Fall 2019

CMU.EDU/CEE

The Climate Change Issue CEE Continues to

Advance Solutions for the Challenges Ahead

Fall 2019

CEE NEWS

Summer 2019

Editor & Designer Mireille Mobley Writers Daniel Carroll Adam Dove Rachel Mohr Handel Miranda Lui Mireille Mobley Georgia Schumacher Sandy West For more news and information about CEE please visit us at: cmu.edu/cee

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Dear Alumni and Friends, Climate change is occurring around the globe at an accelerating pace, and civil and environmental engineers are leading efforts in communities and companies small and large to adapt to changing environmental conditions.

Knowledge of climate change and its impacts on design, construction, and operation of infrastructure is important for new engineering graduates.

Research is needed to advance the ways that we plan for adaptive, resilient infrastructure.

Our cover story describes research and education activities related to climate change adaptation in CEE at Carnegie Mellon. Beginning with a strategic decision in 2014 to invest focus and resources in climate change adaptation, we have initiated graduate courses, incorporated content on climate change in our undergraduate curriculum, and have undertaken a spectrum of research projects. This effort has involved a large fraction of the CEE faculty, and undergraduate as well as graduate students. As discussed in our cover story, the research has spanned technology development to basic science to development of new methods of engineering analysis. For example, Professor Costa Samaras has been examining how rainfall patterns altered by climate change affect design of urban stormwater infrastructure. His students Lauren Cook, Tania Lopez, and Marissa Webber are making progress on several dimensions of this challenge. Professors Matteo Pozzi and Mario Berges, working with PhD students Carl Malings and BeongSeong Choi, have developed models to investigate effects of heat waves in urban environments and approaches for mitigating these impacts. These are just some of our ongoing projects. Faculty and students share information and collaborate through our Center for Engineering Resilience and Climate Adaptation (CERCA), now in its fifth year.

In other research, Professor Hae Young Noh continues to expand her work on vibration sensing and signal interpretation into new areas. From knowledge and experience gained in structural health monitoring, Noh has extended vibration sensing to a wide range of applications, from monitoring of seismic impacts and fall hazard of elderly people, to now include monitoring of livestock health.

Professors Kaushik Dayal and Amit Acharya have undertaken projects involving application of computational mechanics to challenging problems in geotechnical engineering. Dayal and his students and collaborators at several other universities are building micromechanics models to acquire grain-scale insights into soil behavior. Acharya and graduate student Asish Yadav Madala have been working with colleagues at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute to couple visual images and slope stability modeling to assess landslide risk.

We are completing renovation of our environmental engineering laboratory space and making plans for renovation of our sensing and cyber-physical system labs. Also, the construction of ANSYS Hall – to which CEE is directly connected – is complete and this new space will benefit our education and research programs tremendously. The next issue will focus on our new lab spaces and plans for additional lab space renovation. These are important and exciting changes for the department! We need your help to transform all of our educational and research labs.

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

CEE NEWS

Inside this Issue

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Detecting Good Vibrations, With Pigs

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Carnegie Mellon Leads DOE Team Improving Rural Mobility

CEE and ECE researchers use vibrational sensors to detect sick pigs and improve farm efficiency.

The Department of Energy is funding a collaborative team led by CEE Professor Sean Qian as they attempt to change the landscape of rural transportation in Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Greene County.

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Dayal Receives a 2019 MURI Award to Dig into the Labyrinth of Soil Dayal has won a 2019 Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) award to examine soil behavior using multiscale modeling, funded by the Department of Defense.

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New, Integrated CEE/CS Degree Program

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Modeling to Predict Landslides

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CEE Giving: Creating a Legacy With Service and Support

CEE launched a new, integrated degree program with the School of Computer Science designed for civil and environmental engineers who are interested in learning more about emerging technologies.

CEE and Robotics Institute researchers look into landslides and the potential for developing software that will enable authorities to detect future landslides.

A member of the University staff since 2003, Don Coffelt is currently Associate Vice President for Facilities Management and Campus Services and takes great pride in creating an environment that supports the innovative work for which Carnegie Mellon is known.

The Climate Change Issue

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CEE Plans for the Challenges Ahead Determining how to best adapt engineering practices in the face of new climate patterns is a massive undertaking, but our CEE faculty and students are rising to the challenge.

2020 Program Rankings *

Our Faculty & Research

Civil Environmental 12th - UG 9th - UG 9th - Grad 7th Grad

17 Full Professors 5 Associate Professors 1 Assistant Professors

* Source: U.S. News and World Report

Enrollment AY 2019-2020 Bachelors Masters Doctoral FALL 2019

90 186 73

CEE Students 47% of Are Women 64% Undergraduate Women 42% Graduate Women

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Faculty with Active NSF Career Awards

$5.93M Annual Externally F unded Sponsored Research in FY19

The Climate Change Issue CEE Continues to Advance Solutions for the Challenges Ahead Extreme storms, increasing temperatures, drier deserts—our climate is changing, and so must our infrastructure design, construction, and management.

Determining how to best adapt engineering practices in the face of these new climate patterns is a massive undertaking, but our CEE faculty and students are rising to the challenge.

