Kurt Beyer Prize awarded for outstanding graduation work

On September 12, 2025, the Kurt Beyer Prize was awarded at TU Dresden. Since 1996, this prize has been awarded annually for outstanding final theses by students and young academics in the fields of civil engineering and architecture. The sponsor of the prize, which is endowed with a total of EUR 5,000, is HOCHTIEF Infrastructure GmbH, Southeast Germany branch. The award ceremony took place in the carbon concrete building "CUBE" on the TU Dresden campus.

© Stefan Gröschel

The actual Kurt Beyer Prize was awarded to Dr.-Ing. Josiane Herfort from the Faculty of Civil Engineering for her dissertation "Stability sensitivity of thin-walled structures made of carbon-reinforced concrete" and to Dipl.-Ing. Christopher Ehlers, Faculty of Architecture and Landscape, for his thesis " RUDOLFBAND Revival of the Berlin Mix".

Ms Herfort's dissertation examines the stability behavior of carbon concrete - a lightweight, resource-saving composite material that can reduce CO₂ emissions in the construction industry. Because carbon concrete enables particularly slender components, stability problems are more of a focus than in classic reinforced concrete.

The work uses tests on bar-shaped test specimens to analyze how factors such as slenderness, material inhomogeneities, deviations in geometry or eccentricities under load influence the load-bearing and deformation behavior. To this end, various degrees of slenderness were investigated experimentally and the results compared with existing prediction models.

The key findings: Stability failure can occur without warning in carbon concrete and significantly reduce the load-bearing capacity. The results contribute significantly to the understanding, safety and efficient use of this material - and thus to the further development of sustainable construction methods.

In his letter of recommendation for the award, Professor Manfred Curbach writes:"In her work, she dealt with a problem in carbon concrete construction that has hardly been researched to date: the influence of stability, which is becoming increasingly important with increasing material efficiency and slenderness of the components.

Ms. Herfort carried out extraordinarily extensive and above all demanding tests of very high quality and documented and evaluated them very well. With her work, Ms. Herfort has impressively demonstrated that she can work in an extremely focused, goal-oriented and independent scientific manner. The work is characterized by a very good linguistic and graphic style. In addition to her research activities, Ms. Herfort has published several scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals, which demonstrates her ability to communicate complex research results effectively and comprehensibly."

Every year, HOCHTIEF lnfrastructure GmbH, Germany Southeast Branch, honors particularly outstanding scientific theses by students and early-career researchers at TU Dresden with the Kurt Beyer Prize. The prize is awarded for one or two theses - dissertations, diploma and master's theses or comparable work - in the fields of civil engineering or architecture.

Prize money
HOCHTIEF lnfrastructure GmbH, Germany Southeast Branch, sponsors this prize endowed with € 5,000. If two works are selected by the jury as worthy of the prize, the individual amount is halved to € 2,500 each.

Selection
The work should have been completed and defended between November of the previous year and the end of the current year. The Deans of the Faculties of Civil Engineering and Architecture at TU Dresden are entitled to nominate candidates.

Jury and award
Representatives of the founder and representatives of the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Civil Engineering form the jury. The award ceremony takes place in a festive setting with representatives of the founder and representatives of the University Executive Board.