WE
A R E CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL E N G I N E E R S D E D I C AT E D T O I M P R O V I N G T H E
H U M A N
P E O P L E T H E
2
0
W O R L D
1
5
S C H O O L
G
E
O
A R E
R
-
2
O F
G
I
0
C I V I L
A
I
N
O U R
I S
1
S
C O N D I T I O N .
O U R
A
A N D
E N V I R O N M E N T A L
I
T
U
T
N
L A B O R A T O R Y .
6
T
N
P R I O R I T Y .
E
U
O
A
F
L
R
T
E
E
P
O
R
T
E N G I N E E R I N G
C
H
N
O
L
O
G
Y
Annual Report JULY 2015 – June 2016 LEADERSHIP Reginald DesRoches, Ph.D., F.ASCE, F.SEI Karen and John Huff School Chair and Professor Donald R. Webster, Ph.D., P.E. Associate Chair for Finance and Administration and Professor James A. Mulholland, Ph.D. Associate Chair for Graduate Programs and Professor Susan E. Burns, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs and Georgia Power Distinguished Professor Adjo A. Amekudzi-Kennedy, Ph.D. Associate Chair for Global Engineering Leadership and Research Development and Professor Christi B. Tillery Director of Development 404 / 894 / 2772 christi.tillery@ce.gatech.edu
S ch o o l o f C i v il a n d E n v ir o n me n tal E n gi n eeri n g at the G e o rgia I n stitute o f T ech n o l o g y 790 Atlantic Drive N.W. Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0355 communications@ce.gatech.edu www.ce.gatech.edu P / 404 / 894 / 2201 F / 404 / 894 / 2278
W O R D S B Y J o shua S tewart PHOTOS & DESIGN BY J ess H u n t - R A L S T ON
C ontents W e A re C E E a t G T . . . . . . . . . . 1 W elc o me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Faces o f o ur F uture . . . . . 3 J. David Frost....................................5 Kari E. Watkins...................................7 John E. Taylor....................................9 Sheng Dai.........................................11 Rudy Bonaparte.................................13
20 Students / 20 Visions...15 Sara Shojaee.....................................15 Rebecca Yoo.....................................17 Matt Wallace......................................18 Maggie Lindsey..................................19 Leselle Vincent...................................20 Atiyya Shaw.......................................21 Andrew Melissas................................22 Alice Grossman..................................23 Laura Mast........................................24 Annabel McAtee.................................25 John “Jack” Cebe..............................26 Genevieve Pezzola.............................27 Annie Blissit.......................................28 Georgene Geary.................................29 Ryan Henderson.................................30 Natalia Cardelino.................................31 Brittany Bruder...................................32 Simon Berrebi....................................33 Daniella Remolina...............................34 Aaron Bivins......................................35
PULLING FOCUs..............36 Making Headlines...............37
R esearch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 9 Sustainable Cities of the Future............41 Bio-Inspired Geotech..........................42 Rogue Waves....................................43 Swim Like A Butterfly...........................44 Parking Problems...............................45 Waste to Water..................................46 Better Burns......................................47 Modeling Lake Microbes......................48 Tracking the Streetcars........................49 Erosion’s Impacts...............................50 Origami Strong...................................51 Interdependent Infrastructure................52
D ream W o rld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3 Designing the Dreamliner.....................55 Water: Clean and Simple.....................57 Braves’ New World.............................59 CAREER Paths..................................61 Digital First.........................................62 Sparking Charleston’s Future...............63
CEE at GT Capital Campaign...65 Mundy Global Learning Endowment......66 Global Engineering Leadership Minor.....67 Hyatt Alumni Speaker Series...............70
A lum n i T rip S 2016: Brussels, Belgium.....................71 2017: Chicago, Illinois.........................72
Our Faculty........................73 External Advisory Board....75
We are global citizens and pragmatic leaders improving the earth at our feet.
entrepreneurs and strategists defining public policy and the future of sustainability.
01
02
03
No 1 Number
No 2 Number of
No 3
of women enrolled & awarded degrees
African Americans enrolled & awarded degrees
Undergraduate civil engineering program
06
07
No 4
No 5
No 6
No 7
08 82%
Undergraduate job placement rate upon graduation
09 97%
Freshmen retention rate across Georgia Tech
Women: 46% Minority: 23% Students-to-faculty: 20:1
05 Graduate environmental engineering program
Students: 1,100
International: 12%
04 Graduate civil engineering program
innovative optimists dedicated to solving problems and improving the human condition since 1898.
Undergraduate environmental engineering program
Public university in the US
10
11
1 in 10
CEEatGT alumni serve as a company founder, CEO, or president
Six-year grad rate: 86% Student organizations: 10 Study abroad fund: $4M Job growth by 2022: 18%
11,000+
living alumni
Learn More @CEEatGT
1
S o urces : ce . gatech . edu / s o urces
creative realists who design at the intersection of people, nature and civilization.
WELCOME As our doors open for the 2016-2017 academic year, we’ll be welcoming somewhere around 1,100 students into our classrooms and labs. The youngest of those students will be the Class of 2020. It’s a bit difficult to fathom that we’re already two decades into the 21st century. And when you consider how much has changed in those 20 years — no one had heard of an iPhone in 2000, let alone Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat — I can’t even begin to imagine what the next 20 will look like.
Yet everyday our students and faculty are literally bringing that future into focus as they imagine solutions to new problems and as they invent the tools, techniques and ideas that will drive our global society forward. So, as I think about the Class of 2020, I also start to think about vision (you noticed our adapted vision chart on the cover, right?) and how we’re working to develop a clear vision of the next decades of society.
You’ll meet alumni who have taken the skills they learned in our classes and put them to work on marquee projects that are changing how we build commercial airliners and shaping the future of professional sports in the South. You’ll meet students who have turned a summer research trip and a passion for clean water into a new invention that could help millions of people in developing countries.
It’s work we couldn’t do without the incredible support of our more than 11,000 living alumni and without the help of our friends and industry partners. Their generosity and dedication to our efforts has been no clearer than when we wrapped up Campaign Georgia Tech this year with more than $49 million in gifts — $4 million beyond our goal. Their foresight now has set the table for our future. I can’t wait to see what comes next! Reginald DesRoches Professor and Karen and John Huff School Chair
You’ll read about rogue waves, sea snails, water-treatment plants, natureinspired geotechnical engineering, sustainable and livable cities, prescribed burns, the Atlanta Streetcar, soil erosion and atmospheric carbon, origami, and much more. In short, you’ll see at least some of the lens through which we see — and shape — the world.
P h o t o : G ar y M eek
It’s a future with cleaner air. More resilient and sustainable communities worldwide. Safer, more efficient transportation systems. Less waste. Renewable energy sources. A healthier planet and healthier people.
Those are some of the ways we’re transforming the world, and they’re all represented in these pages. I am both thrilled and humbled to present the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering annual report to you and the stories we have to tell.
2
FAC E S
3
O O
U
R
FUTURE
Meet the new minds joining us on our journey to improve the human condition as well as some familiar names with new resources that position them to make an even more significant impact.
P h o t o : R afterme n P h o t o graph y
U
F
4
Professor J. David Frost has been named the Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Frost said his selection for the professorship, created earlier this year, is an honor on many levels. “I consider being a Professor as a position in which I have the opportunity to impact and influence students in the classroom and research laboratory through enthusiasm, hard work, creativity and passion,” Frost said. “Thus, I consider being recognized as the Higginbotham Professor an endorsement of the environment I have contributed to creating.” “I really sat down with [School leaders] and said, help me do something that solves your biggest problem,” said Bill Higginbotham, who earned his bachelor’s in civil engineering in 1976. “Your biggest problem is not the condition of the building or funding a capstone project or any other small thing. Your real problem is attracting professors or keeping the professors here. Good professors equal good students.” Frost said he’s proud to be associated with the Higginbothams and their successful and impactful careers. “I consider being named the Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor a charge to identify new ways to engage with these amazing donors and their passion for the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering 5
in the future. As W.B. Yeats wrote, ‘Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.’ I look forward to lighting many fires with Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham, thanks to their vision and commitment.” Frost has been a member of the School’s faculty for two decades. His work focuses on the study and analysis of natural and man-made disasters, including creating new kinds of tools to study sub-surface soils and problems related to earthquakes and other disasters. Frost helps lead a nationwide collaboration that recently received funding from the National Science Foundation to use nature-inspired processes to reimagine geotechnical engineering. He also is a founding member of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association, an NSF-sponsored group that responds to geotechnical disasters worldwide. He was quick, however, to share credit for his career. “A professor may lead a research group, but ultimately, it is the excellence and effort of the students who work with them that contributes to any recognition they may receive,” Frost said. “I have been incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to work with an amazing group of scholars over the years at Georgia Tech. This recognition is as much as testament to the talents of these individuals.”
As the Higginbotham Professor, Frost will receive $25,000 each year to support his educational and scholarly activities, DesRoches said. “It’s much more flexible than the funding you would get from a funding agency, so you can use it to really do creative things, to do things that are much more risky,” DesRoches said. “We see it as seed funding to be able to explore some areas that might lead to really big things for your [research] program.”
•
Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham created their eponymous professorship in early 2016 to unlock new possibilities in research and teaching for a School of Civil and Environmental Engineering professor. Bill Higginbotham, BSCE 1976, has been a lifelong entrepreneur and businessman, and he recognized the importance of attracting and retaining the best faculty talent to maintain the School’s world-class reputation. The Higginbotham Professorship is the first answer to a push from the School’s External Advisory Board to triple the number of named faculty positions over the next five years.
6
P h o t o : F itrah H amid
7
Kari E. Watkins has a new platform and new resources to use in pushing her vision of sustainable transportation for our communities. Watkins, a well-known face around Atlanta and an assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been named to a new endowed position, the Frederick L. Olmsted Junior Faculty Professorship. “Kari is a rising star in the transportation arena and brings a unique combination of creativity and practical experience to her research and the classroom,” said Reginald DesRoches, the Karen and John Huff School Chair. “I have no doubt she will excel as our first Frederick L. Olmsted Junior Professor.” “[Olmsted] was a visionary, an activist, and an organizer. I see this professorship as a way to continue in his footsteps,” Watkins said, “establishing a vision for the use of public space and working to organize the community around creating that vision.” Perhaps best known in transportation circles for her work on the Cycle Atlanta and OneBusAway smartphone apps, Watkins studies multi-modal transportation planning and using technology to improve transportation systems. “Olmsted believed in design for relaxation, a principle that has led to the livable communities concept upon which I base much of my research and teaching,” she said. “I believe that
if Olmsted were alive today, he would be actively involved in the connection between physical design and public health and would stand beside me as I advocate for infrastructure that encourages us to mitigate our increasingly sedentary lifestyles that have made obesity an epidemic.” Alumnus Mike Messner, BSCE 1976, created the Olmsted Junior Faculty Professorship along with his wife, Jenny. It’s one of three endowed positions in the School dedicated to advancing Olmsted’s ideals in the 21st century. “Mike and Jenny Messner have been very supportive of my efforts in sustainable transportation over the years,” Watkins said “It is an honor to be the first junior Olmsted professor and to be trusted to carry on Olmsted’s legacy, something that I know is very important to the Messners.” The professorship comes with prestige as well as flexible and dedicated funding for Watkins to use to advance her collaborative and research efforts. She said she’s thinking about using those resources to organize a yearly symposium on infrastructure design that would incorporate water resources, public health, policy and transportation. The meeting would combine invited lectures with community roundtables to turn ideas into working plans of action.
“These small pilot projects can help resolve conflicting goals between engineers, urban planners, politicians, business owners, and the general public by installing a temporary smallscale version and assessing the impact,” she said. Watkins earned her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Georgia Tech and worked as a professional transportation engineer for a decade before earning her graduate degrees at the University of Washington. She returned to Tech as a faculty member in 2011.
•
The Frederick L. Olmsted Junior Faculty Professorship is a new endowed faculty position made possible through the support of Michael Messner, BSCE 1976, and his wife, Jenny. Named for the man considered the father of landscape architecture, the Messners’ vision was to create positions dedicated to instilling in students — and advancing through interdisciplinary research and collaboration — Olmsted’s concern for engineering urban spaces that have long-term public benefits. The Messners’ gift created three endowed positions, the Frederick L. Olmsted Professorship and two Frederick L. Olmsted Junior Faculty Professorships.
