Fall 2021 - CEE News - Carnegie Mellon University

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REIMAGINING ADVANCED INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS Inside CEE’s New AIS Facilities

Fall 2021

CEE NEWS

Fall 2021

Editor & Designer Mireille Mobley Contributors Daniel Carroll Dave Dzombak Rachel Mohr Handel Mireille Mobley Valentina Ortiz de Zárate Georgia Schumacher John Wise For more news and information about CEE please visit us at: cmu.edu/cee

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Please email news to mmobley@andrew.cmu.edu

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Dear Alumni and Friends, I am very happy to report that all CEE students, staff and faculty are back on campus in Fall 2021 after a year of hybrid in-person plus remote operation. Pandemic safety measures in place at Carnegie Mellon, including vaccination requirements for all, are serving us well and enabling us to conduct education and research in almost-normal mode. The CEE community is delighted to be back together in person!

As of October 1 the widely-recognized and impactful research of CEE faculty and students in Advanced Infrastructure Systems is now powered by a new laboratory complex within Porter Hall. Our new AIS Labs include spaces supporting research in autonomous technology, sensing, mobility analytics, virtual reality, and more.

The AIS Labs complex also includes two conference rooms, a PhD student office, and a PhD student lounge/collaboration space. Located along a much used corridor, research in the AIS Labs is visible to passersby via glass walls. Screens with real-time building performance data and images from highway traffic video undergoing processing are on display, for example. See our lead article for more information.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. In this issue we report on the experiences of two of our alums who were at the site within days, and then involved with the rebuilding at the site for the following decade. Their stories illustrate vividly the opportunities that civil and environmental engineers have for positive impact on people and communities.

2021 also marks the 70th anniversary of the naming of our CEE home, Porter Hall—and we continue to honor the legacy of our past through dedication to our mission of education, research and service. Some current examples: Professor David Rounce has created the first global estimates of debris thickness for “dirty glaciers,” providing new insight into climate change impact on glacial melting; Professor Destenie Nock will utilize a 2021-2022 Wimmer Faculty Fellow Award to evaluate ways in which social-justice-based active learning activities can impact student learning; and Professor Greg Lowry will use $2.2 million in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve agricultural efficiency using nanoparticles for targeted delivery of nutrients and plant protection products in crop plants. Other recent developments include: Professors Burcu Akinci and Pingbo Tang are working with 40 partners in industry to design the future National Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Construction; Professor Akinci was elected as a member of the National Academy of Construction; and Professor Jeanne Van Briesen was appointed to lead the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) at NSF. Our undergraduate project courses engage our students in the real-world complexity of engineering, especially in their senior capstone project course CEE Design. In AY2020-2021 our seniors were challenged to design a prototype of an aquaponics food production system, and an energy-efficient facility to house it. You will enjoy reading about their multi-faceted experience, which included navigating with suppliers, contractors, and clients.

The faculty, students, and staff of CEE thank all of our loyal and generous alumni who support the Department in so many and much appreciated ways. We send our best wishes to all of you.

Dave Dzombak Hamerschlag University Professor and Department Head * U.S. News and World Report rankings

INSIDE THIS ISSUE 8 10 14

70TH ANNIVERSARY OF PORTER HALL September 2021 marks the 70th anniversary of the naming of the building in which the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been located since December 1949, when the department moved from Engineering Hall (now Doherty Hall) to part of Industries Hall (now Porter Hall).

REVISING GLACIER PROJECTIONS

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About seven percent of the world’s glaciers are covered in debris such as rocks and gravel. As climate change continues to shift glaciers and the surrounding terrain, more debris adds to the expansion of these debris-covered glaciers, or “dirty glaciers.”

REIMAGINING ADVANCED INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS

CEE CAPSTONE: AQUAPONICS FOR CENTER OF LIFE For the 2020-2021 senior capstone course, CEE students designed a prototype of an aquaponics food production system and an energy-efficient facility to house it.

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REBUILDING THE WORLD TRADE CENTER SITE: LOOKING BACK 20 YEARS AFTER 9/11

This fall, CEE students and faculty conducting research in Advanced

CEE alumni, Seth Pearlman (BS ’78, MS ‘79) and John Wise (BS ‘84) share their role and experience as two of the many engineers who helped stabilize the site for rescue and recovery, and later rebuild infrastructure to create a new legacy and memorial for the site.

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Infrastructure Systems (AIS) are gaining access to a new space custom-built to empower them

ALUMNI PROFILE: HENRY RANDALL GROOMS

to develop and showcase novel

Growing up, Dr. Henry Randall Grooms (PhD ‘69) academic prowess earned him an undergraduate scholarship to Howard University and then fellowships to Carnegie Mellon’s Civil Engineering MS and PhD programs—exactly the launching pad needed to become an award-winning structural engineer who would shape NASA’s space programs and co-found an organization to help hundreds of minority students to advance their education.

solutions to today’s toughest problems involving the planning, design, construction, and operation of built facilities and infrastructure.

Program Rankings *

Our Faculty & Research

Civil 12th - UG 10th - Grad

13 4 6

Full Professors Associate Professors Assistant Professors

3

Faculty with Active NSF Career Awards

Environmental 8th - UG 8th - Grad

* Source: U.S. News and World Report

Enrollment AY 2021-2022 Bachelors Masters Doctoral

94 146 87

CEE Students 48% of Are Women 58% Undergraduate Women 44% Graduate Women

$5.49M Annual Externally Funded Sponsored Research in FY20 FALL 2021 3

REIMAGINING ADVANCED INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS Inside CEE’s New AIS Facilities 4 CEE NEWS

This fall, CEE students and faculty conducting research in Advanced Infrastructure Systems (AIS) are gaining access to a new, custom-built space. There, they will continue to develop and showcase novel solutions to today’s toughest problems involving the planning, design, construction, and operation of built facilities and infrastructure.

Combining sensing, artificial intelligence, system engineering, economics, public policy, and more to address challenges, the AIS group has for years been conducting, pioneering research utilizing several different lab facilities in Porter Hall and

across campus. The new space inside Porter Hall consolidates these dispersed spaces into one location, providing an expansive home for AIS student and faculty research, collaboration, and project demonstration.

