Sustainable Infrastructure

E6 - Davide Lo Presti, Associate Professor @ University of Palermo

57 min · 13. maj 2026
episode E6 - Davide Lo Presti, Associate Professor @ University of Palermo cover

Description

Davide Lo Presti started his career with a bag of crumb rubber and a PhD question: could waste tyre material be meaningfully integrated into asphalt? Twenty years later, he is leading the SMARTI Lab at the University of Palermo, chairing RoadLCA — the International Symposium on Pavement and Bridge Life Cycle Assessment — and watching the research he began in Nottingham become mandatory in Italian procurement law. This episode covers the full arc: what it takes to move sustainable materials research into industry practice, why road authorities are the real lever of change, how to train engineers who think in lifecycles from day one, and what comes after carbon accounting. One honest takeaway: the tipping point is not a moment. It is a generation.

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7 episodes

episode E7 - Louis Bettini, Principal Advisor Sustainability @ Main Roads Western Australia artwork

E7 - Louis Bettini, Principal Advisor Sustainability @ Main Roads Western Australia

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episode E6 - Davide Lo Presti, Associate Professor @ University of Palermo artwork

E6 - Davide Lo Presti, Associate Professor @ University of Palermo

Davide Lo Presti started his career with a bag of crumb rubber and a PhD question: could waste tyre material be meaningfully integrated into asphalt? Twenty years later, he is leading the SMARTI Lab at the University of Palermo, chairing RoadLCA — the International Symposium on Pavement and Bridge Life Cycle Assessment — and watching the research he began in Nottingham become mandatory in Italian procurement law. This episode covers the full arc: what it takes to move sustainable materials research into industry practice, why road authorities are the real lever of change, how to train engineers who think in lifecycles from day one, and what comes after carbon accounting. One honest takeaway: the tipping point is not a moment. It is a generation.

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