Watkins said she also wants to fund small, student-led projects to test ideas that could improve communities. It’s an approach called “tactical urbanism.”
8
John E. Taylor joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering this summer as the inaugural Frederick L. Olmsted Professor. Taylor studies the dynamics where human and engineered networks meet, making him an ideal fit for an endowed professorship named for the father of landscape architecture and a designer who believed engineered infrastructure should be both functional and aesthetically appealing, serving society’s needs while also creating more livable and healthy communities. “My own research, teaching and service have been at the intersection of human network and infrastructure network phenomena,” Taylor said. “Very recently, I started integrating natural systems thinking at this intersection. I believe that Olmsted’s life and work can really inform that integration and help me to deepen inquiry at this intersection.” Created in 2014, the Olmsted Professorships are designed to give visionary engineering researchers the resources to work across traditional disciplinary lines. Taylor said that’s a unique opportunity. “We hear a lot about the need for multidisciplinary thinking to solve the pressing challenges facing humanity, but there are relatively few faculty positions that explicitly task faculty to work across disciplines,” he said.
9
“I am extremely excited to be in a position that celebrates multidisciplinary research, teaching and service and honored and humbled to be in a position named for such an historic interdisciplinary figure.” Taylor has been an entrepreneur and worked as a project manager before starting his career in higher education. He taught most recently at Virginia Tech, where he was a dean’s faculty fellow in the College of Engineering and a Preston and Catharine White fellow in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. “John is among the most talented and creative minds in the field,” said Reginald DesRoches, the Karen and John Huff School Chair. “His passion, entrepreneurial energy, and academic leadership will serve our students and programs well.” Already, Taylor is crafting plans for his scientific and teaching endeavors, including using Atlanta as a springboard to broadening his focus to engineering change at the urban scale and as a test bed for his efforts. “In addition to studying myriad sustainability aspects of the city and associated communities, I plan to begin working with students to build a virtual version of Atlanta in which the students will be challenged to remake the city,” he said. “I am excited to see the kinds of innovative ideas the students dream up.”
“Georgia Tech, the College of Engineering, and the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering each have outstanding global reputations backed by world-class faculty, staff, students, and facilities,” Taylor said. “This reputation makes it an easy decision to want to come to Georgia Tech. “But what may be less well known are the many exciting interdisciplinary efforts underway in the School and across the Institute. These, and the strong interest in collaboration across disciplinary lines, were also key considerations in my move to Georgia Tech.”
•
The Frederick L. Olmsted Professorship is one of three new endowed faculty positions made possible through the support of Michael Messner, BSCE 1976, and his wife, Jenny. Named for the man considered the father of landscape architecture, the Messners’ vision was to create positions dedicated to instilling in students — and advancing through interdisciplinary research and collaboration — Olmsted’s concern for engineering urban spaces that have long-term public benefits. The Messners’ gift created this professorship and two Frederick L. Olmsted Junior Faculty Professorships.
10
11
Sheng Dai arrived in Atlanta just a week before classes began for the fall 2015 semester, and it was really a homecoming of sorts. Dai joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty after two years at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. But before that, he spent half a decade in the School earning his doctorate in civil engineering. He finished in 2013. You were a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech — what made you want to come back as a faculty member? I am thrilled coming back. The first day I started my graduate studies, it was very clear to me that I wanted to pursue [a career in] academia. I worked hard in terms of publishing, getting involved in teaching, writing proposals, and mentoring junior graduate students. I enjoyed exploring things in academia because of the freedom to realize what I want to know. It is that curiosity that drives me to stay in academia. … When there was an opening here at Georgia Tech, I said “Wow, that is a great opportunity.” I submitted my application package, because there is no other place more attractive than Georgia Tech to me. What is it that makes this place so overwhelmingly attractive? Looking at all the [geosystems engineering] programs in the whole
country, Georgia Tech has, on the one hand, so many faculty and, on the other hand, everybody working on different topics. Many visitors say, “Georgia Tech professors like to think out of the box.” Geosystems professors at Georgia Tech receive research funding from the Department of Energy, U.S. Geological Survey, EPA, the petroleum industry, and many other funding agencies. And the good thing about Georgia Tech is really the positive environment in the group. We get along well with each other. I spent five years here [as a graduate student], and I really love this department. Was it different those first few weeks being a professor versus being a graduate student? The biggest difference I think is, I actually know very little about academia. [laughs] I thought I knew a lot. So I’ll take the professorship itself as a research project. But I have clear ideas about what I should do and what are the expectations. I have grad students working with me now. I spend lots of time with them rather than working alone. That is the biggest change. You do a lot of work in energy and geoengineering. Why are you interested in that area?
look at the reports from 10 years ago about the grand challenges or the big international challenges, energy was not on the top of the list. We are really in a period where our development is limited by having a secure and clean energy supply. Nowadays, for 70, 80 percent of our energy, we rely on fossil fuels — oil, coal and natural gas. These produce huge amounts of carbon dioxide. I realized that and thought I should contribute a little bit on this topic of energy and carbon. ... There are so many exciting things we can do to help mitigate our energy and carbon situations. One of the great things about Georgia Tech civil engineering is, the professors are working on projects that directly have an impact on human life and our society. Is that why you wanted to be a civil engineer or, more specifically, a geotechnical engineer? I love geotechnical engineering the most because it studies the underground, the ground that we are standing on. It may not be as fancy as putting up a structure above ground that is beautiful, but underground there are so many things we don’t know. It is so challenging.
•
Energy is one of the biggest engineering challenges. All the national reports now are talking about energy, environment, water, education, disease, and infrastructure. But if we 12
After 30 years of professional experience as a geotechnical and environmental engineer and two decades leading Geosyntec Consultants, Rudy Bonaparte has come back to school. This fall, Bonaparte joins the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty as a professor of the practice and will teach one of the foundational leadership courses in the School’s global engineering leadership minor. For the longtime Geosyntec president and CEO, it was the logical next step in a career that’s won him the admiration of the engineering community and a list of awards too long to mention. “I care deeply about the well-being of our profession, and I have for many years tried to find ways to give back, whether through service to my alma maters, professional organizations, or others,” Bonaparte said. “I have always enjoyed working with and mentoring more junior staff.” So after he served as co-instructor for the Global Engineering Leadership and Management course in fall 2015, he saw a chance to give back and help develop bright young engineers. “When [School Chair Reginald DesRoches] asked me to take on a larger role in the course this fall, and to consider doing so as a professor of practice, I thought it represented a great opportunity to become more involved with the Georgia Tech CEE faculty and students.”
13
Bonaparte brings the perspective of a seasoned leader to the classroom, but he has the academic pedigree to match, having earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He has received the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Outstanding Projects and Leaders Lifetime Achievement Award for Design and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2007. He’s an ASCE fellow and a licensed professional engineer in 19 states. “Rudy is among the most accomplished and highly regarded geotechnical engineers in the world,” DesRoches said. “His experience and leadership as CEO of one of the most respected engineering firms will be invaluable to our global engineering leadership minor.” While Bonaparte will continue as part of Geosyntec’s core leadership team, he said the firm is in the midst of a succession process that will result in a new president and CEO taking over in late 2016. Bonaparte will become chair of the company’s board of directors. “This transition gives me a little more time to devote to my Georgia Tech activities,” he said. “I have always put a lot of energy into the things I do; I have always put maximum energy into helping Geosyntec be the best it could be, and I intend to put more and more energy in the coming years to contribute to Georgia Tech CEE.” Bonaparte said he sees his role as
helping students think about what they want to accomplish in their careers and what mark they want to leave on the world. “I can already see that Georgia Tech CEE students are a special group: bright, thoughtful, and energetic,” he said. “Many have already been working for some time on building their leadership skillsets to complement their academic training. I hope to further this building process, both in terms of a set of goals and a framework and context for their careers, and also the concrete attributes and skills that will help them in their careers.”
•
“I care deeply about the well-being of our profession, and I have for many years tried to find ways to give back, whether through service to my alma maters, professional organizations, or others. I have always enjoyed working with and mentoring more junior staff.”
14
P h o t o : G e o s y n tec C o n sulta n ts
Sara Shojaee BSCE, Fall 2015
Sara balanced rigorous academics, active leadership in her sorority, and multiple internships as a student, which positioned her to jump into work in the oil and gas industry right after graduation. It’s an industry she loves because of its practicality — everyone uses the products to fuel their lives.
15
H eadsh o t : J o n M ila v ec
“In my classes I work with really focused and really hard-working people, and I think that’s just kind of part of our culture, because we know what we do is important to the people who are going to use it.”
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : R o b F elt
20 s t u d e n t s
VISIONS
20
16
Rebecca Yoo Undergraduate
Rebecca turned her 21st birthday party into a fundraiser for the nonprofit charity: water, asking friends who came to donate so 21 families could have access to clean drinking water.
17
H eadsh o t : K aitl y n L o n g
“When I think about where I was born, the family that I was raised in, the country that I’m in, I know that I’m very lucky to be here. Not everyone has a place to stay. Not everyone has clean water every day. And that thought really drives me to want the same for other people, because if someone is missing out on those basics, then they’re missing out on the rest of what life has to offer.”
Matt Wallace Undergraduate
“With 9 billion people on the planet, not everybody’s going to be able to use the number of resources that they’re currently using. One of the things that Georgia Tech integrates in its program throughout, but especially in your early years of civil engineering, is sustainability and how to maximize the value from a smaller number of resources.” Sustainability is a big driver in what Matt wants to do with his life: build things on a large scale. In particular, he’s interested in vertical construction so that more people can live in urban job centers. Matt has been deeply involved in Georgia Tech’s American Society of Civil Engineers chapter, including planning the 2015 Carolinas Regional Conference.
18
Maggie Lindsey Undergraduate
No stranger to working abroad, Maggie’s dream is to use her civil engineering degree to do nonprofit or humanitarian work in developing countries. She already has a good head start, working on a water supply project in Uganda with Engineers Without Borders and helping build a primary school in Costa Rica.
19
H eadsh o t : M aggie L i n dse y
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : R o b F elt
“I am so fortunate to live somewhere where I don’t have to question if the water I drink and air I breathe are clean, if there are adequate roads and bridges to allow me to get from place to place, and if the building I am in is going to stand if there is an earthquake or other natural disaster. I chose civil engineering at Georgia Tech because I believe it offers me a unique and hands-on opportunity to be a problem solver and to help relieve people from questioning whether those basic necessities will be met.”
F o regr o u n d P h o t o : R o b F elt H eadsh o t : J o n M ila v ec
Leselle Vincent Undergraduate
“My favorite thing about studying civil and environmental engineering here at Georgia Tech is that it’s so diverse. There are so many different ways that this field can go. There’s so many options for me to pursue. With CEE, I know that once I get out of Georgia Tech with that degree, I can go straight into attempting to make a difference.”
A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Leselle wants to use her training as an environmental engineer to return home and improve how the oil and gas industry operates. The energy sector is a major driver of the islands’ economies but with significant consequences for the environment. Leselle has maintained her connection to home as an active member of Georgia Tech’s Caribbean Students Association.
20
Atiyya Shaw
BSCE 2014 Ph.D. Student
Atiyya studies the complexity of roadway environments and how drivers perceive and react to that complexity, work designed to enhance the safety and mobility of all members of society. She’s also an active mentor to high school researchers and undergraduates in her lab.
21
P h o t o S : R o b F elt
“Scientific research and progress are dependent upon a constant source of innovation and young talent in a profession that hinges on the seamless passing of intellectual and philosophical approaches from teacher to student over time. Researchers, therefore, inherit a duty that is implicit in their work: to train, mentor and inspire those who have chosen to pursue educational advancement within their fields.�
Andrew Melissas Undergraduate
H eadsh o t : A n drew M elissas
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : R o b F elt
“[My] motivation for being a civil engineer came from a Habitat for Humanity trip in New Orleans. One of the most gratifying feelings of a build is seeing the change you can make, transforming a bare ground into four walls. On that trip, I learned that children who live in homes that they own actually perform better in school than those who do not. With my career, I hope to work in residential construction. Building homes is different from other sectors of the industry, but I relish the idea that I am creating a place where people will have some of their happiest memories, transforming what is a house to a warm home.”
Andrew spends a lot of his time helping new Georgia Tech students: He has served as a leader for Georgia Tech’s freshman orientation program, FASET, and as a team leader in the GT 1000 course the helps freshman acclimate to college life.