“We’ve used the entire campus as a living lab, but we never had our own fully equipped private testing grounds. We wanted one single spot for AIS to be together,” says CEE professor Mario Bergés, who served as the liaison between the project architects and his fellow AIS faculty members advising on the facility design, including Burcu Akinci, Katherine

furniture, the lab can be easily reconfigured to accommodate research needs, host presentations and meetings, and showcase the group’s innovative work.

Among the projects visitors will see this fall is a residential electric water heater that Bergés and his students have retrofitted to serve as a virtual battery for the power grid. It can store excess energy generated from renewable resources and provide energy back to the

“Whoever is engaged in our research—students, local stakeholders, people from foundations supporting our research, community members— they can come in and get a very clean, direct look at what’s going on under the hood with our projects,” explains AIS professor Flanigan.

Connected to the Autonomous Infrastructure Systems Lab is the Sensing Lab, a place for hands-on research and prototype development, with all of the workbenches,

SCIENCE ON DISPLAY STUDENT OFFICE SPACE Flanigan, Sean Qian, and Pingbo Tang.

Supporting Leading Edge Research Within the new AIS facilities, students, faculty, and visitors will discover three main areas.

The largest is the Autonomous Infrastructure Systems Lab, featuring a clear glass wall that immediately captures your attention. Inside, visitors will see the team’s ongoing work, with large monitors prominently displaying research results and real-time data as it is collected.

With an open layout and mobile

grid when resources are limited.

Other AIS projects featured may explore areas like building information modeling, drone-based infrastructure inspections, transportation system modeling, the use of sensing to prioritize repairs to aging infrastructure, and predictive operations for airports and power plants. Whatever research is on display, the goal is to present it in a way that is as accessible and easy-tounderstand as possible.

equipment, and tools that the AIS group needs, including soldering machines, 3D printers, drones, various types of sensors, and more.

“My research involves using a lot of tools and technologies from electrical engineering and computer science,” explains Flanigan, who applies wireless sensing, embedded systems, and other technology to make civil infrastructure and urban systems more intelligent and adaptable. “These things haven’t always been FALL 2021 5

study the causes and frequency of an operator’s delayed reactions or mistakes.

SENSING LAB within the civil engineering space, but our department is incorporating many new technologies into our field. We think that those tools and skills should be learned and developed from within our own department.”

The third room in the new AIS facilities is a Visualization Lab, a closed-off room designed for the use of augmented and virtual reality technology in education and research. For educators, VR can be used for activities such as having students conduct VRbased infrastructure inspections.

Such assignments give faculty an opportunity to not only assess a student’s knowledge but also gather data on things like common oversights or sequences of observation. Likewise, researchers can utilize these immersive 3D environments, combined with eye tracking equipment and other tools, to study how people interpret and react to different situations and information.

Professor Pingbo Tang, for example, is interested in optimizing the operation of air traffic control, nuclear power plants, water treatment plants and building systems. By placing participants in a simulated control room and allowing them to interact with a 3D environment in real-time, Tang can

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He may also learn what information is critical to ensuring safe, reliable operations.

“Once you identify critical information, you can make sure computers show that information to people at the right time and in the right format,” says Tang. “The other application of my research is that if we are building a new control room, we want to design a workspace to be more convenient and natural for humans to observe data, make decisions, and take timely actions.”

By inviting industry professionals to participate in these simulations and explore the AIS facilities as a whole, Tang and other researchers hope to garner additional insight into current infrastructure challenges and acquire feedback on their work. “We might not realize that a particular problem exists, but people who are doing those jobs every day, they are going to tell us,” Tang asserts. “We have to know what’s happening in real life.”

In addition to the Autonomous Infrastructure Systems Lab space, the

Sensing Lab, and Visualization Lab, renovated areas for student ideation and collaboration are located across the hall. This new office suite for AIS graduate students includes two modern conference rooms, inviting common spaces, and a layout that allows students to work either independently or in collaboration.

Demonstrating What’s Possible Beyond AIS faculty and graduate students, many others stand to benefit from the new facilities. CEE students involved in undergraduate research or design projects may use the AIS space, and, with the department’s focus on incorporating sensing and machine learning across the curriculum at all levels, the new lab will help instructors to drive home the possibilities these technologies allow.

“Our undergrads are learning new skills that maybe they didn’t originally think were part of our field,” says Flanigan, who is teaching the sophomore design course this year. “We can take students over to this open, state-of-the-art lab where they can see how what they’re learning translates to research and the real world. Having PhD students show them demonstrations and data, streaming live on our screens, will help

SOUTH CONFERENCE ROOM

NEW CEE FACULTY

JOE MOORE

VISUALIZATION LAB students to see themselves as users and leaders of this technology.”

Similarly, the new facilities give AIS researchers a chance to educate high school students and other community members on what engineering is and how it relates to their daily life. “That’s part of our mission as civil engineers,” says Tang. “We need to enable people outside of the university to understand what we are doing and how we can be connected to the community.”

Whoever they’re talking to or partnering with—the community, industry, or local and national government—AIS students and faculty inside the Porter Hall facilities now have the tools, technology, and workspace they need to tackle more challenges, expand their impact, and shine a spotlight on their efforts to create smarter infrastructure and more connected communities.

“The research that we do is very rooted in real-world problems, and our new space makes this work a lot more visible,” reflects Bergés. “Now that we’re in one of the main corridors to enter campus, we get to show everyone what we’re doing as we’re doing it. I expect this to lead to a lot more crosspollination and collaboration, not just within the department but from outside of it, too.”

Joe Moore, CEE’s newest Assistant Teaching Professor, is excited to bring an active, interdisciplinary engineering educational experience to his students. Moore’s PhD work focused on the interactions between engineered nanomaterials and bacteria and his post-doc research including chemical engineering at The University of Pittsburgh— as well as work at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and focused on stimulating microorganisms to transform coal into methane. As an instructor, he’s committed to mentoring and supporting students, especially those from marginalized communities.

Moore says that the best part of his career is working with people, and that he plans to bring an interactive, inquiry-based give-and-take relationship into the classroom.

Prior to earning his PhD, Moore taught high school science in Chicago and traveled throughout the United States and Latin America. Along the way, he learned Spanish. His love for languages began as an undergrad minor in French and continues today as he studies Chinese.

