School Highlights Stories about students, faculty and alumni

La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain

THE INTERSECTION OF SKYSCRAPERS AND TREES

18-year-old Ph.D. student Emily Alcazar’s work in structural topology optimization creates buildings that mimic natural beauty

Designing a building is a prime application for optimization. Civil engineers and architects must work together in order to balance the engineer’s need for stability and efficiency with an architect’s vision for a beautiful building. But, finding a perfect compromise between form and function can seem impossible.

When done correctly, this delicate balance results in a structure that is not only strong and functional but may be widely appreciated for years to come. Emily Alcazar, an 18-year-old Ph.D. student in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, wants to enable engineers and architects to create such buildings through structural topology optimization.

“You might not think that these projects are that big of a deal, but they impact people’s lives on a daily basis,” said Alcazar. “Streets, parks, community centers, homes. Making these beyond just bare minimum functionality and making them aesthetically pleasing will make everyone’s lives a bit better.”

Alcazar is a recipient of the prestigious National

“You might not think that these projects are that big of a deal, but they impact people’s lives on a daily basis. Streets, parks, community centers, homes. Making these beyond just bare minimum functionality and making them aesthetically pleasing will make everyone’s lives a bit better.” —Emily Alcazar

Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, which will provide her with professional development resources and opportunities to collaborate with researchers internationally. At 18, Alcazar doesn’t think her age impacts her studies much at all— she’s simply happy to focus on research she truly loves.

She and her fellow researchers in structural topology optimization use algorithms to determine the ideal layout of a structure – one that uses minimal materials, can withstand environmental factors, is structurally sound and strong and complies with safety guidelines.

Incredibly, the outputs of these algorithms are often beautiful and reminiscent of natural structures, like trees or spider webs.

“What we’re doing is we’re using complex algorithms to solve for complicated and realistic structural design problems and consequently we end up getting architecturally aesthetic, biomimetic building designs,” said Alcazar.

Structural design that takes inspiration from nature isn’t anything new. One of Alcazar’s favorite examples is the architect Antoni Gaudi, who was influenced by the movement of water and the shapes of trees, seen heavily in his design of Sagrada Familia.

“Now, people from all over the world go to see his work, said Alcazar. “It’s a great example of making something more than functional, making it beautiful.”

Smaller-scale structures such as car parts and even airplane wings have already been designed via structural topology optimization and manufactured through additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. During her first year of her Ph.D. program, Alcazar has focused on developing a better 3D printer, called a grayscale Digital Light Processing (g-DLP) 3D printer. The g-DLP printer uses ultraviolet light to solidify resin and form smooth transitions between different materials.

According to Alcazar, perfecting this technique would be a big step towards making structural topology optimization feasible in the construction industry. She also hopes to advance the algorithms used in her field so that design firms and engineers all over the world can begin to make beautiful and efficient buildings.

Alcazar was drawn to Georgia Tech because of her admiration for the structural topology work of Glaucio Paulino, Raymond Allen Jones chair and professor of civil engineering. Someday, she too hopes to work in academia and teach students to think more creatively.

Alcazar thinks that art and engineering are still a bit too far apart. Through structural topology optimization, which merges the two worlds, she hopes to eventually see a world where the details of the buildings she looks at resemble trees reaching high or the waves of the sea.

—Polly Ouellette

A DIFFERENT KIND OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Lisa Rosenstein’s Engineering Communications Program Gives CEE Students a Leg Up

With her Ph.D. in english literature, Lisa Rosenstein is a bit of an anomaly among her colleagues in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

While she doesn’t teach fluid mechanics or structures, her instruction is no less foundational for her students to succeed at Tech and in the professional world.

In 1998, Rosenstein joined the School to develop the Engineering Communications Program, which integrates written, oral and visual communication skills into the engineering curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

In May 2020, she was promoted to Principal Academic Professional in recognition of her contributions to the School over more than 20 years.

Karen and John Huff School Chair Don Webster says that the communications program is a major benefit for the School that sets a Georgia Tech education apart from other leading civil and environmental engineering programs around the nation.

“Dr. Rosenstein’s pioneering engineering communications programs have become enduring legacies and generate envy among many peer institutions. We are very fortunate to have her as a member of our academic team,” Webster said.

Engineering schools across the country—including Georgia Tech—often required students to take courses in technical writing in english departments, but Georgia Tech was the one of the first to embed this instruction within the individual engineering programs themselves.

The shift allows a wide range of communications skills like report writing, data display, and explaining research to nontechnical audiences to be taught within the context of the discipline.

This forward-thinking program was made possible

Lisa Rosenstein teaches students a range of communication skills within the context of the engineering discipline.

by the Mundy family, which gave the School a generous gift to create a new model of engineering education.

“These programs have grown across the country,” Rosenstein said. “We’re not the only ones who have them any more, but we were very much at the vanguard.”