22
Alice Grossman Ph.D. Student
“[Transportation] policy shapes how funding is allocated and how projects are selected and prioritized, and these issues are what ultimately affect how people are able to move through cities. I’m especially interested in improving equity in society through transportation and hope to be able to provide better access and mobility to create more opportunities and better quality of life for communities where transportation is currently actively hindering, or not helping, to achieve these goals.”
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : F itrah H amid
Sustainable transportation and effective transportation policy are Alice’s passions. Her work has delved deeply into the condition of Atlanta’s sidewalks and her current research will help regional planners better understand how to use performance metrics for their transportation projects.
23
Laura Mast Ph.D. Student
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : F itrah H amid
“I’m looking at developing new materials and methods of extracting rare earth elements from coal fly ash, a byproduct from burning coal. These rare earth elements are important for clean energy tech and for high tech manufacturing. Rare earth elements aren’t ‘rare’ per se — that’s a misnomer — but China mines and produces over 95 percent of the world’s supply. That’s pretty significant when you’re talking about the keystone part of green tech, and many nations, including the U.S., have dubbed rare earth elements ‘critical materials’ due to this scarcity issue. It’s cool to be doing research on an issue with so many factors and moving pieces; it’s a project where I wake up in the morning and can remind myself that I’m working on something big, that can improve a lot of people’s lives.”
For Laura, the research is a worthy endeavor, but it’s not the end of the process. She sees enormous value in communicating the results and impact of her work, skills she’s been building as a writer and through her involvement in many outreach projects to K-12 students and teachers.
24
Annabel McAtee
Why did Annabel spend so much time in our 50th state? She’s a world-class baton-twirler, and she worked with a coach there for two years. Annabel is the Georgia Tech Golden Girl, the band’s marquee twirler.
25
H eadsh o t : G e o rgia T ech G o ldrush
“When you spend a lot of time in Hawaii, you gain a huge appreciation for the trees, the sea, and the whole ecosystem. The people there live off of the land and rely on it for everything, and that made me want to protect it. I thought going into environmental engineering would be the best way for me to do that.”
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : R o b F elt
Undergraduate
John “Jack” Cebe
Master’s Student
H eadsh o t : J ack C ebe
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : F itrah H amid
“It has been so energizing to research strategies for making cities safer, more equitable, healthier, and more inviting through thoughtful transportation investments. Some may think these are naïve ideals due to the highly politicized and regulated world we live in, but there is such need for improvement in Atlanta and other cities that I feel it’s crucial that I try to make a difference through my work.”
Jack spent four years working for a transportation consulting firm before starting his dual degree in civil engineering and city and regional planning. Now he wants to take what he’s experienced and what he’s learning to the public sector to improve our communities.
26
Genevieve Pezzola Ph.D. Student
“The research that they do [at the U.S. Army Engineering Research and Development Center] directly contributes to the safety of our country and our soldiers, and that is research that I want to be a part of. They have amazing facilities to study blast damage mitigation techniques, which directly aligns with my research.”
H eadsh o t : G e n e v ie v e P e z z o la
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : J o shua S tewart
Genevieve works on experimental testing and analysis of blast retrofits made of carbon fiberreinforced polymer. She even helped design and build the lab where she does her research. In a few years, she’ll be working for the U.S. Department of Defense, thanks to the DoD SMART Fellowship she secured this year.
27
Annie Blissit
Master’s Student
H eadsh o t : A n n ie B lissit
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : R o b F elt
“I always had an interest in going to graduate school but was eager to enter the workforce after graduating. About a year into working in water/wastewater treatment, I realized I needed to supplement my degree in civil engineering with more advanced chemical and biological treatment studies. I enrolled at Georgia Tech and have been taking classes part-time while still working in consulting. I have thoroughly enjoyed my classes and love seeing all the connections to my daily work.”
Annie has long been involved in volunteer service — she grew up giving her time to a local homeless shelter and Habitat for Humanity. Once she earns her degree, she says she wants to get more involved with international volunteer work in water treatment and sanitation as well as water and environmental issues in the United States.
28
After more than 30 years working at the Georgia Department of Transportation, Georgene decided to get her doctorate and put all of those years of experience to work for young engineers. In the meantime, she’s using emerging 3-D technology to help transportation planners optimize the maintenance and rehabilitation of concrete pavements.
Georgene Geary “The teachers I remember most from my undergrad were the ones that had practical experience and could share that in the classroom. I hope to give back to the profession by providing a positive learning experience — with a few practical examples thrown in — to the next generation.”
29
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : R o b F elt
Ph.D. Student
Ryan Henderson BSCE, Spring 2015 Master’s Student
Ryan’s passion is design and creativity. And he says he loves apply that passion to big ideas and solutions to real-life problems. He walked immediately into a position in the nuclear energy industry after graduation, a field that interested him because it likely will play a sizable role in delivering a more sustainable energy supply.
H eadsh o t : J o n M ila v ec
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : R o b F elt
“It sounds cliché, but I like to be able to tell people I’m doing something that makes a difference, that I can be proud of. So civil engineering and the way that you do your job reflect what kind of person you are.”
30
Natalia Cardelino Ph.D. Student
Winner of the Kuhlman Student Scholarship from the American Concrete Institute Georgia Chapter and the Daniel P. Jenny Fellowship from the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute, Natalia is making a name for herself as a promising young scientist finding ways to make concrete more sustainable. Her adviser calls her a natural leader. Natalia returned to graduate school after a decade working as an engineer so she could help shape the next generation.
31
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : F itrah H amid
“Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to be a visiting lecturer at universities and to mentor many young engineers. I realized that teaching was something I loved doing and that a Ph.D. would allow me to pursue an academic career.”
Brittany Bruder Ph.D., Summer 2015
H eadsh o t : K e v i n H aas
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : B rett I srael
“Pursuing a career in coastal engineering has been one of the most challenging but rewarding experiences in my lifetime. While I am intrigued and attracted to the complexities of the coastal ocean, I am ultimately inspired by the immediate need to protect it and its inhabitants. My Ph.D. research at Georgia Tech has harmoniously fulfilled these two desires.�
Now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Delaware, Brittany’s dissertation was recognized as one of the best across all of Georgia Tech in 2015-2016. Her research on tidal energy for a Girl Scouts Eco-Village on a coastal Georgia island allowed her to pursue her passion for the environment while also teaching young women about engineering and instilling in them an excitement for using science to improve our communities.
32
Simon Berrebi Ph.D. Student
33
H eadsh o t : S im o n B errebi
Improving Atlanta’s public transit system not only drives Simon’s research, it drives what he does in his free time. Along with some other Georgia Tech graduate students, Simon has created the MARTA Army, a grassroots group working with the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority to make public transportation more effective in the city.
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : J e n n ifer T y n er
“For me, public transportation is a way of life. When I came to Atlanta, I was shocked that public transit wasn’t what I was used to. I started working with Dr. Kari Watkins, who had a mission to improve public transportation in Atlanta, and I was inspired immediately by her work and wanted to participate.”
Daniella Remolina BSCE, Fall 2015
H eadsh o t : D a n iela R em o li n a
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : R afterme n P h o t o graph y
“What helped me is all the variety of experiences that I could have because of the major. I learned to work with different types of people and in different environments, so that made me a person who can easily adapt.”
When Daniella graduated, she’d just finished an internship with one of the “big three” consulting companies, Boston Consulting Group. On the strength of her work and her experiences, she earned a job in the company’s Atlanta office. Now she’ll use those adapting skills as she moves between projects, teams, and entire business sectors as a consultant.
34
Aaron Bivins
BSCE 2007 Ph.D. Student
Aaron works on the other side of the world in India and right next door in Alabama to ensure that piped water supplies are safe for people to drink. The winner this year of a Fulbright scholarship and a STAR Fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Bivins explores the relationships between the design of water systems, drinking water quality, and public health.
35
B ackgr o u n d P h o t o : L o re n z o T o le n ti n o
“When we consider the challenges of delivering clean drinking water, we are often tempted to think of places like India, but the crisis in Flint, Michigan, has shown us that even here in the United States, reliably safe drinking water is only secured through proper management of our infrastructure. The funding of my domestic water quality research demonstrates our society’s recognition of these challenges and commitment to solving them.”
Pulling Focus 30 Second Thesis This year, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering debuted a new video concept to bring our graduate students’ impact into sharper focus. Dubbed “30 Second Thesis,” the challenge for grad students is to explain their key research and why it’s important to society in 30 seconds (well, 30-ish). See how the first few brave souls did at ce.gatech.edu/30SecondThesis
P h o t o s : Z o n gli n “ J ack ” L i
foreCAST Initiative Summer 2016 marked the beginning of the third round of our foreCAST student video competition. With a $3,000 cash prize on the line, we challenged students across the School to develop and produce short films that explain civil or environmental engineering and look to the future. The first two rounds brought us everything from computer and stopmotion animation to students making an impact around the world. Look for Round III videos in the fall at youtube.com/GTCEE
36
F A C U LT Y Chloé Arson was among the select educators invited to the Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium for 2015. Baabak Ashuri won the Design-Build Institute of America’s Design-Build Leadership Award for his efforts to teach students about design-build practices. The National Water Resources Institute awarded the 2015 Clarke Prize to John Crittenden for his contributions to water sustainability and water treatment technology. The University of California, Berkeley, inducted Reginald DesRoches into the civil engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni. DesRoches also joined the National Science Foundation’s engineering advisory committee and became a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and ASCE’s Structural Engineering Institute.
Georgia Tech’s Center for Teaching and Learning gave Laurie Garrow, Paul Mayne, and Donald Webster the Class of 1940 Course Survey Teaching Effectiveness Award.
37
P h o t o : R o b F elt
Purdue University invited David Frost to deliver the 14th Leonards Lecture.
STUDENTS
Glaucio Paulino joined the Society of Engineering Science board of directors. Also, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences gave Paulino its Cozzarelli Prize for his paper on a strong, reconfigurable origami tube structure. The U.S. Air Force Research Lab selected Lauren Stewart for its summer faculty fellowship program. A paper on predicting scour around bridges during floods won Terry Sturm and Seung Ho Hong the Karl Emil Hilgard Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Iris Tien was invited to the 2015 Arab-American Frontiers of Science, Engineering and Medicine Symposium on sensing technology and applications. The Association for the Sciences of Limnology & Oceanography named Donald Webster to its inaugural class of fellows. Also of note: Graduate Programs Manager Robert Simon won Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Graduate Academic Advising Award for 2016.
The Achievement Rewards for College Scientists organization gave scholarships to doctoral students Josephine Bates, Elizabeth Nadelman and Anna Skipper.
Jack Cebe, Alice Grossman, Janille Smith-Colin and Carly Queen won Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowships from the Federal Highway Administration.
Aaron Bivins won a Fulbright Scholarship to spend a year in India for his water-quality research. Bivins also won a STAR Fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Also, Cebe and Atiyya Shaw were invited to the Eno Center’s Future Leaders Development Conference as 2016 Eno Fellows.
The American Council of Engineering Companies selected part-time master’s student Annie Blissit as one of its Young Professionals of the Year for her service and professional work. Brittany Bruder’s dissertation on tidal energy won the Georgia Tech Sigma Xi chapter’s Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award. April Gadsby won the group’s Best Undergraduate Research Award for her work on intelligent and sustainable infrastructure. Gadsby also won the 2016 Helen Grenga Award from the Women in Engineering program at Georgia Tech. Natalia Cardelino won the American Concrete Institute’s Robert H. Kuhlman Student Scholarship for 2016. Cardelino also received a Daniel P. Jenny Fellowship from the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute for her research looking at the best way to use limestone cement in self-consolidating concrete.
Materials and Structures named Gun Kim’s paper on detecting carbonation in concrete one of its top papers of 2015. Maggie Lindsey’s thoughts on engineers and ethics won her second place in the American Society of Civil Engineering’s Daniel Mead Prize competition. Laura Mast was named a 2015 Environmental Research & Education Foundation Scholar for her work on recovering heavy metals from coal ash. Mast also received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, along with Georgene Geary. Simpson Gumpertz & Heger selected Andrew Melissas as its 2016 Buchberg Scholar. Genevieve Pezzola won a U.S. Department of Defense Science, Mathematics & Research for Transformation fellowship and a guaranteed job after graduation.