Moore earned a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and was selected as a National Academy of Sciences and Engineering Science Ambassador.

“Joe Moore brings a range of teaching experience, a unique style of interactive student engagement, and creative perspectives on engineering education,” says Dave Dzombak, CEE Department Head.

“We are fortunate to have Joe helping us to advance our CEE education mission.”

Moore’s goal is to ensure that students get something meaningful from his courses. He believes that the path to student success begins by making a strong connection that supports students’ needs. “I’m eager to develop my courses to be highly customizable to students’ particular interests,” he adds.

Moore’s commitment to relationship-building and mentoring are at the heart of his teaching style, and he is looking forwarding to forming mentoring relationships.

“I have taken the most pleasure and satisfaction from working with people, developing relationships, and leading initiatives to improve the community. I’m excited to continue doing the same in CEE— and excited to learn along the way.”

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70TH ANNIVERSARY OF PORTER HALL September 2021 marks the 70th anniversary of the naming of the building in which the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been located since December 1949, when the department moved from Engineering Hall (now Doherty Hall) to part of Industries Hall (now Porter Hall).

As reported in the May 1950 annual report for the Department of Civil Engineering by Professor and Head Frederick Mavis, planning for reconfiguration of the space in Industries Hall was carried out over several years preceding the move by Professors Elio D’Appolonia, Fred Evans, John W. Graham, Jr., Louis Laushey, and Charles F. Peck, Jr. Industries Hall was the first building erected for the Carnegie Technical Schools, and was the primary base of operations when the institution opened in 1905. For the first two academic years, all four schools (Fine Arts, Industries, Engineering, and the Women’s School) were housed in Industries Hall. When the rest of the originally planned campus buildings were completed, and with an increase in enrollments and securing of accreditation, the institution was renamed the Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Tech) in 1912.

In the year prior to the 1949 move of Civil Engineering to Industries Hall, the large high-bay open space in the west end of the building was subdivided into three floors. A pump room, sump, and large testing flume were installed in the lower levels for hydraulics education and research. Separate laboratories for concrete, soils, and materials testing were constructed. A metal shop and wood shop were also part

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of the facilities in the lower levels of the building. The new upper floors included classrooms, offices, instrument rooms, project work/collaboration spaces, and “computing rooms.”

The west end of Industries Hall was renamed Porter Hall in September 1951. President John C. (Jake) Warner announced the re-naming in the September 1951 issue of the Faculty Bulletin.

“In 1940, C.I.T. received a bequest under the will of Augusta F. Porter, widow of John L. Porter, a former Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, for the erection of a building or the renovation of an existing building, to be named Porter Hall. By the action of the Executive Committee on May 28, 1951, this bequest was allocated to the renovation of the west end of Industries Hall, and this part of the building was renamed ‘Porter Hall.’

Porter Hall includes all the west end of the building and the connecting corridor, which ends at Room 125 (Room 227 on the second floor). All the rest of the building east of this corridor has been renamed ‘Administration Hall’. The name ‘Industries Hall’ has thus been discontinued.” Administration Hall was renamed Baker Hall in 1960.

John L. Porter (CMU University Archives)

John L. Porter (1868-1937) was a member and then chair of the Carnegie Institute of Technology Board of Trustees for 16 years. Mr. Porter had an interesting career in the oil industry of Western Pennsylvania, and its connections in London, as explained in an account of his life and career in a fraternity publication from November 1937 (pages 27-30).

Phi Kappa Psi Article: bit.ly/70yrs-porter For more information about the history of the College of Engineering, visit: engineering.cmu.edu/about-us/history

CLASS OF

2021

GRADUATION AWARDS ASCE Outstanding Civil Engineering Student Joseph Iacobellis Lawrence G. Cartwright Distinguished Service Chinasa Onyenkpa H. A. Thomas, Sr. Scholarship Emily Albergo Sarah Hamilton Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Sarah Hamilton Ryan Rusali James P. Romualdi Civil and Environmental Engineering Natalie Herrmann

Paul P. Christiano Distinguished Service Tania Lopez Cantu Vasikan Vijayashanthar Outstanding Teaching Assistant Marissa Webber TA Team 12-703: Janel Chua, Kevin Logrande, and Kiana Naghib Zadeh Mao Yisheng Outstanding Dissertation Yuchuan Lai Use of Historical Data to Assess and Forecast Regional Climate Change and Implications for Engineering Applications

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REVISING GLACIER PROJECTIONS

David Rounce

About seven percent of the world’s glaciers are covered in debris such as rocks and gravel. As climate change continues to shift glaciers and the surrounding terrain, more debris adds to the expansion of these debris-covered glaciers, or “dirty glaciers.”

Despite covering a significant portion of the world’s ice, the effects of changes in global temperature on these debriscovered glaciers have, to date, been poorly understood. Climate scientists have little knowledge of the thickness of this debris cover—and by extension— the effect of debris thickness on how these glaciers melt at large scales.

However, Assistant Professor David Rounce has created the first global estimates of debris thickness for dirty glaciers. In doing so, he and his fellow

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researchers made findings that will change the way scientists understand glacial melt.

Research has shown that a thin layer of debris can increase melt rates, while a thicker layer can help insulate ice and lower melt rates. However, the net effect for glacial melt in climate modeling has been a mystery. By modeling debris thickness across the globe and comparing thickness to melt rate, Rounce’s team has created the first regional melt estimates that account

for these differentiations in glacier type, with major implications for glacier projections.

Debris-covered glaciers are prevalent in areas of high elevation such as Eurasia and Alaska. For a region like central Europe, where ice has been melting at a rate of 90 centimeters per year, Rounce found models would overestimate glacier melt by 20 cm per year if they do not account for this debris. For the Himalayas, where glaciers have been melting at an average of 44 cm annually, models would overestimate melt by 26 cm per year—a 27 percent difference.

Debris cover also leads to significant differences in ice dynamics compared to clean glaciers. The debris insulates the glacier, thereby preserving ice at lower elevations. While clean ice glaciers would simply retreat to higher elevations, debris-covered glaciers remain at lower elevations where they’ll continue to melt slowly. This affects both the way glaciers move, as well as the underlying topology of the land.