Flooded Potomac River - Georgetown waterfront, Washington DC

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CEE NEWS

Redesigning Infrastructure for Future Rainfalls From drinking water to sewer systems, much of the water infrastructure we take for granted was built many decades ago with the assumption that future precipitation would follow historical trends. That assumption no longer holds true.

“Much of the infrastructure in place now was designed for a rainfall pattern of the mid 20th century,” says CEE Professor Constantine Samaras.

“It’s already underperforming and it’s likely to get worse.”

A member of the ASCE Adaptation to a Changing Climate Committee and contributor to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, Samaras is immersed in the world of climate resilience, where the focus is on anticipating, preparing for, and responding to changing climate conditions. Recently, he’s been studying projected ranges for future rainfall, which he is translating into usable outputs for engineers and city planners.

Before graduating in 2018, CEE PhD student Lauren Cook, currently a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, contributed significantly to this effort, co-advised by Samaras and fellow CEE Professor Jeanne VanBriesen.

A water systems expert, VanBriesen has teamed up with Samaras to investigate the vulnerabilities of existing water infrastructure and engineering

Lauren Cook

FALL 2019

officials and engineers to assess practices. their local infrastructure and design “Our standards. As those standards are research re-examined, engineers will need to looks at, discuss both risk and budget with given what city leaders, communicating the we expect increased investment required to will happen maintain desired performance with the into the future. climate, how do “The engineering community we build, Tania Lopez-Cantu has to ensure that every design, standard is updated so that our and deploy engineered systems in a designs are resilient to the coming way that will meet the needs of the changes,” says VanBriesen. “All of our future,” she explains. beliefs about how these systems have In considering that future, their questions are wide-ranging. How big should storm drains be to keep streets from flooding? Where do we place drinking water intakes to account for lower river levels? How far from the ocean should intakes be to avoid being affected by salt water?

What green infrastructure needs to exist to absorb additional rainfall?

Their answers must account for not only the amount of water expected, but intensity and frequency of rainfall, which impacts how water flows over soil and the contaminants it absorbs.

So far, their findings suggest that many design standards must be revisited.

Already, Samaras and current PhD student Tania Lopez-Cantu have published on the inadequate performance of existing stormwater infrastructure, and have analyzed which states most need updated designs.

CEE master’s degree student Marissa Webber has also begun studying how well green infrastructure reduces stormwater runoff. In time, the work done in CEE may help to advise decision makers and make it easier for

worked are going to be challenged by climate change.”

Planning for Urban Heat Waves In cities, water is far from the only concern. As the earth’s temperature climbs, the urban heat island effect— which causes cities to be hotter than surrounding rural areas—is intensifying dangerously. Extreme temperatures can lead to heat stroke and exhaustion as well as aggravate existing medical conditions, resulting in hundreds of heatrelated deaths every year.

At Carnegie Mellon, CEE Professors Matteo Pozzi and Mario Berges are leading efforts to predict heat waves and their effects across urban environments.

The project—called marissa webber SHADE, or Surface Heat Assessment for Developed Environments—is a collaboration with former Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) faculty member Kelly Klima (now at RAND) and Princeton University.

Their models show not only the temperature surges in cities during heat waves, but also temperatures across time at every location in the city, with variability from factors such

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as building composition and the amount of exposed surfaces.

While urban green spaces can help Carl Malings combat the heat, many buildings and paved surfaces absorb and amplify heat instead. On the hottest days, some spots reach up to 20°F hotter than nearby areas.

In their early research, the models Berges and Pozzi worked with were highly detailed but required significant computation time. Under Pozzi’s advising, PhD student Carl Malings (who graduated in 2018 and is currently Postdoctoral Researcher at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) addressed this problem by developing simplified probabilistic models on which faster simulations and assessments could be run.

Now, current CEE PhD student ByeongSeong Choi is trying to improve the assumptions powering these statistical models. His goal is to further refine the accuracy of the models, while maintaining the fast computation speed required for running complex scenarios and simulations.

Eventually, these simulations could help to inform targeted heat advisories, optimize the placement of ByeongSeong Choi cooling centers in the hottest spots throughout cities, and reveal where heat mitigation techniques like green

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infrastructure will be most impactful.

Additionally, the group’s work can show where additional sensors for monitoring temperature will provide the greatest value and enable decision makers to respond quickly and strategically to extreme heat.

Berges says, “Our goal is to use these refined models to analyze policies and run what-if scenarios that will help decision makers and

says Berges. He is partnering with EPP Professor Paulina Jaramillo and EPP PhD student Francisco Ralston Fonseca to understand what those effects might be on the electricity sector in the Southeast US in the coming decades. So far, they’ve produced hourly projections for the expected upturn in summer demand as greater cooling is needed and for the decreases anticipated during winter.

“One of the novel things is that we’re not doing isolated modeling of individual systems, but actually combining the simulations to understand the second-order effects and implications for the power sector. What we’re able to show is that the generator fleet of the future has to change, and we need to plan for that.”

