The defence was a hybrid meeting with 4 committee members online Claudia Ostertag from University of California at Berkeley, Gideon van Zijl from Stellenbosch University, Viktor Mechtcherine from TU Dresden and Amir Zadpoor from TU Delft. The other 4 members were all local from our own Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty at Delft University: Bert Sluys, Klaas van Breugel (chair of the committee and representing the rector) and the co-promotor and daily supervisor Branko Savija and the promotor Erik Schlangen.