For instance, as the glaciers slowly melt at lower elevations, they may form supraglacial lakes and become flood hazards.

The debris on these glaciers comes from the glacier scraping the ground as the ice moves and slowly transporting it to the surface of the glacier.

Movement and melt also causes shifts in the surrounding land that can lead to avalanches and landslides, which deposit more debris onto the top of the glacier. These processes gradually increase the area and volume of debris cover.

Dirty glaciers are one small but growing component of the world’s glacial ice, and can make up 20 percent of the glacier area in the mountainous regions where they’re commonly found.

Rounce’s newfound understanding of the effect of debris cover on these dirty glaciers is vital for our future understanding of glacial melt and how it will be affected by our changing climate.

Nock Awarded Wimmer Faculty Fellowship Assistant Professor Destenie Nock has received a 2021-22 Wimmer Faculty Fellow Award to evaluate how social justice based activelearning activities can impact student learning. This award will help her develop tools to integrate social justice considerations into course materials that will push students to think and design beyond theory-based lectures.

Her project will explore the effectiveness of blending compelling social justice themes into technical coursework while evaluating effective methodologies.

Along with this, Nock will assess if social justice active-learning activities to help students understand technical concepts or if they distract from, or further complicate, the course material in a detrimental way.

These fellowships are made possible by a grant from the Wimmer Family Foundation and are designed for junior faculty members interested in enhancing their teaching through concentrated work designing or re-designing a course, innovating new materials, or exploring a new pedagogical approach.

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within the NSF aligns perfectly with her assertion that cross-disciplinary work creates more fertile research.

The mission of the CBET Division is to support innovative research and education in the fields of chemical engineering, biotechnology, bioengineering and environmental engineering.

Jeanne M. VanBriesen

Thanks to the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA), which allows the temporary assignment of university faculty to agencies of the federal government, she’ll fulfill her appointment at NSF while remaining part of CMU. This will enable VanBriesen to continue to mentor her four current PhD students.

Akinci and Tang are currently helping to develop the groundwork for the institute, which will investigate and develop ways to integrate rapidly evolving machine learning and AI technology into modern construction work.

“This National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes Planning award supports research and coordination activities to build collaborations among AI researchers, construction researchers, and industry partners, with the aim of forming an Institute for AI in Construction,” according to Akinci and Tang. “This research will identify AI problems in the construction domain that can serve as model problems,

VanBriesen Named Division Director of National Science Foundation’s CBET Professor Jeanne M. VanBriesen has been appointed to lead the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The opportunity will allow VanBriesen to build on her sustained record of leadership and leverage her experience bringing interdisciplinary methods to help solve elaborate problems.

“This role has a direct parallel to my work over the past decade leading faculty teams and collaborating to advance science and the mission of NSF,” said VanBriesen. “When I approached CMU leadership about my considering this opportunity, they were very supportive—not surprising as CMU values faculty service to the research community.”

The opportunity to not only lead CBET but collaborate across other divisions

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Burcu Akinci

Pingbo Tang

Developing The National Institute for AI in Construction

uncover novel conceptual challenges to AI research from construction applications, and identify likely dataset needs to support future research on AI in construction.”

Professors Burcu Akinci and Pingbo Tang are part of a team that is designing the future National Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Construction, in coordination with researchers from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and over 40 partners in industry.

“The construction industry will welcome the next generation of AI that integrates human intelligence and machine intelligence,” said Tang. “Humans, as intelligent machines that learn from daily life, can collaborate with machine intelligence to tackle construction spaces in an open world full of uncertainties.”

Akinci Elected to National Academy of Construction

Election to the NAC is conferred to individuals who have made significant contributions to the effectiveness of the engineering and construction industry over a period of multiple years.

Akinci will be formally inducted at the NAC’s 2021 Member Annual Meeting in October.

Professor Burcu Akinci has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Construction (NAC).

Akinci has distinguished herself as an expert by way of her significant contributions in the utilization of BIM and sensing technologies to increase operational efficiency and support proactive decision-making in construction and facility/infrastructure management. Among her numerous awards, she recently received the 2020 Computing in Civil Engineering award from ASCE. Akinci co-founded the start-up LeanFM, which was awarded a 2017 Innovation Award from the Pittsburgh Business Times. Lean-FM develops and demonstrates the feasibility of using big data analytics and machine learning to transform facilities operations and maintenance decisions.

She also holds one patent, two provisional patents, and has over 70 referred journal publications and 100 conference publications. She has given over 100 invited presentations and co-edited books on CAD/GIS Integration and on Embedded Commissioning.

Akinci’s research interests include the development of approaches to model and reason about informationrich histories of facilities, in order to streamline construction and facility management processes.

She focuses on investigating utilization and integration of building information models with data capture and tracking technologies, such as 3D imaging, embedded sensors and radio-frequency identification systems to capture semantically-rich as-built histories of construction projects and facility operations.

The first award of $1.7 million will explore the potential of NPs as a nitrogen delivery system, a vital nutrient for plant growth and the primary agent in fertilizers.

According to Lowry, replacing traditional fertilizer application to soil with foliar (i.e. on a plant leaf) NP delivery would be a massive leap ahead for agriculture, significantly improving the efficiency of nitrogen uptake, lowering energy inputs, and reducing harmful runoff.

Joining Lowry in this project will be Assistant Professor Jerry Wang (CEE), Professor Bob Tilton (ChemE), and researchers from the University of Kentucky and University of California, Riverside.

Greg Lowry

Lowry Receives Two NSF Awards for Nanoparticle Research Professor Greg Lowry has received two grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling $2.2 million to improve agricultural efficiency using nanoparticles (NPs) for targeted delivery of nutrients and plant protection products in crop plants.

Lowry’s second award of $500 thousand from the NSF will fund the creation of nano-enabled materials for targeted delivery to chloroplasts, capable of turning plant chloroplasts into “ubiquitous solar powered molecular factories for personalized biomanufacturing devices.” This is a collaborative project with researchers from the University of California, Riverside and University of California, San Diego.

This team will converge principles of nanotechnology and plant biology to modify these organelles, usually dedicated to capturing sunlight to produce energy, to create an engineered mRNA vaccine.