38
COMMUNITIES
SUSTAINABLE 39
RESILIENT
INFRASTR
SYSTE t’s no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention that the world faces significant challenges in the decades ahead. Growing population, a changing climate, radical advances in technology, crumbling or inadequate infrastructure, to name but a few.
That is freeing us to consider new ideas, new collaborations, new sources of inspiration, and new areas of inquiry.
For our students and scientists, however, the exciting and energizing reality is that many of the solutions to these and other global issues will come from the civil and environmental engineers who are today learning, working and leading in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech.
This is where we’re working at the front lines of the world’s grand challenges, at the intersection of social and economic systems, the built environment, and our natural world. By no means do these areas cover the full tapestry of creativity and impact that constitute our research endeavors. But these three broad areas represent the interdisciplinary focus of our scientific work.
To answer the call of service from our global society, we’ve started to think differently about our work, including shedding the traditional boundaries between civil and environmental engineering disciplines.
Now we like to think of our contributions to society in three broad, crosscutting research areas: Sustainable Communities, Resilient Infrastructure Systems, and Smart Cities.
It’s work that crosses traditional boundaries to develop new knowledge, technology and innovations, and ultimately, to invent a future where our global society thrives.
ESILIENT
RUCTURE
STEMS
RESEARCH
SMART
CITIES 40
SUSTAINABLE CITIES Of The Future NSF - f u n d e d r e s e arch n e two rk will de sig n the h e a lt h y, s u s ta i n ab l e , l i vab l e c i t i e s o f t h e f u t u r e The network will use cities across the United States and in India as “test beds” for its work, a unique approach
The project, called a Sustainability Research Network in NSF parlance, runs for four years. “Real success at the end of those four years would be one or more cities — having worked with us from the beginning — take actions that will lead to improving the livability of their city,” Russell said. “That could come in multiple ways: improved transit options, improved plans for water usage, effective urban farming, or strategies to improve air quality that they’ve actually implemented and to inform their citizenry of how to reduce their exposures to harmful chemicals and lead more healthy lives.”
“We’re bringing some very different communities together more than past projects have done,” said Russell, the Howard Tellepsen Chair and a Regents professor. “We are getting the engineering community, the health community, the atmospheric sciences community, the economics communities, the policy communities in the same virtual room to look to the future. “We’re looking at real-life cities and figuring out how to make these cities work better and how to help cities [in general] evolve.” The idea is to reimagine infrastructure — energy grids, road networks, green spaces, and food and water systems — to create cities that are highly functional, that promote the health of residents and the environment, and that have that intangible “vibe” that makes them desirable places to live and work.
41
said. “[We will] not only specify what actions might be taken but actually help realize those actions.”
that Russell said means the outcome of the network’s studies will have significant impact. Atlanta is one of those cities. “One of the points we made with this proposal is that it’s action-oriented, with the idea that the output of this project is not papers, it’s actions,” he
The network stretches beyond civil and environmental engineering at Tech: Nisha Botchwey, an associate professor in the School of City and Regional Planning, and Peter Webster, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will have significant roles, as will Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (better known as CEISMC). Russell said Tech’s wide-ranging involvement in the project fits in perfectly with the Institute-wide focus in the coming decade on sustainability and community.
•
L eft P h o t o : R afterme n P h o t o graph y
A new National Science Foundation-funded research network connects scientists at nine universities with infrastructure groups, public policy experts, and industry partners to reimagine cities. Georgia Tech serves as an anchor of the $12 million network, which will be led by the University of Minnesota, and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Ted Russell acts as a co-director.
BIO-INSPIRED G E O T E C H What can nature teach us about the way we engineer soil to strengthen the foundations of our buildings and infrastructure? What can we learn from ants and other burrowing insects to improve the efficiency of our underground tunneling efforts and make those tunnels safer?
Using nature’s roadmap to re-think geotechnical engineering
An $18.5 million investment from the National Science Foundation is going to help researchers at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering — along with colleagues at Arizona State, New Mexico State, and the University of California, Davis — tap into the lessons nature teaches us and, potentially, revolutionize geotechnical engineering in the process. “That’s what’s exciting about this project,” said David Frost, who will lead Georgia Tech’s efforts as part of the new Center for Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics (CBBG). “It’s not about little tweaks that just make systems that we currently have a little better. There really is the opportunity to come up with transformational approaches and ideas for what we do.” Ideas could come from trees or ants or microbes that help stabilize soil, Frost said. And the discoveries researchers make could mean significant improvements in how we clean up environmental contamination, harden structures against natural and man-made disasters, make infrastructure
construction more efficient, or improve the effectiveness of natural resource recovery operations. “The opportunity to come back and dramatically change how we design, for example, foundations of buildings exists if we look at how nature builds foundations for some of its structures,” said Frost, the Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor. “Let’s go back and learn how nature has done it and see what new ideas emerge that could perhaps lead to a whole new generation of foundation systems, not just from the structural point of view, but also in terms of being sustainable,” he said. “We’re looking for ways to manage the heat of structures better. We’re looking for ways to build ecology-friendly structures and systems. “Who knows what we’re going to find?” The center is one of the nation’s largest single investments in geotechnical engineering. The initial funding extends for five years with the possibility of an additional five years of support from NSF. Frost said the goal at that point would be for CBBG — what’s called an Engineering Research Center, or ERC, by the NSF — to be selfsustaining, and for something even greater to have happened after the NSF support period ends. “We’re not just developing technologies to push out there,” he said. “We’re really trying to build an entire new field.”
•
42
R o gue W a v es Understanding rogue ocean waves may be simple after all An international team of scientists has developed a relatively simple mathematical explanation for the rogue ocean waves that can develop seemingly out of nowhere to sink ships and overwhelm oil platforms with walls of water as much as 80 feet high. The waves stem from a combination of constructive interference — a known wave phenomenon — and nonlinear effects specific to the complex dynamics of ocean waves. An improved understanding of how rogue waves originate could lead to improved techniques for identifying ocean areas likely to spawn them, allowing shipping companies to avoid dangerous seas. Researchers based their analysis on three rogue waves observed in the North Sea and off the coast of Ireland. Their findings appeared in the journal Scientific Reports. “We saw similar wave behaviors at all three rogue wave sites,” said Francesco Fedele, an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We found that the main mechanism responsible for generating these waves is the constructive interference of elementary waves due to directional dispersive focusing enhanced by second-order bound nonlinearities.”
43
Rogue waves have been observed in oceans around the world. They typically last only 20 seconds or so before disappearing. Earlier research had suggested an explanation that had been demonstrated in laboratories. But Fedele said it didn’t adequately explain the complex threedimensional waves that were being measured in the open ocean without boundaries to constrain them.
Fedele worked with colleagues at University College Dublin and the Institut FEMTO-ST CNRS-Université de Franche-Comté on the study. Their findings have been the basis for a new rogue wave model that could be used to identify ocean areas where nonlinear effects could generate rogue waves and to provide new insights into the unsolved problem of wave breaking. That could give seafarers as much as an hour’s warning to avoid those areas. In the end, Fedele said, the formation of the rogue wave is simply chance: the rare combination of waves in what turns out to be a bad place for ships or oil platforms. “It’s just a bad day at the ocean,” he said. – John Toon
•
S wim L ike A B utterfl y Researchers find a sea snail that swims like insects fly It turns out that the tiny sea butterfly lives up to its name. Georgia Tech researchers went to the icy Pacific Ocean around Antarctica to scoop up hundreds of the 3-millimeter marine mollusks called pteropods, and then used high-speed cameras to watch how they move. They found that sea butterflies (Limacina helicina) don’t paddle like most small water animals. Instead, they flap their wings just like insects to produce lift and propel them through the water.
“Almost all other plankton use their appendages as paddles, kind of like a turtle,” said David Murphy, who led the study and received his Georgia Tech doctoral degree in 2012. He’s now a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. “Sea butterflies are honorary insects.” The team did find one major difference in sea butterflies and flying insects. Nearly two-thirds of the plankton’s body is its shell. When it’s not moving, it sinks to the ocean floor. So the pteropod rotates up to 60 degrees with each stroke to stay afloat.
“Insects and birds don’t typically rotate their bodies in a similar manner to generate lift,” Webster said. “By rotating their shell during each stroke, sea butterflies put their wings in a position to always generate upward thrust and fly forward.” The researchers study the plankton for two reasons. First, they play a vital role in the food web in the Pacific, Arctic and southern oceans. Fish, seals and sea birds eat them in massive quantities. Second, absorption of carbon dioxide increases the acidity of the oceans. As carbon dioxide levels increase in the future, so will seawater acidity, which breaks down the shells of pteropods. The next steps in the research are seeing how changes in both shell composition and fluid viscosity affect the pteropod’s ability to rotate its body and “fly” upward. – Jason Maderer
•
P h o t o : D eepak A dhikari
“Snails evolutionarily diverged from flying insects 550 million years ago,” said Donald Webster, a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental
Engineering. “Hence, it is amazing that marine snails are using the same figure-eight wing pattern that is typical of their very distant airborne relatives.”
44
P arki n g P r o blems
Too much parking hurts efforts to get people out of their cars
In fact, there’s now so much space dedicated to storing cars, it takes up 14 percent of the county’s incorporated area. That amounts to almost one residential parking spot for every registered car in the county and three spots per car overall. Those findings come from a study by Ram Pendyala, the Frederick R. Dickerson Chair in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and colleagues at Arizona State University.
45
The group estimated parking growth in Los Angeles from 1900 to 2010, trying to assess the impact of minimum parking requirements, how parking has shaped urban development, and how growth in parking infrastructure influences automobile travel. Pendyala and his co-authors noted that all of this parking infrastructure is likely working against many communities’ efforts to encourage other forms of transportation. “Widely discussed ways to reform parking policies may be less than effective if planners do not consider the remaining incentives to auto use created by the existing parking infra-
structure,” they wrote. “Planners should encourage the conversion of existing parking facilities to alternative uses.” Their work appears in the Journal of the American Planning Association. “Planners must recognize and support a variety of options for converting surface lots and home garages into different land uses,” the researchers wrote. “The conversion of excess parking spaces into commercial, employment, and housing options provides opportunities to address the many challenges posed by the automobile, to better use our urban form, and to improve accessibility for those who cannot rely so heavily on personal automobiles.”
•
P h o t o : R o b F elt
Through the 20th century, parking infrastructure in Los Angeles County, California, has exploded.
W aste T o W ater
Atlanta-area project could be a wa stewater game-changer A metro Atlanta county has joined with School of Civil and Environmental Engineering researchers and engineering firm CDM Smith on a water reuse project that could eventually be a model for other communities around the country. Gwinnett County commissioners formally approved the project in August 2015. The idea is to study if it’s possible to clean wastewater well enough to drink it without putting it back into the area’s water reservoir first. The process is called direct potable reuse, and officials said it could help them conserve water without reducing usage.
“This could be a real game-changer,” Gwinnett’s director of water resources, Ron Seibenhener, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Even if it doesn’t prove to be the solution, it could be the start of different paths to get to that solution. We want to make it safe, reliable and cheap.” Professor Ching-Hua Huang and two graduate students will study whether a process called ozone-biologically active filtration can clean wastewater enough to meet high drinking-water quality standards. They’ll use a pilot plant that will be built at one of the county’s existing water facilities, and they’ll conduct advanced water-sample analysis.
If the treatment process works, it could significantly change the economics of direct potable reuse, Huang said. She said the project is critically important to water utilities because it has the potential to reduce cost and eliminate concentrated waste streams that are generated using current filtration and cleaning processes. “This project will allow water utilities to evaluate water-supply options to decrease their dependence on lake or river withdrawals,” said Denise Funk with the county’s Department of Water Resources. “High-quality reclaimed water is not subject to changes in rainfall, eutrophication, chemical spills, or algae blooms.”
•
46
B etter
B ur n s
How prescribed burns impact health and Air quality across the South
Yet there’s no unified way to track all of this burning across the Southeast and account for the resulting impacts on air quality and residents’ health. It’s especially an issue for a region where prescribed burns are the top source of fine particulate matter in the air. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering researcher Talat Odman has secured funding to help address the problem, bringing together all of the prescribed burn data from a region stretching from Texas to Virginia. With support from the federal Joint Fire Science Program, the U.S. Forest Service, Georgia Tech and North Carolina State University, Odman and his team will marry the burn data with air quality data and cutting-edge computer modeling to understand the full impact of prescribed burns on air pollution and people’s health. It’s a system Odman says will help land managers better plan prescribed burns and public health organizations better protect populations vulnerable to particulate matter in the air, such as the elderly, the very young, and people with existing respiratory problems.