Rosenstein’s tenure at Georgia Tech goes back to the late 1980s, when she began teaching technical writing for the English Department while finishing her Ph.D. at nearby Emory University.

When Georgia Tech restructured its units several years later, these courses offered in support of the engineering curriculum were moved into the College of Engineering.

Rosenstein was hired to develop communications programs for both the Schools of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Materials Science Engineering, where she remained a joint appointment until 2015.

Rosenstein was given a blank slate: no one at the time knew what this type of program should look like simply because it didn’t exist before. “I had taught at Tech, knew the students, knew what they needed to know and, crucially, knew the most effective way to teach them, so I was the obvious choice to envision and create this program from the ground up,” Rosenstein said.

In fact, Rosenstein’s role was so unusual that the Institute didn’t really know what to do with her initially. She was hired as a staff member, though she functioned as faculty. She later became part of a new classification known as Academic Professionals.

“It’s a cohort of academics who contribute to the educational mission of the Institute but are not on a traditional tenure track,” Rosenstein said. “You are an academic, typically have a Ph.D., but don’t do the typical work of academics. I have a Ph.D. in English, so I couldn’t possibly be an engineering professor. But I work for an engineering school.”

CEE’s Engineering Communications Program is an in-house model, meaning that communications material is incorporated into the curricula of engineering courses, rather than being offered as stand-alone classes. Rosenstein serves as a coinstructor or guest lecturer in several courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

For example, she’s a co-instructor in Engineering Systems, a core course in which she introduces

“Once [students] get into the work place, they often see that what they’ve learned is so much beyond what any of the other new hires have learned.” –Lisa Rosenstein

students to the three modes of engineering communication: written, visual, and oral.

She is also a co-instructor for senior design courses, in which she teaches students how to write design reports and deliver oral presenations to engineering firms, businesses or government agencies. By teaching in a variety of course levels, Rosenstein has the benefit of teaching the same students over the years as they matriculate through their degree programs.

“One of the great benefits of having an in-house person is the consistency. I know what they know because I’ve taught them,” Rosenstein said.

Rosenstein has also helped the School expand its international offerings. She helped create the Global Engineering Leadership Minor and she coleads CEE’s study abroad program in London with Associate Professor Lauren Stewart.

“We are the first program to take integrated communications instruction into a study abroad program,” Rosenstein says.

While it hasn’t always been easy to get engineering students excited about communications, Rosenstein takes pride in knowing that she is equipping them with skills to explain complex, technical material clearly and concisely.

“I get so many emails from former students,” Rosenstein says. “Once they get into the work place, they often see that what they’ve learned is so much beyond what any of the other new hires have learned. The students themselves report their lived experience of what’s valued in the work place.” 7

NEW COURSES

EXPLORING CEE

New course for freshmen increases understanding, engagement

The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering debuted a new course in Fall 2019 with a focus on freshmen.

Called “Exploring CEE,” this three-credit course introduces first-year students to a broad range of civil and environmental engineering topics through interdisciplinary research areas, guest lecturers and team problem-solving exercises.

Developed and co-taught by Assistant Professor Emily Grubert and Associate Professor Kevin Haas, the course aims to provide students with a greater sense of understanding and belonging to the civil and environmental engineering fields early in their academic journey.

CEE programs across the country struggle with retention. A main culprit is that students often aren’t significantly engaged with civil and environmental engineering material until after they’ve completed their core courses halfway through their college experience.

Haas, who serves as the School’s associate chair of undergraduate programs, conducted an analysis of CEE students at Georgia Tech to determine when they enter and exit the program. What he found was a net zero loss: While around 50 percent of students transfer into the School, about half of students who initially declare civil engineering or environmental engineering as their major do not stay in these programs.

School leadership determined that early and continuing engagement in the discipline would help keep more students in the program. As a result, “Exploring CEE” was developed as a way to introduce first-year students to all that the civil and environmental engineering majors and professions have to offer.

The pilot course was structured into a series of four three-week modules. Each module focused

“Exploring CEE” was developed as a way to introduce first-year students to all that the civil and environmental engineering majors and professions have to offer.

on one of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s cross-cutting research areas: Smart Cities, Sustainable Systems, Resilient Infrastructure and Healthy Communities.

For each module, students engaged in a repeating pattern of activities designed for them to “learn, do and reflect.”

The students learned background information and context about a topic, implemented their new knowledge in a group setting, and finally reflected on their own experiences and the role of the topic within the broader civil and environmental engineering field.

The course also featured alumni and faculty guest lecturers who spoke about a variety of topics including: sustainable structures, coastal hazards, bio-inspired engineering, and engineering responses to climate change.

“The course is helping students understand that ‘civil and environmental engineers can do that,’ across a variety of really exciting topics that we address as a profession,” Grubert said. “It's been a real pleasure to watch students realize the scope of what we do as a School, while simultaneously realizing that we're a supportive community with a ton of interests.”