- Mario Berges city officials protect the elderly and other vulnerable populations from the recurring heat waves in cities.”

Optimizing Electricity Production for New Demands While much research details how fossil fuels in the power sector have contributed to climate change, less research exists on how a changing climate will impact the power sector.

Yet, the shifting climate is certain to necessitate modifications in the operation and design of power plants

Beyond changing hourly and seasonal demand, many electricity generation plants use stream water to cool down generators. As stream temperatures rise, these plants will be unable to generate electricity as efficiently.

“One of the novel things is that we’re not doing isolated modeling of individual systems, but actually combining the simulations to understand the second-order effects and implications for the power sector,” says Berges. “What we’re able to show is that the generator fleet of the future has to change, and we need to plan for that.”

To that end, Berges and his colleagues are using an economic dispatch model to determine the optimal mix of power plants for anticipated future

CEE NEWS

Climate Mitigation Through Energy Transitions

Across CEE, faculty study not only climate adaptation but mitigation as well, with a focus on energy transitions.

As a member of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Air, Climate, and Energy Solutions (CACES), Peter Adams spends a lot of time thinking about the future of energy and the climate.

“A big theme of CACES is to look at energy transitions with consideration to both air pollution and climate change, so that we can address these problems in a holistic, coordinated way,” says Adams.

Currently, Adams and fellow CACES members are developing metrics so that researchers can analyze the costs and benefits of energy systems for both climate and air quality simultaneously. To test these metrics, they are using case studies in the electricity, transportation, and agriculture sectors.

Professor Costa Samaras is studying transportation and electric systems. He’s the Co-Director of the Power Sector Carbon Index, which reports quarterly on the nation’s progress in reducing the carbon intensity of the electric power sector.

emissionsindex.org

scenarios, including solar, nuclear, coal, and others. Because the group has already projected hourly demand, they can also run the dispatch models at an hourly level.

“This lets us see at every hour in the future what mix of energy or power plants makes the most sense,” explains Berges. “We can run that model through many different climates and areas to find the best options for utilities as they plan for their future infrastructure.”

Connecting Around a Shared Goal No matter what the specific infrastructure challenge, developing climate change adaptation solutions requires diverse experts to join

FALL 2019

“In CEE, we also work a lot on how autonomous and electric vehicles will affect future emissions,” says Samaras. “Our students are conducting systems analysis and simulations on how the transition to alternative fuels and automation affects greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, air pollution, and more.”

forces—one area where Carnegie Mellon has always excelled.

For example, one of CEE’s newest climate adaptation projects involves CEE faculty members Pozzi and Peter Adams, CEE PhD student Suman Pokharel, and Kelly Klima of RAND, all exploring how to optimize infrastructure management under climate uncertainty.

Their theory is Suman Pokharel that, depending on how rapidly researchers

are learning about climate change, the best way to manage uncertainty may be with flexible designs that can be adjusted as new data become available.

“We are investigating what applications it may be beneficial, rather than making a fixed decision right now. That way we can design infrastructure components now that may be modified using knowledge developed in the future,” says Pozzi.

While the project is in its early days, possible testing applications include designing protection for coastal

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areas that allows for changes in height, as researchers refine their understanding of water level increases and the frequency and intensity of extreme events.

Part of what makes this project possible is the combination of Pozzi’s adaptive learning and infrastructure management expertise with Adams’ knowledge of state-of-the-art climate modeling.

of collaborating.”

Pozzi and Adams are far from the only CEE researchers interacting with others outside their area of expertise.

Efforts to achieve climate change resilience have united CEE faculty and students with people from across Carnegie Mellon as well as from outside universities, government organizations, and private institutions. Together, progress is inarguably being made.

“CEE has made an important and long-term commitment

“CEE has made an important and longterm commitment to both conducting research and changing education around climate resilience and mitigation,” Samaras reflects. “Many faculty members are involved in this work, and we are going to continue this commitment.

I believe we will change the field by doing so.”

to both conducting research and changing education around climate resilience and mitigation.”

- Costa Samaras

“The department and the whole university have this very interdisciplinary and collaborative culture,” says Adams. “In CEE, we have strength in environmental and infrastructure systems, and both of those groups recognize the benefits

Constructing Climate History for 100+ Cities

“These problems don’t fall neatly into any particular discipline,” says Berges of his climate adaptation work.

“The fact that we are not constrained by traditional boundaries helps everyone.”

Researchers are confident in their understanding and predictions for climate change at a global level, but examining how climate change will manifest in individual cities tends to be more complex. Some cities are getting hotter, others slightly cooler, and for many cities, researchers simply haven’t had the long-term, high-quality data needed to analyze local trends—until now, that is.

Working with his advisor and Department Head Dave Dzombak, PhD student Yuchuan Lai has compiled local climate histories for 115 US cities, dating back as far as the 1870s. To accomplish this, Lai dug through temperature and precipitation information spread across various National Weather Service databases, aggregating data from multiple local weather stations to fill in spotty records and create a composite history for each city.

