engineering. For his dissertation, he developed computer vision-based systems that reduced multi-day concrete absorption tests to minutes and published this breakthrough as a first author in Nature Communications. He then created the Ultra-Rapid Reactivity test, a five-minute assay to quantify the reactivity of emerging low-carbon cements that already has yielded a provisional U.S. patent. Both tools are under consideration for field deployment in construction research and practice. He remains at UIUC, now as a postdoctoral researcher designing real-time imaging pipelines that identify micron-scale defects during 3D printing. His future research program will target three interlinked challenges — intelligent manufacturing, sustainable construction, and infrastructure longevity — and will incorporate sensing, modeling, and data-driven decision making. As a voting member of the American Concrete Institute Committee on Emerging Technologies, Kabir helped draft guidance on integrating AI into construction practice. His UIUC teaching evaluations placed him on the 2023 "List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent," and he now is developing an open-source, low-cost durability testing kit so resource-constrained labs can perform state-of-the-art measurements without expensive equipment. As a professor, he will treat every classroom and lab as an investigative newsroom where students gather evidence, question assumptions, and publish discoveries.

Research Interests

Automation in Construction Materials