47
“We want to optimize burns — which have higher demand than supply — and air quality at the same time,” Odman said. In Georgia, for example, any open burning requires a permit from the Georgia Forestry Commission, and most burning is banned from May through September in the state’s most-populated areas. The burns are important to maintaining healthy ecosystems and preventing out-of-control wildfires, but Odman said the commission can’t keep up with requests. “Applications come in [to burn] 2 million acres a year, and last year they issued permits for slightly over 1 million acres,” he said. “So they could easily double the capacity. The first hurdle for the two-year project will be to pull together data in 13 southern states that all have different systems for outdoor burning, Odman said. Plus, state applications may only account for private landowners, not federal lands owned by the military or the U.S. Forest Service. So far, Odman’s group, which includes Fernando Garcia Menendez at North Carolina State University and Cassandra Johnson with the U.S. Forest Service, has commitments from Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to participate. Initially, they plan to gather data from 2010 to 2015, adding 2016 and 2017 burns as the information becomes available.
•
P h o t o : R o b F elt
When land managers in Florida or South Carolina or Georgia approve outdoor burns in their states, the resulting smoke doesn’t float to the state line and stop.
Modeling Lake Microbes
Understanding healthy lakes means we might be able to heal sick ones Development of a dynamic model for microbial populations in healthy lakes could help scientists understand what’s wrong with sick lakes, prescribe cures, and predict what may happen as environmental conditions change. Those are among the benefits expected from an ambitious project to model the interactions of some 18,000 species in a well-studied Wisconsin lake. The research produced what may be the largest dynamic model of microbial species interactions ever created. Analyzing long-term data from Lake Mendota near Madison, Wisconsin, a Georgia Tech research team identified and modeled interactions among 14 sub-communities — that is, collections of different species that become dominant at specific times of the year. Because of the large number of different microorganisms involved, creating such a model was a monumental task.
“The exciting part about this work is that we are now able to model hundreds of species,” said co-author Kostas Konstantinidis, the Carlton S. Wilder associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “The ability to dynamically model microbial communities containing hundreds or even thousands of species as those interactions change over time, or after environmental perturbations, will have numerous implications and applications for other research areas.” Beyond understanding what’s happening in aquatic microbial environments, the model might also be used to study other microbial populations — perhaps even human microbiomes. The research was reported in Systems Biology and Applications, a Nature partner journal.
In the past, researchers have created static models of interactions between large numbers of microorganisms, but those provided only snapshots in time and couldn’t be used to model interactions as they change throughout the year. Scientists might want to know, for example, what would happen if a community lost one species, if a flood of nutrients hit the lake, or if the temperature rose. The next step in the research will be to complete a similar study of Lake Lanier north of Atlanta. In addition to the information studied for Lake Mendota, that study will gather data about the enzymatic and metabolic activities of the microorganism communities. Lake Lanier feeds the Chattahoochee River and a series of other lakes, and the researchers hope to study the entire river system to assess how different environments and human activities affect the microbial populations. – John Toon
•
48
One problem the researchers faced was the “urban canyon” effect where GPS reception reverberates on buildings or is blocked entirely, creating an error in the signal and causing the GPS location of the vehicles to “wander.”
New algorithm, sensors w i l l t rac k A t l a n t a Streetcars in real-time
The new Atlanta Streetcar recently deployed a real-time dispatching method developed at Georgia Tech that eliminates the need for schedules and cuts down on passenger wait times. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Kari Watkins and Ph.D student Simon Berrebi developed an algorithm that ensures each vehicle is spaced evenly along the 2.7 mile route in downtown Atlanta, maximizing the frequency of service. And unlike the previous approach to dispatching streetcars, their algorithm uses real-time information. “Our method identifies a late streetcar and holds every proceeding vehicle to make sure that they will all be able to be dispatched with the same headway,” Berrebi said.
49
“Connecting this with the urban canyon problem that we’ve been studying at GT-RNOC, it became clear that we can track the observed elevation changes along the vehicle’s path and match the elevation profile against the known profile for the given path,” Eason said. “Once you can tell where you are on that elevation curve, you can determine exactly where you are on the route.” Dispatchers will advise drivers how long to stop at a control point located in Centennial Olympic Park, and mobile applications like Watkins’ OneBusAway, along with LED displays located at streetcar stops, will notify passengers of expected arrival times. Researchers will work to expand this system to other transit routes in Atlanta and throughout the country. – Alyson Powell
•
P h o t o : A l y s o n P o well
T racki n g T he S t R eetcars
Watkins and Berrebi worked with research scientist Bill Eason of Tech’s Institute for People and Technology and Georgia Tech Research Network Operations Center Co-Director Russ Clark to use a barometric pressure sensor. They found the newest sensors, designed to be built into next-generation cell phones, are sensitive enough to detect changes in elevation of under a meter (3.3 feet). The sensor allows for more accuracy in pinpointing the location of a streetcar in real-time.
E r o si o n ’ s impacts
S o i l e r o s i o n m o d e l s o l v e s a carb o n p u z z l e A high-resolution model of how soil erosion impacts the carbon cycle of a small South Carolina watershed may help explain an apparent imbalance in the world’s carbon budget. Explaining that imbalance is necessary for understanding and predicting the course of global climate change.
“This is the first model that couples physics-based formations of hydrologic, geomorphic and biogeochemical processes into a spatially-explicit model,” said Dialynas, who is a member of the research team of Rafael L. Bras, Georgia Tech provost and a professor of civil and environmental engineering. “The model systematically accounts for dynamic feedback among linked processes. We have validated the performance of the model based on observations and measurements of organic material from diverse soil profiles.”
The model shows how localized soil erosion transfers and buries soil organic carbon in streams and other deposition sites.
P h o t o : U . S . F o rest S er v ice
“Recent attempts to estimate global carbon budgets have identified a missing sink of significant size,” said Yannis Dialynas, a Ph.D. student in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We believe this can be partly explained by the erosion of soil and the burial of organic matter in streams and rivers.” In a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation, researchers from Georgia Tech, Duke University, the University of Georgia and the University of Kansas studied soil eroding from the Holcombe’s Branch watershed, a 4.3-square-kilometer area that is part of the NSF’s Calhoun Critical Zone Observatory in South Carolina. The watershed has suffered dramatic land degradation caused by intense agricultural practices over the past century.
The research was reported in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
The researchers developed a highresolution computer model of the mechanisms responsible for carbon transport. The model allowed them to quantify key features governing the soil-atmosphere carbon exchange, including the fate of eroded carbon at the watershed scale and the replacement rate of eroded carbon by atmospheric carbon sequestration.
“Soils have the potential to act as significant sinks of carbon dioxide,” Dialynas said. “By accounting for the effects of erosion on the net soil-atmospheric carbon exchange, we may be able to better understand future challenges posed by climate change. What we are seeing in South Carolina could be extrapolated to other areas with disturbed soils and human impacts.” – John Toon
•
50
Origami S T R ON G
Scientists develop origami tubes that fold f l at a n d s t i l l h o l d c o n s i d e rab l e w e i g h t Researchers from Georgia Tech, the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, and the University of Tokyo have developed a new “zippered tube” origami configuration that makes paper structures stiff enough to hold weight yet able to fold flat for easy shipping and storage. Their method could be applied to other thin materials, such as plastic or metal, to transform structures ranging from furniture and buildings to microscopic robots. “The geometry is what really plays a role,” said Glaucio Paulino, the Raymond Allen Jones Chair in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We are putting two tubes together in a strange way. What we want is a structure that is flexible and stiff at the same time. This is just paper, but it has tremendous stiffness.”
Origami structures would be useful in many engineering and everyday applications, such as a robotic arm that could reach out and scrunch up, a construction crane that could fold to pick up or deliver a load, or pop-up furniture. Paulino sees particular potential for quick-assembling emergency shelters, bridges and other infrastructure in the wake of a natural disaster. The researchers use a particular origami technique called Miura-ori folding. They make precise, zig-zag folded strips of paper, then glue two strips together to make a tube. While the single strip of paper is highly flexible, the tube is stiffer and does not fold in as many directions. 51
The researchers tried coupling tubes in different configurations to see if that added to the structural stiffness of the paper structures. They found that interlocking two tubes in zipper-like fashion made them much stiffer and harder to twist or bend. The structure folds up flat, yet rapidly and easily expands to the rigid tube configuration.
“All of these ideas apply from the nanoscale and microscale up to large scales and even structures that NASA would deploy into space,” Paulino said. “Depending on your interest, the applications I think are endless. We have just scratched the surface. – Liz Ahlberg
•
P h o t o : R o b F elt
Paulino, Illinois graduate researcher Evgueni Filipov, and University of Tokyo Professor Tomohiro Tachi published their work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Interdependent Infrastructure Model aims to improve the reliability of our i n f ra s t r u c t u r e Sy s t e m s The National Science Foundation has awarded Iris Tien nearly $500,000 for a three-year project that will develop new computer models of infrastructure systems and the connections between them. The idea is to create a model that can be used for any infrastructure system — water, power, transportation, or communications, for example — and takes into account each component of the system as well as how the system interacts with other infrastructure. The result will be software that can help utilities make real-time decisions and even automatically adjust how infrastructure operates to account for problems.
“We have more and more data that’s becoming available about these systems,” she said. “One of the main motivations behind this project is, how do we use that data to better assess the current state of infrastructure systems and use it to predict future behaviors [and] to help us make control decisions or management decisions for current infrastructure so they are more reliable and more resilient.” The project will look at three kinds of systems: communications, power and transportation. It will focus on one rural community in Georgia and one urban area in California.
•
P h o t o : R o b F elt
“As these systems are subject to more and more hazards of different types,” Tien said, “it’s really important for us to be able to model these systems properly and to be able to make decisions about how we manage these systems so they perform better under different adverse conditions.”
Tien said current infrastructure management systems are highly distributed. Each power utility or water system might have its own models or decision-making frameworks. But nothing exists that works for all of those systems and accounts for how they interact, she said.
52
Dream
Wor
HOW some of
our people are
transforming vision into reality – and shaping our communities and culture along the way. 53
P h o t o : F lickr U ser M . Zhu
rld
54
Meet the structural engineer who helped design Boeing’s pride and joy Sometimes it’s the littlest things that change everything.
Pretty soon, he’s shared your name with the recruiter. You sit for an interview. And by lunchtime that same day, you have a job offer in hand. Less than 20 years later, Stacie Sire has turned that simple conversation into a successful career rising through the ranks at Boeing, including helping shepherd the vaunted 787 Dreamliner from its very early conceptual stages to the plane now carrying thousands of passengers on longhaul flights around the world every day. “[That conversation] was just a connecting-the-dots kind of thing, because I had thought about aircraft structure,” said Sire, who earned a bachelor’s in civil engineering from Georgia Tech in 1996. “Not to the point that I had gone and taken any aerospace classes — it was not to that level. But then I have the interview with Boeing. I remember even in the interview I was like, ‘OK, so you’re looking for structural engineers that are working on an aircraft structure, right? Not your facilities or buildings?” 55
That’s exactly what they were looking for, and, it turns out, they were exactly what Sire was looking for too.
“That was just amazing, because I got to start on it as a pretty young-ish engineer,” Sire said.
“The first time [I thought about airplane structural engineering] was when Professor [Leroy] Emkin, in a structural analysis class, mentioned aircraft design and analysis and that they used structural engineers for that. I perked up a little. ‘Oh, that would be really cool.’”
“We didn’t even know we were going with the ‘87. We were looking at all sorts of different types of airplanes that I was running trade studies on. And getting to be a part of it so early on — I mean there were so many transformational things we did.”
It has turned out to be just as cool as Sire expected. She started out as a structural design engineer and a structure analyst, but it wasn’t long before she was tapped to work on a new plane the company was starting to conceptualize. That plane would eventually become the 787, Boeing’s most fuel-efficient aircraft ever and a groundbreaking design with extensive use of composite materials like carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer.
Originally, Sire worked on sizing for metal wings as the company tested designs of metals and composites for the new plane. As the project took shape — deciding on the 787 design, deciding on composites for the wings and fuselage — she got involved in structural testing, taking a full-scale stationary airframe and putting it through its paces.