Lai and Dzombak have analyzed the data to identify each city’s climate trends. The results, Use of Historical Data to Assess Regional Climate Change, published in the Journal of Climate are now available for public download and use (bit.ly/constructing-climate-history). Additionally, they are using these records to develop near-term, localized climate projections.

Yuchuan Lai

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“Our historical analysis can give the public critical information about how their cities have experienced climate change from the past to the present and also provide engineers with location-specific climate change information for infrastructure design, construction, management, and operation,” says Lai.

CEE NEWS

Recent PhD Theses Rajat Arora - Computational Approximation of Mesoscale Field Dislocation Mechanics at Finite Deformation - Advisor: Acharya

Wei Ma - Statistical Inference of Spatio-Temporal Transportation Networks through Large-scale Multi-source Data - Advisor: Qian

Mahnoush Babaei - Instability-Induced Rapid Shape Change in Heat- and Photo-responsive Materials Advisor: Dayal

Xidong Pi - Multi-modal Mesoscopic Transportation System Modeling and Management with Mobility Data Advisor: Qian

Timothy Bartholomew - Process and Network Level Optimization for High Salinity Brine Dewatering and Management - Advisor: Mauter

Ellis Rosenbaum - A Computational Study of Bubble Suspensions and Foamed Cement Using Extended Stokesian Dynamics - Advisor: Dayal

Sabyasachi Chatterjee - Practical Time Averaging of Nonlinear Dynamics with Application to Plasticity from Discrete Dislocation Dynamics - Advisor: Acharya

Sara Schwetschenau - Fit-for-Purpose Water Quality Models to Impove Drinking Water System DecisionMaking - Advisors: Cohon, VanBriesen

Xiaoyu (Will) Gao - Dissolution of Cu-based Engineered Nanomaterials (ENMs) in Agricultural Soil: Impacts on Metal Bioavailability and Toxicity - Advisor: Lowry

Sneha Shanbhag - Electrode Material Functionality and Efficiency in Electrochemical Deionization - Advisors: Mauter, Whitacre

Miranda Gorman - An Assessment of Environmental Sustainability of Non-Fuel Mining and Mined Materials in the U.S. - Advisor: Dzombak

Eleanor Spielman-Sun - Understanding the Impact of Charge and Solubility on Nanoparticle Uptake and Transformations in Planta Through Spatially Resolved Chemical Speciation - Advisor: Lowry

Matthew Grasinger - Multiscale Modeling and Theoretical Design of Dielectric Elastomers Advisor: Dayal Henning Lange - Variational Methods for Energy Systems - Advisor: Berges Xuechen Lei - Systematic Control Logic Fault Identification and Localization of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Systems - Advisors: Berges, Akinci, Liu

Susu Xu - Physics-Guided Information Acquisition and Learning for Urban Infrastructure Systems with Constrained Sensing Capabilities - Advisor: Noh Shuguan Yang - Predicting Spatio-Temporal Traffic in Large-Scale Network with Multi-Source Data - Advisor: Qian Pinchao Zhang - Managing Travel Demand for System Optimum in Transportation Networks - Advisor: Qian

2019 Graduate Orientation

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Detecting good vibrations, with pigs CEE and ECE researchers use vibrational sensors to detect sick pigs and improve farm efficiency.

On a pig farm in Thailand, researchers wearing protective gear from head to toe attach sensors beneath the panels of a muddy pig pen floor. The sensors don’t have cameras and they are protected by waterproof boxes to survive the harsh, dirty environment in the pens. Instead of visuals, the sensors pick up vibrations to detect pig movement and behavior.

In a Carnegie Mellon University Thailand (CMU-Thailand) collaborative research project, Professors Hae Young Noh (CEE) and Pei Zhang (ECE) are developing these sensors to track pig movement and manage pig health in a noninvasive way.

Hae Young Noh

Currently, raising pigs requires the use of antibiotics—it is cheap, safe, and keeps the pigs alive when illness strikes. But this quickly leads to drug resistance as the antibiotics stop being effective. Without the antibiotics, farmers can quickly go bankrupt from one bug killing their entire stock.

“We had been thinking about animal tracking and animal monitoring for a while, and we noticed that antibiotics

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are a big issue for animal welfare as they are quickly becoming ineffective due to overuse,” said CEE Associate Professor Noh. “It’s good to know quantitatively what kind of sickness the animals have.”

The sensors detect even the tiniest pig’s movement based on the vibrations from their footsteps or other motion. Each time the pig comes in contact with the floor it creates a vibration that the sensors can detect—similar to what happens when humans walk.

By tracking healthy pig behavior, they can also detect abnormal behavior that could indicate the pig is ill. The farmers can then isolate the sick pigs or administer antibiotics only when the pigs are sick.

Monitoring the pig behavior in this way could also provide valuable information that can be used to increase farm efficiency. For example, are all of the pigs feeding? Are any of the baby pigs being unintentionally injured? The vibration sensors, unlike visual sensors, don’t require a line of sight or consistent lighting.

CEE NEWS

The team has a partnership with Betagro Farm in Thailand, where they have done two sensor deployments.