NEW COURSES

INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Elective introduces CEE students to the business side of engineering

For the first time in Spring 2020, students had the opportunity to take a course uniquely focused on entrepreneurship within the context of civil and environmental engineering.

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Course is part of a sustained effort in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering to offer more resources for students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and performance skills to complement their technical education.

The course was co-taught by three instructors, each bringing a different perspective and area of expertise.

Bill Higginbotham, CE 76, is president and CEO of ET Environmental Corporation and a lifelong entrepreneur. He led the class with Academic Professional Robert Simon, a leadership scholar, and Professor John E. Taylor, the School’s associate chair of graduate programs and research innovation.

The course was organized around lectures, guest speakers, and a team project that put the material students learned into action. The instructors covered a range of topics about creating and sustaining a business, including business formation and modeling,

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Course is part of a sustained effort in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering to offer more resources for students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and performance skills to complement their technical education.

marketing, financing, risk mitigation, and more.

In addition to business topics, the students also learned the kind of skills that will help them succeed in the professional world such as idea generation, teamwork and leadership.

The inaugural class of 25 students was divided into six teams, with each responsible for creating an idea to form a new company.

“It was a very interactive class,” Higginbotham said. “We would spend some of every class period working directly with the teams, mentoring them and shaping their ideas.”

The teams formed businesses relating to software, concrete, construction management, and more, reflecting the variety of opportunities available to civil and environmental engineering graduates.

After the teams developed a business plan, they were presented with a new challenge: real-world risk management scenarios tailored to each team’s mission. From the midterm on, students focused on how to respond to these challenges, which included hacking, litigation, and product failure.

Midway through the Spring 2020 semester, the class experienced an unexpected risk scenario first-hand. The emerging Covid-19 pandemic forced the class to meet remotely for the remainder of the semester after campus shut down in March.

“All of us pointed to Covid-19 and said, ‘you never know what’s going to happen,’” Simon said. “It was a very real-life parallel to what we were talking about. You have to be prepared to adjust.”

Living and Learning

Georgia Tech’s Kendeda Building pushes the boundaries of green building

Over the last academic year, a building unlike any other opened its doors at Georgia Tech.

The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, dedicated on Oct. 24, 2019, is more than sustainable — it’s regenerative. It diverted more waste from landfills than it sent to them during construction and is projected to generate more on-site electricity and collect more water than it consumes over the course of a year.

In a nutshell, the building actually creates more energy than it uses and has already become a model for green building.

“The Kendeda Building is an incredible and beautiful example of sustainable design, integration with nature, human inclusion and well-being. It is the most sustainable building of its kind in the Southeast,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera at the building’s dedication. “Thanks to our partnership with The Kendeda Fund, it will inspire architects, civil engineers, business and policy leaders for generations to come.”

The Kendeda Building is the first academic and research building in the Southeast designed to be 10 certified as a living building by the International Living Future Initiative.

One of the key members of the construction team was civil engineering alumnus Jimmy Mitchell, CE 05. Mitchell is a sustainability engineer with Skanska USA and a cofounder of the Lifecycle Building Center, an Atlanta nonprofit that is dedicated to salvaging items from renovation and demolition sites and making them available for reuse.

“Reusing materials in both new construction and renovation has been a passion of mine for more than a decade. I believe it’s an important element for any truly green project,” Mitchell said. “I’m proud that we managed to incorporate unique materials into the building’s design, support the neighboring community and divert tons of “waste” from landfills — all at the same time.”

Mitchell’s influence can be seen throughout the building’s innovative use of salvaged materials.

The Kendeda Building’s central staircase features stair treads that were built using heart-of-pine joists that were recovered during a recent renovation of Tech Tower. These original joists from the 1880s give The Kendeda Building a special connection to Georgia Tech history. Another

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(1) A view from The Kendeda Building's atrium. (2) Jimmy Mitchell, CE 05, leads members of the CEE Executive Advisory Board on a tour of The Kendeda Building in Oct. 2019. (3) The natural grain of wood provides a beautiful visual element. (4) Mitchell explains the building's unique systems. (5) The Kendeda Building's exterior

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prominent example is in the second story floor boards, which were created by alternating two-bysix and two-by-four boards to form a unique visual pattern on the ceiling below.

The team utilized thousands of two-by-fours from movie sets left behind by production companies in Georgia. Skanska partnered with the nonprofit GeorgiaWorks!, which provides job training to help end the cycle of homelessness. The GeorgiaWorks! clients were hired to nail the thousands of boards together to fabricate the panels for the flooring.

This one aspect of construction had several benefits: The men from GeorgiaWorks! got experience to start careers in the construction industry, and around 25,000-linear-feet of two-byfours were diverted from the landfill.

More about The Kendeda Building for

Innovative Sustainable Design: In 2015, The Kendeda Fund committed $25 million for a living building on campus in an effort to prove a regenerative building was practical even in the Southeast’s heat and humidity. An additional $5 million will support programming activities once the building is certified.