H eadsh o t : S tacie S ire
Like the casual conversation with a professor one day after your soil mechanics class. He mentions airplane maker Boeing is interviewing students on campus. Would you be interested in talking to them? He knows one of the recruiters.
e h t g n i n g Desi
r e n i l m a e r D
P h o t o : F lickr U ser G tarded
Eventually, Sire was tapped to lead the full-scale testing for the plane’s wings, its landing gear, and its empennage, the plane’s tail section. She became a manager in the 787 project’s loads and dynamics analysis and then a senior manager in charge of the overall systems stress team, making sure all of the plane’s systems met Federal Aviation Administration requirements. It all culminated in September 2011 when Sire and some of her colleagues packed aboard a 787 for a flight designed to test the finished interior and the flight entertainment system. Near the end of that special flight, things got even better. “I was asked to be in the flight deck for the landing,” Sire said. “That was the pinnacle. I am in this airplane that I have started [working on] from very
rough conceptual design. Landing in this airplane that now exists physically. I am thinking back on these finite element models that I ran that were so coarse on this airplane. It was just overwhelming.”
B o ei n g ’ s 7 8 7 D reamli n er is the
Now that production is in full swing on the 787, Sire has moved on to new projects as director of airplane configuration and systems engineering. Instead of focusing on one particular model, her team supports all of Boeing’s commercial airplanes.
full - scale testi n g .
c o mpa n y ’ s m o st fuel efficie n t aircraft e v er a n d makes e x te n si v e use o f c o mp o site materials . S tacie S ire , B S C E 1 9 9 6 , pla y ed a sig n ifica n t r o le i n desig n i n g the pla n e fr o m earl y c o n ceptual stages thr o ugh t o
And it all happened because of that on-campus job interview and a professor who mentioned her skills in structural engineering could be used more broadly than Sire had imagined. Sometimes it’s the littlest things that change everything.
•
56
Water:
clean and simple
Students invent a simple system to keep household water clean in developing countries
fifth-year undergraduate studying environmental engineering. “You could pour bottled water into a household cup, drink it, and you’ve just ingested E. coli.”
To test the water’s purity, Becker and Evanchec took samples directly from the village’s running tap and from the household storage containers.
For something like 900 million people in India, access to clean water isn’t the problem.
The culprit? The cup itself — a discovery Evanchec and fifth-year civil engineering student Samantha Becker made during a summer research trip to the villages around Nagpur, India.
One day they decided to pour sterile water from the lab into the common drinking cups found in every home and then test it.
It’s keeping that water clean once it reaches households. “$59 billion has been spent bringing clean water to the developing world, but it is all essentially wasted at the point of use,” said Shannon Evanchec, a
In these communities, running water is available for only an hour or two a day. Sometimes, the tap runs just 15 minutes. The residents must collect and store enough water to last the whole day.
“We were doing these samples, and we realized, why are we pouring the water into a cup first then testing it?” Becker said. “What if the cup is the thing that is getting all of this water dirty?” The results, she said, were startling. “In 90 percent of the cases, the deionized water that we poured into cups then had enough E. coli to turn our test kits purple, which meant that it had a harmful level,” Becker said.
T eam T ru P a n i with their I n Ve n ture P ri z e P e o ple ’ s C h o ice A ward . F r o m left , S ama n tha B ecker , Na o mi E rgu n , S ha n n o n E v a n chec a n d S arah L y n n B o we n .
57
That seemingly simple discovery led the pair to design a new kind of cup with a thin antimicrobial coating that disinfects water by releasing copper ions. Those ions disrupt the microbes’ cellular functions and kill them. Each cup also comes with a similarly coated metal lotus flower for each home’s water storage container.
P h o t o : F itrah H amid
“The two-second interaction with the cup was enough to contaminate it,” Evanchec said.
A w o ma n i n I n dia prepares a sample o f her h o use h o ld water as she lear n s h o w t o test it f o r E . c o li . W o rki n g o n this research pr o ject led se n i o rs S ha n n o n E v a n chec a n d S ama n tha B ecker t o i n v e n t a n a n timicr o bial cup t o reduce water c o n tami n ati o n i n v illages like this o n e .
P h o t o : S ha n n o n E v a n chec
Their idea won them the People’s Choice Award and $5,000 in the 2016 InVenture Prize contest, a competition to find promising technologies that could be commercially successful. Becker and Evanchec, along with teammates Sarah Lynn Bowen and Naomi Ergun, call themselves TruePani. “There’s a lot of examples of technologies that people develop in the U.S. and think, wow, this is great let me take it over to rural village,” Evanchec said. “It isn’t developed with the end user in mind, so it doesn’t really work. “Our main goal in designing our product was for it to be something that
we could incorporate into [people’s] daily lives that would require little to no behavior change at all.” The group accomplishes that by making the cup the same shape as the ones found in virtually every home. They said the lotus flower is viewed as a symbol of purity in Indian culture, so they have a better chance of convincing people to place the metal flower in their water storage container. “We are really focused on designing with the culture instead of for a culture,” Evanchec said, noting that preliminary lab tests show their design starts working almost immediately.
“With microbial concentrations similar to the drinking water in India, we saw a dramatic reduction in the number of colonies,” she said. “We compared our results to the World Health Organization standards and found that after four to six hours, the risk was reduced from dangerous levels [of bacteria] to reasonable [water] quality.” Though their sanitation system was inspired by Becker and Evanchec’s experiences in India, they said similar communities with poor sanitation around the world could benefit. All they have to do is perhaps redesign the shape of the cup and the lotus flower to fit into the cultural norms of other places.
•
58
T he v iew fr o m what will be h o meplate i n the A tla n ta B ra v es ’ n ew stadium , S u n T rust P ark . S e v eral ci v il e n gi n eeri n g a n d buildi n g c o n structi o n alum n i are helpi n g make the ballpark a realit y : A dam K arabe n li a n d K y le M a n weiler , B S C E 2 0 1 3 , M S C E 2 0 1 4 , are structural e n gi n eers wh o desig n ed the o utfield light t o wers a n d n ew sc o reb o ard . A dam C o bb , B S B C 2 0 0 7 , o v ersees c o n structi o n o n the park ’ s i n teri o rs .
Visit the Atlanta Braves’ new stadium with three alumni helping build it The 2016 season is a history-making one for baseball in Atlanta. It’s the last of the hometown Braves’ two-decade run at Turner Field. By next season, the team will have moved a few miles north to Cobb County, where a flock of construction cranes is helping draw a new 41,000-seat stadium and entertainment complex out of the ground near the junction of Interstates 75 and 285. Some School of Civil and Environmental Engineering alumni have had a direct hand in the new legacy under construction on what was more than 60 acres of mostly empty land. Adam Karabenli and Kyle Manweiler are engineers with structural engineering firm Walter P Moore. Adam Cobb is the project manager overseeing the ballpark’s interiors for American Builders 2017, the joint venture of four general contractors that’s putting the stadium together. 59
Braves’
They offered us a sneak peek at what will be christened SunTrust Park in spring 2017 and told us about the work they’ve been doing to make a new icon of baseball in the Deep South. Thrown into the deep end Karabenli and Manweiler earned their bachelor’s degrees in 2013 and master’s degrees a year later. It wasn’t long into their careers when they were assigned to work on some of the new ballpark’s most recognizable features.
In Karabenli’s case, that was the four outfield light towers. For Manweiler, it was the main scoreboard looming over center field.
“I started in June, and then within that first month, they put me on that. It was the very first thing I did out of school,” Manweiler said. “That’s what Georgia Tech does: you hit the ground running.” Running is what these three have been doing for the last couple of years as they worked to design and assemble a baseball stadium more quickly than has ever been done in the United States.
new world Young guns
It’s not lost on the group that they’re involved in shaping Atlanta’s history, an opportunity not often afforded to people who are all on the early side of their careers.
education behind us,” Cobb said. “It comes with a brand recognition.”
Cobb said his Georgia Tech education has gone a long way.
“Something that’ll impact the city, something big? That’s why I got into structural engineering.”
“To be as young as we are, in an environment like this, full of more senior people, more experienced people, they see us carrying ourselves well, speaking the vocabulary, and [they] understand that we have that
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Manweiler said.
“Every single day — you can ask anybody out here — you’re dealing with at least 10 challenges, maybe 20 some days. Not bad things, but just stuff you have to overcome in order to
keep progress rolling,” Karabenli said. “That’s something that Georgia Tech taught [me to be able to do].” So will the next project be a letdown after years of working on a signature, high-profile job like this one? “It just makes the next one easier,” Cobb said. “If we can handle this, we can handle a lot. That’s what I look forward to: the stepping stone this creates for us.”
•
60
Phanish Suryanarayana is building a computational system that will use symmetry to design
Chloé Arson’s work
new kinds of
on damage and healing
nanostructures.
mechanics in rocks has broad reach into energy production and underground waste storage.
NSF CA R EE R awar d s he l p t wo fac u lt y me mb e rs chart n e w paths to the future Two assistant professors in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering have won the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for junior faculty, the Early Career Development award. Chloé Arson and Phanish Suryanarayana learned of their selection in early 2016 for what are known simply as CAREER awards. The grants recognize the top educators and researchers in the country, those who “exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research,” according to the NSF. Damage and healing in rocks Arson’s proposal focused on her work on damage and healing mechanics in rocks, work that has broad applications in energy production and underground waste storage systems. “We extract oil and gas from rock. We produce geothermal energy by extracting hot liquids or using heat exchangers that are embedded in the soil. Waste is stored in the ground,” Arson said.
61
“There was a natural contribution that a geotechnical engineer could make just because of the essential processes that were involved.” Arson said her work will address fundamental questions like why cracks and pores form in rocks in the first place, how long it takes for rocks to recover from extraction or storage operations, and how much energy healing requires. She’ll be creating numerical models of how the fractures start and spread, and her findings will help develop ideal conditions for minimizing damage or maximizing healing. “If we understand better how healing occurs in certain kinds of crystalline materials, that knowledge could also be applied to the design of better concrete, better cements,” Arson said, “and why not better ceramics that you could use to repair bones or for a variety of purposes?” Characterization and design of nanostructures Suryanarayana’s proposal focused on developing a theoretical and computational framework to help discover and describe new kinds of atomic-scale structures.
“The basic question is, how does one design such a nanostructure with the desired properties? The answer is, currently there does not exist any systematic approach, and therefore it is common to rely on empirical insight,” Suryanarayana said. His approach will speed up the process of designing small-scale structures so that they are well suited for a variety of applications — like curing diseases, purifying air and water, or converting renewable energy. It’s the kind of work that simply can’t be done now because of the huge number of potential ways to configure the structures. Suryanarayana said the key to the computational system he’s building is symmetry, which plays an essential role in determining the properties of nanostructures. “It turns out, most of the interesting nanomaterials and nanostructures have very high symmetry, either perfect, or just broken,” he said. “Even bio-structures like DNA and parts of viruses have helical symmetry. The idea is, can we use the notion of symmetry to discover new phenomena and design new materials suitable for technological applications?”
•
Digital first N e w M OO C h e l p s yo u n g engineers prep for FE exam Young engineers preparing to take the Fundamentals of Engineering exam can now review test material through a free online course developed in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
P h o t o s : R o b F elt
The MOOC — a massive open online course — rolled out in Fall 2015 to replace the “refresher” sessions School faculty members used to offer students before the civil engineering version of what’s commonly called the FE exam (it was previously the EIT exam). The exam is now offered only online, and engineers can take it throughout the year. With that change, “the idea of the one-time refresher courses went out of the window. It was no good anymore,” said Philip Roberts, the professor who spent about two years
building review material and recording 100 videos for the course. “So then we came up with this MOOC idea.” With the help of Georgia Tech Professional Education, Roberts built seven modules of content
“It’s modular, so students can pick and choose whatever modules they want to review and they can do the exercises online,” Roberts said. “If they don’t understand anything, they can rewind, look through it again. So from that point of view, it’s much better [than the refresher courses we used to offer].” Roberts said between 100 and 120 students typically attended those refresher sessions every year. He expects the online course to far exceed those numbers — it’s free, open to anyone, and available any time around the world.
corresponding with the topics covered on the FE exam, particularly the civil and mechanical engineering versions. They cover math, mechanics of materials, statics, and fluid mechanics, among other areas.
In its first months, the course would seem to have lived up to Roberts’ expectations, with thousands of people enrolled from more than a hundred different countries.