The sensors are geophone sensors— the kind used for earthquakes. Ten sensors were placed in two pens: one pen with 20-30 pigs and the other with a mother pig and her piglets.

Once they collect the geophone, they apply machine learning to differentiate between the different pigs’ movements, even classifying between the large pigs and small piglets.

While the team still has more data to collect, the initial results showed changes in the pigs’ activity level over time, noting that activity depends on the time of day. As the piglets grew, their overall energy per day increased over time, and they exhibited a regular daily pattern. The team will continue to monitor pig behavior and optimize the machine learning model to be able to distinguish between not only sick and healthy pigs, but pigs with different kinds of illnesses. The sensors could eventually be used to monitor other animals once they are able to develop the technology further. Because the sensors are inexpensive, they could work on any size farm. The researchers also have a similar project that detects human gait to predict and prevent falls of elderly patients.

“On the practical side we are hoping to have a system that farmers can use to monitor pigs 24/7, predicting when a pig may be sick or aggressive or in danger, so they can respond before anything bad happens,” said Zhang, an associate research professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

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“We want what we present here to inspire other researchers to use structural response to detect activity inside buildings. We want buildings not just to become smart, but empathetic in a way—so they can understand and respond to our wants and needs.”

“It’s good to know quantitatively what kind of sickness the animals have.”

- Hae Young Noh

The sensors are instrumented on the underside of the floor panels in the pig pen.

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CLASS OF 2019 STUDENT AWARDS ASCE OUTSTANDING CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENT

Lauren Mueller H. A. THOMAS, SR. DISTINGUISHED SERVICE

Amanda Soyk H. A. THOMAS, SR. SCHOLARSHIP

Stephanie Wong

Elizabeth Young JAMES P. ROMUALDI CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Ariana Sabbat OUTSTANDING TEACHING ASSISTANT

Stephanie Laughton

Mostafa Mirshekari PAUL P. CHRISTIANO DISTINGUISHED SERVICE

Elizabeth Alexander MAO YISHENG OUTSTANDING DISSERTATION

Kelly D. Good Coal-Fired Power Plant Wastewater Contributions to Bromide Concentrations in Drinking Water Sources

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CEE NEWS

Alum Pingbo Tang Joins CEE as Associate Professor CEE is pleased to welcome Pingbo Tang as an Associate Professor.

Tang earned his PhD in CEE in 2009. Tang, whose PhD dissertation explored the extraction of surveying goals from point clouds obtained from laser scanners to support bridge inspection, previously taught at Arizona State University and Western Michigan University.

Tang’s research focus includes computer vision, pattern recognition, and data science for civil infrastructure systems. He’s also interested in human technology and human systems engineering within civil engineering—as well as automation and robotics in construction and civil infrastructure operations.

At CEE, he plans to incorporate the use of gaming tools for infrastructure engineering and management education and practice.

“I plan to extend virtual reality and augmented reality games into group decision-making modes to have students team up and compete against each other,” he says. The goal is to achieve high performance in condition assessment of structures, cash flow diagnosis, construction safety inspection, and workspace arrangement for productivity.

“Pingbo Tang has an impressive record of innovation in bringing advanced technology into infrastructure engineering, construction, and operation,” said Dave Dzombak, Hamerschlag University Professor and Department Head. “Pingbo will complement nicely existing strengths in our faculty, and help us move into new areas.”

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Tang says he is excited to return to CEE as an instructor, working with the school’s computer science and robotics programs to train civil and environmental engineering researchers to integrate artificial intelligence, robotics, sensing technology, and human-computer interactions into a wide range of applications.

He says that his teaching style makes the classroom more interactive through the use of discussions and hands-on experiments.

He utilizes interdisciplinary discussion and creative thinking in the classroom—integrating computational models, data science, and human systems engineering into engineering and project management decisionmaking scenarios.

VanBriesen Named Vice Provost for Faculty Jeanne VanBriesen has been appointed vice provost for faculty. VanBriesen is the Duquesne Light Company Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy, and director of the Center for Water Quality in Urban Environmental Systems.

Under her leadership, the Vice Provost for Faculty office will continue to focus on establishing long-term and effective diversity, inclusion, and equity strategic plans in all of Carnegie Mellon’s fields and disciplines.

VanBriesen will work with Provost Jim Garrett to oversee all areas of faculty affairs, with particular focus on recruitment and retention; the reappointment, tenure and promotion process; academic human resources issues; faculty development; and academic unit hiring plans.

She also will serve as a liaison to faculty-related university committees.

“CEE prepares civil and environmental engineers to face the challenges of operating and maintaining complex interdependent and aging civil infrastructure systems. The CEE program creates well-rounded engineers that not only have technical capabilities, but also strong leadership skills needed to lead society into a sustainable future.”

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Qian Awarded Posner, Molloy, and Pietrandrea Career Development Chair in Civil Engineering

A car breaks down. An accident halts traffic. A few streets away, a road closes for construction. In many cities, congested roadways are simply inescapable.

