Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras
Swansea University UK
Senior Lecturer
Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras
Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras is a senior lecturer in civil engineering at Swansea University, UK, where he founded and leads the Advanced Bituminous Materials Lab (ABMLab). He also serves as vice-chair of the UK Academic Alliance for Pavement and Highway Engineering (UK-AAPHE). His research focuses on self-healing and low-carbon asphalt for more durable and resilient roads, integrating materials science, civil engineering and chemical engineering.
Before joining Swansea, he was a professor of materials at the University of Bío-Bío, Chile, where he founded and led the LabMAT Research Group for more than a decade. He was also a research fellow at the Nottingham Transportation Engineering Centre (NTEC) at the University of Nottingham.
His research has received international recognition, including the Robert L’Hermite Medal (2024) from the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems, and Structures (RILEM). This medal is one of the most prestigious distinctions in materials research awarded to researchers under 40, and made him the first Chilean recipient.
He has published more than 90 journal articles and is ranked among the top three authors worldwide in the Scopus topic of self-healing asphalt. His research has involved collaborations with National Highways, the Swiss Federal Roads Administration, the Chilean Government and Google Cloud, including recent work on AI-driven self-healing asphalt for net-zero roads.