•
62
Sparking
Charleston’s future
Some have called the project Charleston’s 21st century version of Central Park, the famed New York City green space. Others have termed it a “keystone” to rejuvenating a blighted area of the South Carolina city and to reuniting neighborhoods separated decades ago by the construction of Interstate 26. Supporters say it will drive the economic future of the entire city. It’s called the Charleston Lowcountry Lowline, a plan to turn an abandoned railroad line in the heart of the Charleston peninsula into a 6.5-mile linear park — and a group of Georgia Tech students helped take the first steps to making the dream a reality. “We think this is a great way to start connecting the lower part of the peninsula with the upper part of the peninsula,” project advocate Mike Messner told The Post and Courier newspaper. “It’s just the keystone.” Messner, BSCE 1976, has been advocating for the park through his Speedwell Foundation, and he suggested students at his alma mater could help. In the spring, a group of students from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of City and Regional Planning completed some of
the early conceptual and engineering work as their senior design projects. “This is a really good opportunity to bring both halves of Charleston together, and then also [connect] north and south, too,” said Samantha Becker, a fifth-year civil engineering major who was one of four engineering students involved. The Lowline’s proponents imagine it as Charleston’s version of the High Line in New York City, where a park was built on an abandoned elevated rail line, or Atlanta’s Beltline, which has transformed old rail tracks into a thriving park-cum-transportationcorridor encircling the city center. The challenges are somewhat different in Charleston, however, where one of the key engineering goals, the students said, is to design the Lowline to manage the area’s frequent flooding while also serving as a recreational, cultural and transportation space. “Charleston is different because it has more rainfall than New York or Atlanta does, and it is also lower elevation,” said environmental engineering major Shannon Evanchec. “It makes the challenges for storm water management much more interesting.”
Evanchec, Becker, and environmental engineering majors Allison Findley and Alana Wilson put together designs that slightly elevated the trail and built a drain underneath to collect floodwater and direct it somewhere useful. They traveled to Charleston to explore the area and talk to nearby residents. And at end of the semester, they presented detailed plans to the nonprofit Friends of the Lowcountry Lowline. That group has secured the rights to buy the first mile and a half of the rail line from Norfolk Southern and has until late 2017 to come up with the money. Friends of the Lowcountry Lowline also heard from city and regional planning students who are evaluating how the park would integrate with nearby schools, parks, retail and historic locations, and tourist areas as well as the potential for economic redevelopment around the project. “It’s interesting that our Senior Design project is preparing us for the real world,” Evanchec said. “The actual project itself is very openended, which I like,” Becker said. “We can be very creative with it.”
•
For more stories:
ce.gatech.edu/media 63
S e n i o rs S ha n n o n E v a n chec , left , A llis o n F i n dle y , A la n a W ils o n , a n d S ama n tha B ecker sit o n a p o rti o n o f aba n d o n ed rail li n e n o rth o f d o w n t o w n C harlest o n . C o mmu n it y gr o ups wa n t t o tur n the li n e i n t o a li n ear park rec o n n ecti n g n eighb o rh o o ds
P h o t o : J o shua S tewart
se v ered b y I n terstate 2 6 .
64
$49.2 MILLION
Capital Campaign
Celebration
Thank you for your support!
The end of 2015 brought an end to Campaign Georgia Tech, the Institute’s $1.5 billion capital campaign. In the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, we smashed through our $45 million goal, wrapping up the campaign with $49.2 million in gifts supporting the School’s work. These gifts enable us everyday to pursue our vision to be global leaders enhancing the health, safety and quality of life of people the world over.
6,000 gifts 50% alumni participation $13.5 million
Jesse W. Mason Building renovation
46 new scholarships and fellowships $4 million
global travel fund named for Joe S. Mundy
8 new endowed faculty chairs and professors
Established
P h o t o : J o sh M eister
K e n n e t h Hyat t Distinguished Alumni Leadership Speaker Series
65
1.8721° N, 157.4278° W
K iritimati I sla n d
“ T his e x perie n ce added imp o rta n t c o n te x t t o m y prese n t a n d future research o n climate cha n ge , b o th fr o m a s o cial as well as a tech n ical dime n si o n , e q uippi n g me with the perspecti v e a n d skills I n eed t o succeed as a n aspiri n g scie n tist i n climate cha n ge . ” – S h e l l b y M i l l e r
Managua, Nicaragua “ T he ki n d n ess a n d h o peful n ess that I
e n c o u n tered i n m y time i n Nicaragua has reall y i n flue n ced me t o see the best i n pe o ple a n d helped me t o be m o re p o siti v e whe n faci n g challe n ges . ” – Em i l y F e rr a n d o
Read more stories from our Mundy travelers: ce.gatech.edu/mundy
P h o t o s : E mil y F erra n d o , S hellb y M iller
12.1150° N, 86.2362° W
Joe S. Mundy Global Learning Endowment
66
Global Engineering Leadership Minor
Learn more about the Minor: ce.gatech.edu/leadership
A ke y c o mp o n e n t o f o ur n ew gl o bal e n gi n eeri n g leadership mi n o r is t o se n d stude n ts ar o u n d the w o rld t o stud y a n d w o rk i n differe n t cultures . Our facult y ha v e ru n with that idea , de v el o pi n g a h o st o f n ew c o urses with embedded tra v el f o r research o r academic pursuits . T hese are the st o ries o f tw o such c o urses .
A group of Georgia Tech students spent two weeks this summer studying bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands and contrasting the Dutch approach to American standards. The overwhelming consensus: it’s not just bicycles that define the Dutch transportation system. Rather it’s the integration of biking with all forms of public transit and infrastructure planning that makes the Netherlands’ famed bike culture a way of life. “The Dutch designs are completely driven by their efficiency-seeking culture. They are environmentally aware and health conscious, and their policies on cycling reflect those ideals,” senior Matthew Miller wrote on the class’s blog. “In order for Dutch designs to work in America, there must be a shift in
67
attitude toward [transportation] modes beyond cars,” he noted. “My hope is that we can bring back the designs we witnessed firsthand abroad and make the first steps in redefining Atlanta’s system by implementing some of these principles,” wrote fellow senior Savannah Brooks. The trip was part of a new class in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering called Sustainable Transportation Abroad designed and taught by Kari Watkins. It’s one of two new study-abroad courses rolled out this year as part of the School’s global engineering leadership minor. The course incorporated modules on mentoring, and students interacted with three Atlanta-area transportation professionals who traveled with them
to Europe. That part of the course was made possible by civil engineering alumnus Mike Messner and his wife, Jenny, whose donation allowed Faye DiMassimo, general manager of the City of Atlanta Renew Atlanta Infrastructure Program, and Hiral Patel, the director of engineering for the Georgia Department of Transportation, to go on the trip. The City of Atlanta chipped in so Becky Katz, the city’s chief bicycle officer, could go along, too. “Because this trip incorporated so many professionals with great insight both from abroad and Atlanta, I feel this trip has firmly cemented my desire to become a transportation engineer,” Lauren Gardner wrote shortly after the trip. “I could not see myself doing anything else.” “I feel empowered to be not just a civil engineer, but a global leader.”
P h o t o s : S ustai n able T ra n sp o rtati o n A br o ad C lass
The netherla n ds
A s part o f the c o urse , stude n ts kept a bl o g ab o ut their e x perie n ces a n d what the y were lear n i n g . H ere ’ s m o re o f what the y wr o te :
O n giving bicycles priority over cars The Dutch separate cyclists from
T he first few times yo u appr o ach a n
vehicular traffic while the U.S.
i n tersecti o n betwee n car traffic
merges the two. The effects of this
a n d bike traffic , yo u n aturally slo w
difference on comfort levels and
d o w n a n d wait f o r the car to pass .
overall ride enjoyment makes cycling
T he n yo u reali z e the y are actually
in the Netherlands simply a matter of
waiti n g o n yo u to g o first. B ut as yo u
practicalit y. Why would you not use bikes
bec o me accusto med to bei n g y ielded
as your primary mode of transportation
to, yo u begi n to n otice the practicalit y
when the infrastructure makes it so safe
o f desig n i n g yo ur tra n sp o rtati o n
and easy? – Savannah Brooks
system to acc o mm o date the m o re v ul n erable m o des . F o r e x ample , it takes c o n siderably m o re eff o rt to sto p a n d g o o n a bike c o mpared to a car .
On Dutch culture’s influence on the country’s transportation network The Dutch like to plan everything and be as simplistic with their designs as possible. This is a part of their culture and European nature in general, and this was something that was really apparent during our visit. Most people were direct and to the point, they were extremely punctual, and they liked getting straight to business. … This behavior might seem rude to some people in America, but I believe that is the exact reason why it is so important to be culturally aware and to respect the traditions and practices of different cultures. The behavioral practices translated in their infrastructure design as it was meant to be safe, fast and easy. – Noor-ur-Rahman Shaikh
– M at t h e w M i l l e r As the Dutch have allowed their culture to I’m still having an infraculture shock.
shape their design, their designs have also
I’ve been a pedestrian and a cyclist, and a
shaped their culture. Over the course of two
user of transport, in two different cities
weeks, we were able to notice that because
in the Netherlands. What ama zes me is the
they have such high efficiency overall during
effort that has been put in to prioritize
the workweek, their shops tend to close at
cyclists here. … Cycling here is like
six o’clock and that evenings remain a time for
breathing. Anyone can do it at anytime
friends and family. When you think about how
and anywhere. – Ambar Johnson
many things one could do with the accrued time
5 2 . 1 32 6 ° N 5.2913° E
waiting in traffic in America, perhaps a similar culture could ensue. Perhaps, not only would [our] physical health benefit from the Dutch designs, but also [our] emotional health as well. – Lauren Gardner
68
B o li v ia While many Georgia Tech students enjoyed some time away from classes during Spring Break 2016, students in Joe Brown’s Environmental Technology in the Developing World class were working to improve the lives of Bolivians.
Days 4 and 5 found Team Mercury headed to Lake Titicaca to collect samples of fish and see how nearby mining operations affect them. Delayed by traffic, they weren’t able to collect the fish they needed, so they rose early the next morning to this striking dawn over the lake.
The students — 10 undergraduates and two teaching assistants — spent a week exploring Bolivian culture and racing around La Paz and the surrounding areas trying to collect water samples and various fish. Their research tackled four water-quality issues in the country: Assess the quality of the Choqueyapu River and risks of agricultural water reuse, compare low-cost water quality testing methods, measure bio-aerosols around open sewage channels, and evaluate mercury bio-accumulation in fish. The trip, like any field work, had its share of unexpected challenges. But Valeria Hernandez said that made the experience all the more valuable:
“ T he early bird gets the w o rm . . . Or i n o ur case fish # gtb o li v ia # teammercur y # hellamae n gi n eers ”
“ I t was a rewardi n g a n d tiri n g week i n B o li v ia — th o se
trip was defi n itely figuri n g o ut h o w to r o ll with
thi n gs o fte n c o me to gether . A s a n aspiri n g teacher ,
the pu n ches . W he n s o ma n y esse n tial parts o f yo ur
it was really c o o l to watch the stude n ts put it all
pr o ject d o n ’ t g o as pla n n ed, it ’ s easier said tha n
o n the table to meet their g o als . H ere the y get s o me
d o n e . S o metimes yo u just g otta get creati v e whether
much n eeded rest while their T. A . mercilessly s n aps
it ’ s usi n g a h otel r o o m as a lab o r totally cha n gi n g
a selfie . # lasto n esta n di n g ” – Aaron Bivins on Instagram
o n e o f yo ur sampli n g meth o ds ” – Valeria Hernandez
69
P h o t o S , F R O M T O P : H arris o n A ike n , @ B r o w n R esearch G T , A ar o n B i v i n s
“ T he m o st u n e x pected thi n g I lear n ed duri n g this
16.4897° S, 68.1193° W
– Tweet from Harrison Aiken
Kenneth Hyatt Distinguished Alumni Leadership Speaker Series The Kenneth Hyatt Distinguished Alumni Leadership Speaker Series taps the School’s broad alumni base to bring a distinguished leader to campus each fall and spring who can share wisdom and insight with the School’s students and the wider Georgia Tech community. It is made possible by the generous support of Kenneth Hyatt, BSCE 1962, MSIM 1966. Our speakers this year were Gen. Philip Breedlove, BSCE 1977, who just finished his assignment as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, and Charles “Wick” Moorman, BSCE 1975, retired chairman and CEO of Norfolk Southern. We are deeply grateful to them for sharing their insights with us and to Ken Hyatt for enabling us to bring stellar alumni back to campus to speak to the Georgia Tech community.
