On February 17, the China Building Materials Academy (CBMA) appointed Prof. Martin Schneider, managing director of the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA) as a guest professor. At the auditorium on the 5th floor of the State Key Laboratory of Green Building Materials, Yao Yan, president of China National Building Materials Group Corporation (CNBM), presented the certificate and plate of appointment to Schneider, and invited him to give an academic presentation entitled "Technical Progress of the Cement Industry".

Yao held cordial and friendly talks with Schneider. She thanked him for his strong support to the 14th International Congress on the Chemistry of Cement (ICCC) undertaken by CBMA. They exchanged ideas on issues of cooperation such as standardization, information sharing and visiting scholar exchange. At last, Yao and Schneider signed a memorandum of cooperation between CBMA and ECRA, and visited the State Key Laboratory of Green Building Materials.

Schneider graduated as a Ph.D. from the Department of Applied Physics, University of Bonn, Germany. He joined VDZ in 1991 to work on environmental technology and cement chemistry. Now he works as managing director of ECRA and CEO of VDZ.