With his research, CEE Associate Professor Zhen (Sean) Qian is working toward a different world, where real-time and historical data allow us to better manage our aging and overcrowded infrastructure. Through data modeling and frameworks, Qian is not only finding ways to reduce congestion, energy use, and emissions within existing systems, but also to design sustainable, resilient, and intelligent infrastructure for the future.

As director of Carnegie Mellon’s Mobility Data Analytics Center (MAC), Qian integrates massive amounts of data from various agencies and the private sector to look holistically at our transportation systems. By analyzing data on weather, parking, public transit, roadway, incidents, events, and more, Qian can better understand travel behavior, identify efficient management strategies, and develop decision-making tools for legislators, transportation planners,

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engineers, researchers, and even travelers.

Qian has previously received a Greenshields Prize from the Transporation Research Board and an NSF CAREER Award for his work.

In May 2019 he was honored with the inaugural Henry Posner, Anne Molloy, and Robert and Christine Pietrandrea Career Development Chair in Civil Engineering, an endowed term professorship created to support a faculty member in the early phases of their career.

“I am extremely honored to receive this endowed professorship at the early stage of my career,” say Qian.

“This early career development chair will not only provide resources to advance my research, but also allow me to further expand on the impact of my work, particularly understanding the societal consequence of emerging technologies to infrastructure and human beings. I am so grateful for the recognition and to the support from Mr. and Mrs. Pietrandrea, Mr. Posner, and Ms. Molloy.”

This prestigious award was made possible by the generosity of Robert

and Christine Pietrandrea, who chose to honor their long-time friends Henry Posner III and Anne Molloy in the naming of the chair. Robert Pietrandrea and Posner have together run the Railroad Development Corporation (RDC) since 1987, and Anne Molloy, Posner’s wife, is a Carnegie Mellon trustee. The Posner family has previously supported the construction of Carnegie Mellon’s Posner Center and provided significant contributions to the Presidential Scholarship program.

“With his focus in transportation research and education, coupled with his hard work and creativity, Sean Qian is an ideal first recipient of this first early-career development chair for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,” said Dave Dzombak, Hamerschlag University Professor and CEE Department Head. He added, “We are very grateful for the generous gift that made this career development chair possible. It strengthens permanently our department and the work that we do on infrastructure and the environment.”

CEE NEWS

Carnegie Mellon Leads DOE Team Improving Rural Mobility The Department of Energy (DOE) is funding a collaborative team led by CEE professor Sean Qian, as they attempt to change the landscape of rural transportation in Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Greene County. The interdisciplinary team includes CEE professors Chris Hendrickson and

with a single trip purpose, and thus, energy inefficient.”

Encompassing the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and bordered by neighboring West Virginia, Greene county is about 90 percent rural. With its proximity to partners in Pittsburgh

support trip reservations, volunteerrequest matching, and information dissemination. The project will take a holistic approach, centered around user access to health care, community-based services, their place of work, and food.

Project partner 412 Food Rescue has already found great success combatting issues of food waste and insecurity in urban areas.

“We want to respond to requests to utilize our platform to address mobility and transit access,” says cofounder and CEO Leah Lizarondo. This project allows us to explore how our technology-coordinated, communitypowered model can be adapted to meet even more challenges.”

NREL is a DOE national lab working towards breakthroughs in energy efficiency, sustainable transportation, and renewable power technologies.

“The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and specifically the Mobility Systems Group at NREL, is excited to extend our CMU partnership to research and address rural citizens’ mobility needs for enhanced quality of life, while taking into account energy efficiency and sustainability,” says NREL team lead Dr. Stanley Young.

“mobility services to rural areas are insufficient, inefficient, unaffordable, and inaccessible.”

Costa Samaras, Rick Stafford and Karen Lightman of Metro21: Smart Cities Institute alongside deployment partners at Greene County, Waynesburg University, Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities, 412 Food Rescue, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Modern innovations in transportation mean that it has never been easier to get around, however these advances have largely bypassed rural America.

To quote the team’s proposal, “mobility services to rural areas are insufficient, inefficient, unaffordable, and inaccessible,” while rural driving trips are “likely to be expensive, long, FALL 2019

and the local presence of Waynesburg University, it is the ideal test bed for this innovative rural county mobility platform (RAMP) that could be replicated in rural counties across the U.S. The RAMP will be a hybrid service consisting of two complementary components: a volunteer-based ridesharing system and a structured shuttle service, both designed and optimized using available data.

Feedback from county residents will shape the “human-centered design” process, while an online platform and phone-based system will

Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities (PRCC) is a local partner of the DOE’s Clean Cities Coalition Network working to support local actions to reduce petroleum use in transportation.

“This project has the potential to advance the fundamental knowledge of how energy-efficient, affordable mobility services can work in rural America, enabling them to be systematically planned, operated, and monitored, inherently merged with system-level modeling. Mobility services in rural counties have been overlooked for decades, but they are critical to social welfare, energy usage, and the local population’s quality of life.” says Qian.

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If you’ve planted vegetables or made mud pies before, you probably noticed the little stones, leaves, and sand particles in the soil. Unlike steel bowls and aluminum foil, soil is much more complicated and contains many more particles. While a long piece of steel can look the same at every point, you might find something different in a soil pot, even if you move 10 cm.

