Fiber-polymer composites are construction materials that offer unique properties to structural engineering and architecture if compared to traditional structural materials, e.g., reinforced concrete or steel.
Thomas Keller obtained his Civil Engineering Degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 1983. He then worked for several years at the architecture and engineering office of Santiago Calatrava. In 1992, he received his doctoral degree from ETH Zürich. In 1998, Keller was elected to the position of an associate professor and in 2007 as a full professor of Structural Engineering at the School of Architecture, Civil & Environmental Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) Lausanne. In parallel, he always worked as a structural engineer in bridge and building construction and also co-owned an engineering firm. Today, Thomas Keller is the director of the Composite Construction Laboratory (CCLab) at EPFL, which he founded in 2000. His research work is focused on composite and hybrid materials and engineering structures with an emphasis on lightweight structures and advanced composite materials. During the last five years, he published morethan 50 journal papers and participated in more than 20 scientific committees of international conferences. Thomas Keller is a founding member and a fellow of the International Institute for FRP in Construction (IIFC). He furthermore is a member of the CEN TC250 Project Team WG4.T2 to establish the European Technical Specification “Design of fibre-reinforced composite structures”. As a practical engineer, Thomas Keller designed the first composite bridge in Switzerland (Pontresina Bridge, 1996), which also is one of the first composite bridges in Europe. He furthermore designed the five-story Eyecatcher building (Basel, 1998), which still is the tallest composite building in the world. He also contributed to the design of the free-form multifunctional composite sandwich roof of the Novartis Campus entrance building (Basel, 2006) and to the hybrid composite-balsa sandwich road bridge in Bex, Switzerland (Avançon Bridge, 2012).