Lowry and Tilton have filed a patent on their novel NP delivery materials. Their upcoming work on nitrogen delivery and environmentally responsive polymers holds huge promise for an agriculture sector threatened by a rapidly changing climate.

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CEE CAPSTONE AQUAPONICS FOR CENTER OF LIFE

Dhruv Choudhary

Valentina Ortiz de Zárate and Evian Zhang

Joseph Iacobellis 14 CEE NEWS

For the 2020-2021 senior capstone course, CEE students were tasked with designing a prototype of an aquaponics food production system and an energy-efficient facility to house it. “In an aquaponics system, fish and plants work together,” explains Joseph Iacobellis (BS ‘21). “As the fish live and excrete waste, the plants grow by absorbing nutrients from that waste.”

“When I found out that we were doing this project for a community in Pittsburgh, I was ecstatic. The purpose behind our work really fueled us,” CEE student Valentina Ortiz de Zárate (BS ‘21) says of the senior design project, which involved partnering with Center of Life, an organization dedicated to revitalizing the Hazelwood neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

Center of Life hopes to use these prototypes to create a facility to host educational events for schools and community members as well as produce food they could sell at a farmer’s market for revenue.

Each group working on the senior project focused on different subsystems of the facility, including the aquaponics system, structural design, and electrical design. Additionally, an automation group designed a plan to monitor factors like water quality and temperature to inform facility managers about the plant and fish health.

“Including sensing and automation is exciting because that is the future of infrastructure,” says Sarah Christian, the course instructor. “Students were able to see how those information systems interact with the other systems they’re dealing with in a way that requires domain knowledge in civil and environmental engineering as well as an understanding of computing.”

Unifying every group’s design, of course, required much coordination and collaboration. “I was someone who thought to build on the fly and plan as we go, but that wouldn’t have been

possible,” says Iacobellis. “There were so many steps to be taken into account and communications that needed to happen to make sure that the things we were doing would work correctly with the other groups.”

After the students submitted their designs in the fall, another group of seniors continued the work in the spring, creating a functioning aquaponics prototype with a fish tank and two plant growing areas. To clean the waste from the fish, the dirty water is moved first to a separator tank and then a biofilter, which transforms the waste into fertilizer. After the plants use the fertilizer as nourishment, the clean water is returned to the fish tank to restart the cycle.

At first, the prototype featured only Deep Water Culture (DWC) beds, where rafts of leafy greens float in a tank of nutrient-rich water. After selecting this growing method for its ease of use, the students realized that the client preferred to prioritize maximizing production. As a result, they added a second growing method: Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) channels, in which nutrient-rich water travels through horizontal PVC pipes. As plants grow on and through the pipes, their roots are exposed to the water inside.

allowing visitors to walk around each area, learning about the process in a logical order.

For Ortiz de Zárate, this work was an opportunity to not only explore her environmental engineering interests but also areas outside her focus. “The project was a great combination of the disciplines within civil engineering,” she says. “As I worked on the aquaponics system and water flow calculations, the structural engineers were designing and constructing the support systems for the DWC bed. We had to work very closely, so I learned a lot about what they were doing and they learned a lot about my expertise.”

Beyond the technical knowledge gained, the students also walked away with stronger project management and communication skills and a readiness to handle the unknown and unexpected.

“Nobody that we were directly working with had all the information,” reflects Iacobellis. “We had to reach out to our client and to suppliers and contractors for quotes and advice.

It was a lot of learning on the fly, a lot of improvisation and a lot of communication. It helped me and other students to go outside our comfort zones, and everyone valued that.”

“What’s cool about NFT channels is you can layer them.

We have one layer, but that could be stacked vertically to maximize vertical space,” explains Ortiz de Zárate. “Having to think about a client and incorporate their feedback guided our design in a more innovative direction.”

The design also reflects the organization’s educational goals by

Natalie Herrmann

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Hakimzadeh Named Steinbrenner Institute Fellow The Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research at Carnegie Mellon University has selected Maryam Hakimzadeh as a Steinbrenner Research Fellow.

This graduate fellowship program provides support to exceptional, second-year Carnegie Mellon PhD students who work on cuttingedge environmental research. The interdisciplinary research projects’ topics align with the Institute’s strategic focus areas of energy transition strategies, urban infrastructure, and sustainable cities.

Hakimzadeh is a PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She received her BS in Civil Engineering and MS in Environmental Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. She is currently being co-advised by Professor Kaushik Dayal and Assistant Professor David Rounce.

Her work looks at the challenges and opportunities that global climate change and warming oceans present in terms of undersea energy exploration, newly available shipping routes, climate modeling, and sustainability of built infrastructure in the Arctic region.

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Karimi Awarded Dowd Fellowship

Samudio Awarded D’Appolonia Fellowship

PhD student Mina Karimi was selected as a Dowd Fellow by the College of Engineering. She earned her undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering and her master’s in Computational Mechanics at the University of Tehran, Iran.

PhD student Mateo Samudio was recently awarded the Dr. Elio D’Appolonia Graduate Fellowship.

Samudio completed his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at Universidad Nacional de Asuncion, Paraguay, and masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering at CMU.

Karimi, co-advised by professors Matteo Pozzi and Kaushik Dayal, is focusing on integrating physics-based models with statistical learning to target event-level forecasts of earthquakes induced by fluid injection related to wastewater injection and CO2 sequestration.

“I am honored to receive the Dowd Graduate Fellowship to support my research on induced seismicity,” says Karimi. “Also, I’d like to thank the Dowd Fellowship committee for providing this invaluable opportunity to me.”

The Philip and Marsha Dowd Engineering Seed Fund was established in 2001 through a generous gift to the College of Engineering from Philip and Marsha Dowd. The fund is intended to provide support for graduate students proposing work on cutting edge research projects. The objective of the fund is to help enable future external research funding and possible future entrepreneurial activity by generating initial research results through the seed project.

Advised by professors Destenie Nock, Corey Harper, and Greg Lowry, Samudio’s research analyzes the impact of E-grocery in the transportation network of Seattle through stochastic demand modeling and transportation systems analysis software.

‘I believe this support is an example of one of the best traits that can be found in human beings: generosity,” says Samudio. “I will do my best to contribute to knowledge as is expected from a CMU PhD student, and will be ever thankful for this fellowship.”