So how exactly does soil behave? What happens when something moves over it? We rely on soil to grow flowers and food, but we really don’t know much about how it behaves in this type of scenario.

“Even if you have a big truck or robot, and you want to drive it on soil, you’re not sure if it’s going to get stuck or move,” said CEE Professor Kaushik Dayal.

Dayal has won a 2019 Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) award to examine soil behavior in these situations using multiscale modeling, funded by the Department of Defense (DoD).

Dayal Receives a 2019 MURI Award to Dig into the Labyrinth of Soil

Dayal is part of a team of researchers from five universities, led by California Institute of Technology, working on this problem. Dayal will be joined by two PhD students in fall 2019 for the program, which will receive $1 million over five years.

Scientists typically use two different size scales to analyze materials: the grain scale that examines individual particles and the continuum scale that looks at the bigger picture. Though soil contains a great variety of particles to keep researchers’ hands busy, focusing on individual particles alone is simply not enough to comprehend a hillside or large stretch of land.

“If you really look at every particle, you don’t have enough computing power to even figure out what a little block of soil is doing. So you want to figure out how things behave on the scale of meters,” said Dayal.

“And at the same time, you have particles that are smaller than a millimeter. You have these two different scales that you want to understand how they talk to each other, and that’s where the multiscale part of things comes in.”

While some of the other teams characterize soil through experiments, Dayal’s team will build predictive computational models that they hope will help engineers understand how soil behaves in all kinds of conditions. Using that knowledge, they will be able to know how machines interact with soil, predict whether they can drive on unfamiliar terrain, and build robots that can more easily navigate difficult ground.

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CEE NEWS

New, Integrated CEE/CS Degree Program Focus on Emerging Technologies This fall CEE launched a new, integrated degree program with the School of Computer Science.

The Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Integrated Study in Computer Science was designed for civil and environmental engineers who are interested in learning more about emerging technologies.

“The intersection of engineering and computer science is opening up new opportunities in both fields, so the degree will appeal to students who see themselves as innovators,” says Director of Graduate Programs David Vey. The new program prepares students to work in areas of civil and environmental engineering—while enabling them to pursue fields

including data analytics, sensing, machine learning, statistical optimization and networking, software design and implementation.

“Our new MSCEE and CS program contributes in new ways to bring advanced computing technology into civil and environmental engineering,” says Hamerschlag University Professor and CEE Head Dave Dzombak.

The curriculum was developed through a joint agreement between CMU’s College of Engineering and School of Computer Science—both of which offer highly-ranked and soughtafter programs.

The integrated degree program meets the needs of the evolving civil and

environmental engineering industry. “In recent years, we’ve noticed a growing trend among our engineering students who want to incorporate components of computer science within their degree,” Vey explains.

The desire to incorporate computer science into their coursework led a number of students to create self-designed tracks that drew on curriculum from across the University. “We decided that it would be worthwhile to formalize the curriculum and provide an option that we believe will answer the demand,” Vey says.

Recent Alumni to Participate in MIT Rising Stars Workshop Three recent CEE PhD graduates have been selected to participate in MIT’s Rising Stars in Civil and Environmental Engineering workshop, a competitive program the brings 20 women together to prepare them for careers in academia and as leaders in civil and environmental engineering.

Mahnoush Babaei (PhD ‘19) is currently doing postdoctoral research in Mechanical Engineering.

She completed her PhD research under the supervision of Professor Kaushik Dayal. Her thesis work examined using structural instabilities to generate high power and work densities in heat- and photomechanically active thin liquid crystal FALL 2019

Mahnoush Babaei

Kelly Good

Susu Xu

polymeric films using nonlinear finite element models.

plant bromide discharges on drinking water sources.

Kelly Good (PhD ‘19) is currently a visiting assistant professor at Villanova University. While at CMU she was advised by Professor Jeanne VanBriesen where she researhced the interactions of water systems with other infrastructure systems and the resulting effects on the environment and health.

Susu Xu (PhD ‘19) is currently engaged as a research scientist at Qualcomm AI research.

Most recently, she was named a 2019 Siebel Scholar in Energy Science in recognition for her work on understanding the effects of power

Her PhD research focused on sensing and learning in smart urban infrastructure systems, from bottom layers such as sensing system optimization and machine learning algorithm development to real-world applications such as city-scale air pollution monitoring and earthquakeinduced infrastructure health monitoring.

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Modeling to Predict Landslides Landslides in the United States annually claim between 25-50 lives and cause more than $3 billion in damage. Of the hundreds of landslides in Southwestern Pennsylvania in 2018, it is estimated that more than 30 happened in Allegheny County, including in Pittsburgh, causing $18 million in damage.

With that in mind, CEE master’s student Asish Yadav Madala has been working with CEE professor Amit Acharya and Christopher Mertz, Principal Project Scientist at CMU’s Robotics Institute, on research into landslides and the potential for developing software that will enable authorities to detect future landslides.