P h o t o s : N o rf o lk S o uther n , U S A ir f o rce
Watch the lectures or read a recap: ce.gatech.edu/hyatt
Charles “Wick” Moorman, BSCE 1975 retired chairman and CEO Norfolk Southern
Gen. Philip Breedlove, BSCE 1977 Retired SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER, EUROPE AND COMMANDER OF UNITED STATES EUROPEAN COMMAND
70
More than 70 alumni, friends and their families joined us in April for our annual alumni trip to Brussels, Belgium. The gathering took us farther from our home base in Atlanta than ever before for an exciting few days of one-of-akind experiences in the seat of power for the European Union and NATO.
The following day’s excursion put us in the footsteps of history and what Winston Churchill called the greatest American battle of WWII, what we now know as the “Battle of the Bulge.” We had special tours of the site’s museums with military advisers, and we visited some of the very foxholes where young American soldiers repelled Hitler’s forces.
The trip gave us unique insight into the geopolitics and security concerns of the Western world as well as a window into one of the key battles in the waning days of World War II. Thanks to our host, Gen. Philip Breedlove, we toured NATO’s home base in Mons, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, or SHAPE. We indulged in the famed local beverage and toured one of the general’s favorite breweries.
This was our ninth alumni trip and a little different than what we’ve done before. Our trips to Las Vegas, New York City, Washington, New Orleans, Panama, San Francisco, and Savannah gave us the opportunity to learn about some of the most interesting and significant engineering achievements of our time. For 2017, we’ll return to that theme with an alumni weekend in Chicago. We hope you’ll join us!
H ighlights o f o ur alum n i trip t o B russels , B elgium , cl o ckwise fr o m t o p : C h â teau ge n debie n , h o me o f the S upreme A llied C o mma n der o f N A T O ; T he B ast o g n e W ar M useum M ardass o n M em o rial ; a n d T he S ai n t- F euillie n B rewer y i n L e R o eul x .
71
2017 ALUMNI TRIP
CHICAGO
April 28-30, 2017
Expect two days of tours and activities plus a reception Friday night and a fun activity for the group Saturday. We’re still making plans, so stay tuned!
P h o t o : F lickr user urba n feel
Watch for details: ce.gatech.edu/Chicago
72
Our Faculty Dr. Adjo A. Amekudzi-Kennedy Associate Chair for Global Engineering Leadership and Research Development & Professor Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Yongsheng Chen Associate Professor Ph.D., Nankai University
Dr. Mustafa M. Aral Professor Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. John Crittenden Director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Hightower Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Environmental Technologies & Professor Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Dr. ChloÉ Arson Associate Professor Ph.D., École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées Dr. Baabak AsHURI Associate Professor Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Nelson C. Baker Dean of Professional Education & Associate Professor Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University Dr. Rafael L. Bras Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs & K. Harrison Brown Family Chair Sc.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dr. Joe Brown Assistant Professor Ph.D., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Dr. Susan E. Burns Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs & Georgia Power Distinguished Professor Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
73
Dr. Yong K. Cho Associate Professor Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Sheng Dai Assistant Professor Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Reginald DesRoches Karen and John Huff School Chair & Professor Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Dr. Francesco Fedele Associate Professor Ph.D., University of Vermont Dr. Hermann M. Fritz Associate Professor Ph.D., Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Dr. J. David Frost Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor Ph.D., Purdue University Dr. Laurie A. Garrow Associate Professor Ph.D., Northwestern University
Dr. Aris P. Georgakakos Director, Georgia Water Resources Institute & Professor Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dr. Leonid Germanovich Professor Ph.D., Moscow State Mining University Dr. Barry J. Goodno Professor Ph.D., Stanford University Dr. Randall L. Guensler Professor Ph.D., University of California, Davis Dr. Kevin A. Haas Associate Professor Ph.D., University of Delaware Dr. Ching-Hua Huang Professor Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University Dr. Haiying Huang Associate Professor Ph.D., University of Minnesota Dr. Michael P. Hunter Director, National Center for Transportation Systems Productivity and Management & Associate Professor Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin Dr. Laurence J. Jacobs College of Engineering Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Professor Ph.D., Columbia University Dr. Kostas T. Konstantinidis Carlton S. Wilder Junior Faculty Professorship & Associate Professor Ph.D., Michigan State University
Dr. John H. Koon Professor of the Practice Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Dr. Kimberly E. Kurtis College of Engineering Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship & Professor Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Dr. Jorge A. Laval Associate Professor Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Dr. John D. Leonard College of Engineering Associate Dean for Finance and Administration & Associate Professor Ph.D., University of California, Irvine Dr. Jian Luo Associate Professor Ph.D., Stanford University Dr. Paul W. Mayne Professor Ph.D., Cornell University Dr. Patricia L. Mokhtarian Professor Ph.D., Northwestern University Dr. Rafi L. Muhanna Associate Professor Ph.D., Higher Institute for Structure and Architecture Sofia, Bulgaria Dr. James A. Mulholland Associate Chair for Graduate Programs & Professor Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Glaucio H. Paulino Raymond Allen Jones Chair & Professor Ph.D., Cornell University
Dr. Phanish Suryanarayana Assistant Professor Ph.D., California Institute of Technology
Dr. Spyros G. Pavlostathis Professor Ph.D., Cornell University
Dr. Iris Tien Assistant Professor Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Ram M. Pendyala Frederick R. Dickerson Chair in Transportation Systems & Professor Ph.D., University of California, Davis Dr. Philip J. Roberts Professor Ph.D., California Institute of Technology Dr. Lisa G. Rosenstein Senior Academic Professional Ph.D., Emory University Dr. Armistead G. Russell Howard T. Tellepsen Chair & Regents Professor Ph.D., California Institute of Technology Dr. J. Carlos Santamarina Professor Ph.D., Purdue University Dr. David W. Scott Associate Professor Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Yi-Chang James Tsai Professor Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Jingfeng Wang Associate Professor Sc.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dr. Yang Wang Associate Professor Ph.D., Stanford University Dr. Kari E. Watkins Frederick Law Olmsted Junior Faculty Professorship & Assistant Professor Ph.D., University of Washington Dr. Donald R. Webster Associate Chair of Administration and Finance & Professor; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Dr. Donald W. White Professor Ph.D., Cornell University
Dr. Lauren K. Stewart Assistant Professor Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
Dr. Arash Yavari Associate Professor Ph.D., California Institute of Technology
Dr. Marc Stieglitz Associate Professor Ph.D., Columbia University
Dr. Sotira Yiacoumi Professor Ph.D., Syracuse University
Dr. Terry W. Sturm Professor Ph.D., University of Iowa
Dr. Abdul-Hamid Zureick Professor Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
E M E R I T U S facult y
A dju n ct F acult y
Dr. G. Wayne Clough President Emeritus Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Domniki Asimaki Michael Bergin Daniel Castro Jon Drysdale Maohong Fan T. Russell Gentry Joseph Hughes Jaehong Kim Roberto Leon John Z. Luh Glenn Rix Catherine Ross Frank Southworth Costas Tsouris Huaming Yao
Dr. Bruce R. Ellingwood Professor Emeritus Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dr. Lawrence F. Kahn Professor Emeritus Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Dr. James Lai Professor Emeritus Ph.D., Brown University Dr. F. Michael Saunders Professor Emeritus Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dr. Jim C. Spain Professor Emeritus Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin Dr. Kenneth M. Will Associate Professor Emeritus Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
R esearch E n gi n eers & S cie n tists Deepak Adhikari Chengbo Ai Satish Bastola Giovanni Circella Angshuman Guin Yongtao Hu Zixuan Hu Jin Yeon Kim Martin Kistenmacher Chengwei Luo Charlene Mingus Jeffrey Newman Mehmet T. Odman Arka Pandit Michael O. Rodgers Wonho Suh Yi-Ching Wu Ann Xu Chuang-Sheng Walter Yang Borja Zarco Guangxuan Zhu
74
External Advisory Board Mr. José M. Bern B.S. 1995 Vice President, Empresas Bern Gen. Philip Breedlove (Ret.) B.S. 1977 United States Air Force Ms. Jennie Lee Colosi, P.E. B.S. 1977 President and Treasurer E.T. & L. Corporation Mr. Grosvenor “Rusty” Fish B.S. 1990, M.S. MBA 2000 Senior PGS Engineering Fleet Management Operations Leader, GE Power & Water Mr. Paul Flower, P.E. B.S. 1968 President/CEO Woodward Design + Build Mr. Rick L. Garcia B.S. 1973 Retired, Delta Airlines Mr. Ulysses Grady Jr., P.E., MCE B.S. 1979, M.S. 1981 Chief Civil Engineer Pentagon 540, LLC Mr. James R. Hamilton, P.E. B.S. 1977 Senior Associate Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. Mr. Bill Higginbotham, P.E. B.S. 1976 President and CEO ET Environmental Corporation Mr. Michael F. Houlihan, P.E. B.S. 1985, M.S. 1987 Principal Engineer and Vice President, Geosyntec Consultants
75
Mr. John U. Huffman B.S. 1981 President and CEO Pepco Energy Services Mr. Raymond J. Lawing, P.E. M.S. 1977 Senior Consultant K.S. Ware and Associates, LLC Mr. Todd I. Long B.S. 1989, M.S. 1990 Chief Operating Officer, Fulton County, Georgia Mr. Silvio J. Lopez B.S. 1979, M.S. 1981 Senior Vice President Banco Popular Mr. James L. Mitchell B.S. 2005 Business Development Manager, Skanska Ms. Emmy Montanye, P.E. B.S. 1982 Senior Vice President Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. Mr. Charles W. Nelson, P.E. B.S. 1970 Chairman, Waldemar S. Nelson and Company, Inc. Mr. Christopher D. Pappas B.S. 1978 President and CEO, Trinseo Mr. Wilson L. “Lee” Presley B.S. 1979 Operations Manager, Nuclear CB&I Mr. Josh Rowan, P.E. B.S. 1996 Branch Manager McDonough Bolyard Peck Inc.
CEEatGT External Advisory Board members provide an important outside perspective that is essential to maintaining the relevance of our programs to industry. They play a significant role in vetting programs designed for students, alumni and corporate constituencies to ensure we maintain the highest quality standards in our curriculum, practice and outreach. Dr. Wassim A. Selman, P.E. B.S. 1981, M.S. 1982, Ph.D. 1986 President, North American Infrastructure, ARCADIS Mr. S. Paul Shailendra B.S. 2001 President, SG Property Services Ms. Stacie Sire B.S. 1996 Director of Airplane Configuration & Systems Engineering, Boeing Mr. Ronald S. Stuff, ESQ. B.S. 1982 Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Sundt Construction Mr. Damian K. Taylor B.S. 2001 Vice President, CBRE Capital Advisors Mr. William R. “Rick” Toole, P.E. B.S. 1979, M.S. 1980 President, W. R. Toole Engineers, Inc. Mr. Michael R. Van Epp B.S. 2003 Senior Vice President Mariner Real Estate Management Mr. Emilio Venegas B.S. 1977 President, Venegas Construction Corp. Mr. Richard E. Zalesky B.S. 1978 Retired, Chevron Downstream & Chemicals Advisory Board Chair
DETAILED REPORT LIST
PAGE 1 OF 1
RESULTS
of products used:
951 lb(s) of Rolland Enviro Print 100% post-consumer
Printed on Rolland Enterprises 100 percent recycled Generated by : calculateur.rollandinc.com Enviro Print 80-pound Sources : Environmental impact estimates cover and Enviro Print for the North American marketplace 80-pound text paper. are made using the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator Version 3.2. Ancient Certified For more information visit www.papercalculator.org. Forest Friendly and by The fine papers' environmental savings environmentally related to greenhouse UL gazas impacts are based on the Life Cycle Assessment friendly, this paper is methodology. The LCA was made by Rolland processed without and validated by a third-party chlorine and made www.rollandinc.com. with renewable energy. Compared to using 100 percent virgin fiber, we saved:
Based on the Rolland products you selected compared to products in the industry made with 100% virgin fiber, your savings are:
8 trees 7,799 gal. US of water
84 days of water consumption
798 lb of waste 7 waste containers 2,617 lb CO2
4,963 miles driven
7 MMBTU
32,808 60W light bulbs for one hour
3 lb NOX
emissions of one truck during 5 days
ce.gatech.edu @CEEatGT