The Dr. Elio D’Appolonia Graduate Fellowship was established, with the generosity from the Devendra and Kshama Shukla Foundation, and other donors, to recognize his impact on the department. Dr. D’Appolonia, was a CEE faculty member from 1948 to 1956 and helped to define and develop the multidisciplinary, creative problemsolving nature of civil engineering at CMU that remains a hallmark of the program.

outcomes in historically disinvested neighborhoods. By combining modeling methods, field experience from professional contractors, and community stakeholder engagement, Joseph aims to improve the quality of life for residents in affordable housing units and lowincome communities.

Joseph Awarded Cohon Graduate Fellowship PhD candidate Jordan Joseph has recently been awarded a Jared and Maureen Cohon Graduate Fellowship in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Joseph received his Bachelors in Engineering Science with an Environmental Engineering concentration from Saint Vincent College and Masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering from CMU. Co-advised by professors Kelvin Gregory and Costa Samaras, Joseph researches pathways for residential decarbonization and their impacts on vulnerable communities. His work explores how efforts like home energy efficiency retrofits and electrification will affect equity, health, costs, and other sustainability

“It is an honor to be awarded the Jared and Maureen Cohon Fellowship in Civil and Environmental Engineering,” says Joseph. “As a first-generation student from a low-income family, this award will enable me to focus on my research throughout the course of my doctoral program. This fellowship is yet another reminder of CMU’s commitment to the success of underrepresented students.”

Through a generous gift to the Inspire Innovation Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University, University Professor and President Emeritus Jared Cohon and his wife Maureen Cohon established in 2009 The Jared and Maureen Cohon Graduate Fellowship in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The fund provides research support fellowships to deserving graduate students in Civil and Environmental Engineering who are specializing in environmental engineering.

Recent PhD Theses ABDULLAH ALARFAJ Deep Decarbonization of U.S. Passenger Vehicle Transportation: Robust Decisions for Sectoral Transition and Climate Policy Advisor: Samaras JONATHON FAGERT Human Gait Health and Activity Monitoring Using Structural Vibration Sensing Advisors: Noh and Qian SHOHAM SEN Nonlocal Dipolar Interactions in Complex Geometries for Quantum Embedding Advisor: Dayal YUJIE WEI Detecting As-built Information Model Errors Using Unstructured Images Advisor: Akinci YILIN ZHANG Multi-functionalized Polymer Nanomaterials for Environmental Applications Advisors: Lowry and Tilton

FROM DAVE’S DESK (September 3, 2021)

Our campus has sprung back to life with the start of classes this week.

The Fence is being painted daily with new messages, and students are everywhere, including back in Porter Hall.

(Follow weekly updates from Dave Dzombak on our Facebook page)

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REBUILDING THE WORLD TRADE CENTER SITE LOOKING BACK 20 YEARS AFTER 9/11

After the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001, people from across the country stepped up to help in any way they could. The engineering community, in particular, rose to the challenge, from stabilizing the site for rescue and recovery to later rebuilding infrastructure and creating a new legacy and memorial for the site.

Both the design and construction team had to be very agile. Especially in the early years, everyone was working closely together.”

Among those contributing were two CEE alumni, Seth Pearlman (BS ’78, MS ‘79) and John Wise (BS ‘84). Both men worked for Nicholson Construction Company, a firm that specializes in geotechnical engineering and foundation work. In total, Wise spent nearly a decade of his career working on and off at the World Trade Center site.

From 2003 to 2012, Wise managed a range of projects at the site as Nicholson’s VP of Operations and head of the New York office. In 2003, he oversaw the construction of a support system for an elevated pedestrian bridge to reconnect the World Financial Center to the redeveloped World Trade Center. In 2007, his team assisted in creating a new Transportation Hub that linked the subway system and the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) train, installing micropiling so that crews could dig and work underneath an active subway line.

“The work was fast paced and changing all the time,” recalls Wise. “Someone would design something one way because of how they thought it looked.

Then when you got down there, the actual conditions were very different.

The following year, the team began work on the Memorial Plaza, now home to the memorial reflection pools and a 100,000 square-foot underground museum. Other large projects included excavation and foundation work for a

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security center for vehicles entering the complex.

“During the rebuild in the mid 2000s, I was there 35 to 40 weeks a year,” says Wise. “I was involved at many levels. I attended meetings with the building owner, went onto the site, and [problem solved to] figure out why a particular machine wasn’t working” With the site’s location at the southern tip of Manhattan, logistics were immensely complex and the scale of the work necessitated collaborating with many engineering, design, and construction firms as well as with the building’s owner and management. The level of innovation involved was also noteworthy. “Because of the existing subway, the disturbed ground, and the need to preserve some of the old foundations for the memorial that you see in the museum today, it made for some very unique designs and that required innovative means and methods of construction,” Wise shares.

John Wise (BS ‘84)

Wise also played a supporting managerial role in the recovery stage work Nicholson Construction did immediately following 9/11. That project was initiated largely by fellow CEE alum Seth Pearlman, who was Vice President of Nicholson Construction at the time of the attacks.

After the towers fell, Pearlman realized that the firm could assist with the rescue and recovery efforts. “We were already known for working in large urban excavations below the water table,” says Pearlman, “The work that they needed to do to dig it all out, to recover the people, and to begin rebuilding, that was in our expertise.”

Within just two weeks of 9/11, Pearlman was visiting the grounds and, by early October, the Nicholson Construction team was beginning work. Their most pressing item of focus was the World Trade Center’s bathtub wall. Previously held in place by the building’s concrete floors, the bathtub wall supported the

entire site, holding back not only the soil but also the Hudson River.

“When the floors got crushed down, there was no way you could excavate that site without anchoring the walls back, or they would come in against the pressure of the earth and water,” Pearlman explains. “The initial job was just to anchor the whole thing back.

We consulted on making sure that was schemed out correctly and that it could be done in a way that allowed them to safely dig the building down.”

One wall had already shifted 12 inches in parts, and the engineers moved rapidly to establish and implement their plan. Ultimately, the team reinforced the walls with over 1000 tieback anchors drilled into the bedrock, securing the site for the removal of over 1.5 million tons of debris in a clean-up process that lasted through May of 2002.

Today, the intact slurry wall reinforced

Seth Pearlman (BS ’78, MS ‘79)

by Nicholson Construction during the recovery period is on display in the World Trade Center Museum that they also helped to construct.

Reflecting on their work at the World Trade Center, both CEE alums are grateful to have participated in such a monumental effort. “It’s something that’s bigger than yourself,” asserts Pearlman. “If you have the capability to make a contribution or to influence the way decisions are made and you think your knowledge is valuable, then you should offer it.”

Though the work undoubtedly had challenging moments, being involved with something so important to New York City and to the entire nation was personally and professionally rewarding. “The time there was definitely one of the highlights of my career,” says Wise. “I was proud to say that we were there and we were helping.”

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CEE ALUMNI AWARDS SHINE SPOTLIGHT ON SUCCESSFUL GRADS CEE celebrated our 2021 alumni award winners via a virtual celebration event led by department head Dave Dzombak.

RECENT ALUMNI Kan Shao

OUTSTANDING ALUMNI SERVICE Mark Pleskow

This award recognizes CEE alumni who have made noteworthy achievements within ten years of receiving their highest degree from the CEE Department.

The Outstanding Alumni Service award recognizes CEE alumni who have made sustained contributions to the CEE department, the university, or the engineering profession over a period of time.

Professor Kan Shao (MS ’07 and CEE/ EPP PhD ’11) is the Director of Graduate Studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Indiana University Bloomington. His specialty is dose-response modeling for quantifying the influence of contaminants in the environment on human health.

Shao was also recently awarded the prestigious “K” award from the National Institute of Health. Upon receiving the award from Dzombak, Shao added that “all of those achievements were based on the training I received at CMU.”

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Mark Pleskow’s (BS ’81, MS ‘85) experience includes working as a program manager, adjunct faculty, and consultant. He joined WSP as a Project & Program Manager in 2018—and in that role serves as a mentor and advisor to CEE students interested in pursuing a career within the company.

Pleskow is also a member of the Carnegie Mellon University CEE Advisory Council and serves as a project advisor to graduate students. He stated that he gives back because he never forgets what it felt like to be a student.

“CEE is a place of high expectations and high standards. I remember how much it helped me when I had my mentors, so I’m just paying it back.”

LT. COL. CHRISTOPHER K. RAIBLE DISTINGUISHED PUBLIC SERVICE Elizabeth Durika Commander Elizabeth Durika (BS ‘03) earned the Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible Distinguished Public Service Award, created to honor Lt. Col. Raible (BS ‘95) who was killed in action in Afghanistan.

The award recognizes CEE alumni who have made outstanding public service contributions.

Durika serves in the United States Navy as an Assistant Operations Officer at Naval Facilities Engineering Command Mid-Atlantic in Norfolk, Virginia. She’s been a valuable resource and mentor to CEE students interested in public service careers.

Durika is also a current member of the CEE Alumni Advisory Council. She mentioned that her experience at CEE was an important time in her life. “CEE is a great place; all of us can say it has a big part in our hearts.”

Alumni Notes Sawyer to Lead PMRD Stephen G. Sawyer, Jr. (MS ‘99, PhD ‘02) has been appointed as the Director of the Pittsburgh Mining Research Division (PMRD) of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Mining Program. Sawyer brings a mine rescue perspective to his position as PMRD Director.

Prior to becoming director, Sawyer worked in PMRD’s Human Systems Integration Branch as a general engineer on the virtual reality mine rescue initiative. Before joining NIOSH, he spent 16 years in the Mine Safety and Health Administration Technical Support program area and has served as a technical expert on regulatory committees.

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI Adjo Apkene Amekudzi-Kennedy Professor Adjo Apkene AmekudziKennedy’s (MS ’97, PhD ‘99) award concluded the program received the Distinguished Alumni Award which recognizes CEE alumni who have one or more major achievements that have improved the work of professional engineers or have improved people’s lives.

Amekudzi-Kennedy is a professor at Georgia Tech, an author, curriculum developer, and is focused on the development and application of systems and sustainability engineering methods to promote sustainable development. She’s the founding Chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Committee on Sustainability and served on the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment of the National Research Council for 10 years.

She is also on the Transportation Asset Management Committee of the Transportation Research Board, a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and a member of the National Academy of Construction.

Amekudzi-Kennedy expressed gratitude at being honored by her alma mater. “[Being commended by] CEE is special because it’s a place where thinking happens at a very high level.”

Barry Named Dean of Allen School of Engineering and Computing Trine University, Angora, Indiana, named William Barry (BS ‘92, PhD ‘98) as the dean of the Allen School of Engineering and Computing.

Barry served as a professor and chair of the Reiners Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Trine since 2019. A member of Trine’s civil engineering faculty since 2008, he has chaired the department for eight of the past 10 years.

Sriram Awarded Prestigious INCOSE Fellowship Ram D. Sriram (MS ‘82, PhD ‘86) was awarded a prestigious fellowship from The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).

Fellows are individuals with significant verifiable contributions to the systems engineering art and practice in industry, government, or academia.

Sriram’s award is in recognition of his advancing theory, practice, and computational tools for designing complex engineered systems.

Sriram is the chief of the Software and Systems Division, Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburgh, Maryland.

HAVE NEWS TO SHARE? We want to hear about your awards, promotions, career moves, and unique projects! Email us: mmobley@andrew.cmu.edu.

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ALUMNI PROFILE HENRY RANDALL GROOMS (PHD ‘69) Growing up, Dr. Henry Randall Grooms (PhD ‘69) didn’t know whether he would be able to attend college. With money tight, earning one degree, let alone the three he now has to his name, was no guarantee. Yet his academic prowess earned Grooms first an undergraduate scholarship to Howard University and then fellowships to Carnegie Mellon’s Civil Engineering MS and PhD programs—exactly the launching pad Grooms needed to become an award-winning structural engineer who would shape NASA’s space programs and co-found an organization to help hundreds of minority students to advance their education.

At Carnegie Mellon, where Grooms studied from 1965 to 1969, both his peers and instructors helped pave the way for his future success. Here, Grooms learned how to get along with others, examine different points of view, and conduct himself as a professional. “There was a very diverse population and students from all over the globe, particularly in graduate school and our department. Civil Engineering seemed to be leading other departments in that regard,” he recalls.

“Being around so many intelligent, articulate people and seeing what the most successful ones had in their skillset made me understand what I needed to do to pursue my goals in the corporate world.”

For Grooms, his connections with fellow Black students at Carnegie Mellon were especially valuable, including when dealing with racist attitudes encountered off-campus. For example, when Grooms was looking for housing in Pittsburgh, landlords would respond to his calls, but when he showed up, he would be told the apartment was no longer available. This happened multiple times near campus before another Black student recommended a spot 20 minutes across town where Grooms ended up living with his wife and daughter.

One notable Carnegie Mellon friendship that Grooms maintained long after graduating was with CE classmate

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Melvin Ramey (PhD ‘67). “Mel was a very important mentor for me,” he reflects. “As another Black engineer, he made my transition a lot smoother than it might have been otherwise.”

Grooms’ advisor Dr. Tung Au and CE Department Head Dr. Thomas Stelson were also supportive and influential figures. Beyond advising him on his research, Au recommended Grooms for the interview that would lead to his 37year career with Rockwell International (which eventually became part of Boeing).

As a structural engineer at Rockwell, Grooms led teams of more than 80 individuals conducting technical, structural, and stress analysis for high-profile space missions such as the Delta launch vehicle, Skylab, the Apollo program and lunar landing, X-37 reusable space plane, and the Space Shuttle. He earned Boeing’s space division Engineer of the Year Award in 1980 and CMU’s Alumni Merit Award in 1985. In 2004, he received both the Black Engineer of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award and Lifetime Achievement Award in Industry from the National Society of Black Engineers.

“Seeing something you work on actually fly is one of the things I enjoyed most in my career,” shares Grooms. “What I loved about the aerospace industry is that you almost never solve the same problem twice. Because it’s the

challenge of space, almost all of the problems are new problems.”

Outside of his career, Grooms continued demonstrating an aptitude for solving problems, this time with help from his wife Tonie, with whom he had 12 children. As parents, Grooms and his wife stressed the value of education to their children. Yet, particularly in the Black community, they saw that many other families didn’t know much about college and many students simply had never considered it to be a possibility.

Grooms and his wife decided they could help, and, in the early 1990s, the pair co-founded Project REACH along with two of their co-workers (Dwayne Orange and Faye Belson-Hardin).

Project REACH helped high school students from across Los Angeles to learn about college, explore career options, and prepare for standardized testing, admissions applications, and interviews. Participants also toured local campuses and received scholarships to help with college.

“We ran Project REACH for around 20 years. We essentially accepted anyone who applied, and 400 to 500 students went through the program,” he says.

“Every single student graduated from high school. Approximately 50% went to college, and a handful went on to earn master’s degrees, PhDs, and even MDs. Those are things we are really proud of.”

CEE GIVING Left to right: Jen Chan (BS 13, MS 13), Jeffie Chang, and Ramya Sivakumar (BS 14) “I think my four years at Carnegie Mellon were some of the happiest years of my life,” says CEE graduate and structural engineer Jeffie Chang (BS’13, MS’14). “The friends I made there are still among my closest friends today.

There was this camaraderie and really close, tight-knit environment in the CEE department that I was so grateful for.”

Beyond her fellow classmates, Jeffie formed strong bonds with CEE faculty members—particularly with Larry Cartwright, whose fund (the Lawrence Cartwright Support Fund for Teaching Professors) she now donates to on a regular basis. While in school, Jeffie was one of Cartwright’s last work-study students before his retirement from teaching. She assisted with everything from building materials for his classes and labs to cleaning out concrete forms to restocking the soda machine.

Even when the work was monotonous, talking with Cartwright was always entertaining. “It was just so much fun working with him,” she says. “Larry meant a lot to me, so that’s why I keep donating to his fund.”

In addition to her donations to the department, Jeffie has stayed involved with the CEE department in other ways, including offering career mentorship and advice to current students. She has helped to talk students through things like what structural engineering is, what courses they should take, what to look out for, and even what not to do. In fall

JEFFIE CHANG

2021, Jeffie will also give a presentation that’s open to all students in the department on what it means to be a structural engineer.

Carnegie Mellon helped to prepare Jeffie for her own engineering career— with strong technical knowledge and a solid foundation in the humanities and writing. “A lot of people think engineers don’t need to know how to speak or how to write well, but that is absolutely false. Technical writing was one of the most important classes I took,” she says. “The program requirements force students to have not just depth but breadth. Taking things like humanities courses helped me to become a more well-rounded person.”

“I stay involved with CEE because I think it’s the right thing to do.

Carnegie Mellon gave me so much and so many opportunities.”

Carnegie Mellon’s courses also fostered the development of her creative problem-solving skills, which she has been able to apply throughout her work with building renovations and adaptive reuse.

“I stay involved with CEE because I think it’s the right thing to do. Carnegie Mellon gave me so much and so many opportunities,” she reflects. “I was at my first job because of connections I had through Larry Cartwright and Carnegie Mellon, and I found my new role also through friends from Carnegie Mellon. You can’t place a value on those networks and opportunities, and it’s all tied around CMU.”

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GIVE WHERE YOUR HEART IS Making donations help the department maintain our standards of excellence. Your gifts contribute to elements of our department such as student activities, laboratory equipment, and facility updates.

CURRENT CEE GIVING OPTIONS Advanced Infrastructure Systems (AIS) Lab Environmental Engineering Laboratories Fund Lawrence Cartwright Support Fund for Teaching Professors

We are able to provide an engaging, enriching, and

Dr. Elio D’Appolonia Graduate Fellowship Fund

encouraging environment because of the support of

Chris T. Hendrickson Undergraduate Travel Fund

our donors. Giving to CEE is a vote of confidence in our program, and helps to keep us at a competitive level with other world-class programs.

Steven J. Fenves Graduate Travel Fund CEE Student Activities Fund CEE Strategic Fund

Gifts at all levels are needed and appreciated from alumni and friends.

cmu.edu/cee/giving

LEADERSHIP GIFT INFORMATION These CEE funds were created through leadership gifts from alumni and friends. If you are interested in learning more about making a leadership gift to an area that interests you, please contact: Heather Cain - hcain@andrew.cmu.edu

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