Madala is constructing 3D models of Pittsburgh area landslides to determine the soil crack pattern, as well as the shape and size of the land dislocated. He takes hundreds of photos of a landslide to develop a 3D

model, which allows researchers to see the entire area after a landslide occurs. These visual images/models are then compared to data and images collected in road monitoring research as part RoadBiotics, a CMU spin-off of which Mertz is a co-founder.

RoadBiotics uses smartphones mounted on vehicles to collect images regularly throughout Allegheny County. From the earlier research, Madala had access to lidar data and GIS-maps that provide soil information. He says officials from Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh also contributed data to the project.

Comparing the historic data with the data he collected simultaneously allows Madala to determine where the fractures occurred that led to the slide, how much soil moved, as well as the shape and trajectory of the soil that slid.

Asish Yadav Madala Madala says computer vision and deep learning are used to interpret the data, producing a mathematical model, which will potentially be used to predict if a particular slope is prone to slide.

For Madala, who has been involved in research before, this project has been particularly important. While he has not been personally affected by landslides, he cites the potential for loss. Being part of developing a solution that could save lives and money is meaningful, he says.

“Through research, we can find ways to advance development to improve lives,” he says. “That’s my motivation.

I want to create something that will improve the quality of life.”

Ansys model showing the sliding of assumed failure surface using CZM

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CEE NEWS

Brown and Hegde Named Andrew Carnegie Scholars

CEE/EPP senior Taylor Brown demonstrates a steady leadership presence in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter and on the CMU Varsity Swimming/Diving team. She serves as the Director of Events for ASCE, successfully incorporating first-year students and graduate students, as well as upperclassmen, into ASCE service and social activities.

Brown also served as the Aesthetics Chair for ASCE Blitz Booth at Spring Carnival, using upcycled materials for the booth’s art pieces, winning first place for Sustainability. As a senior member of the Swimming & Diving team, she is a mentor for younger members. Brown is also an active participant on the CEE Department’s Undergraduate Student Advisory Council.

When junior Ryan Rusali stepped off of the plane in Germany, he immediately felt overwhelmed. But his desire to learn more about Berlin and its urban planning helped him overcome his fears. It also tested his adaptation skills—he’d never traveled outside of the country and didn’t know the German language. The result

Study Abroad in Berlin Provides Urban Planning Insight was a summer experience that he says he’ll never forget.

Ryan Rusali

Rusali’s summer program fulfilled his dream to travel within Germany while gaining valuable life and educational experience through the IES Abroad program. He took classes alongside students from across the United States and the courses were taught in English, allowing Rusali to dive immediately into his studies.

“Before going, I heard that Berlin had a lot of great public works so I wanted to go and experience that

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Sharika Hegde, a CEE senior with a minor in computer science, has shown strong leadership as the President of the ASCE student chapter. She has strengthened the chapter’s connection to key employers and has raised the level of ASCE’s participation in Booth through her work as Booth Chair.

Hegde has a deep interest in transportation, and is a part of Professor Sean Qian’s research team. She completed two summer internships at renowned transportation companies. She has presented on her research efforts in a department poster session and in a well-received presentation to the CEE Alumni Advisory Council. Hegde also often gives her time to be a resource for new and prospective CEE students.

for myself. The city was amazing and totally exceeded my expectations.” In Berlin, Rusali split his time between classwork and travel. He made a point to visit somewhere new each day.

“Walking around, it seemed like every street was the site of some major historical event. I really loved getting the chance to learn about all that the city has gone through,” he mentions.

Rusali also experienced apartment life in the heart of the city as well as Berlin’s public transportation system.

He came home with ideas about how American systems could change for the better. “The buses in Berlin were on time and signs posted at the bus stops told you exactly when the next bus would be arriving. It definitely showed me a lot of the ways that we could improve public transit here.”

Rusali says that his time in Germany helped him to better understand urban planning and design. It also confirmed his passion for civil engineering. “I’ve now solidified my decision to go to graduate school and study more about how urban planning and design can be used to make city life better here in the United States,” he says.

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Imagine your car alerting you that the next traffic signal is about to turn red because the signal “spoke” to it.

Using Connected Vehicles and Traffic Signals to Improve Transportation Safety

That is a world Navin Katta (MS ’09) is helping create, as part of the team at high-tech start-up Savari, Inc., a company that develops both hardware and software for vehicles that is designed to improve road safety.

Katta joined Savari in 2010, and currently works on next-generation technologies, managing the company’s Smart City initiatives, working with Savari’s Cloud products, and managing mobile application development. He began his career as a member of the technical staff, and has worked as a principal investigator and manager for research grants, totaling more than $3.8 million.

Savari’s technology allows vehicles to “speak” to one another so drivers can be alerted if, for example, a car drifts across lanes, turns without signaling, or suddenly emerges from behind an obstruction and into the path of another car. Katta says they expect this technology to reduce the number of vehicle crashes in the United Sates by about 80 percent.

Several automakers have announced plans to include this technology in cars manufactured for the 2020-2021 model year.

“What we do here is more on the perception side—helping the car perceive what is going on around it but not actuating your brakes or accelerator to react to the situation. It still relies on the driver – whether they are human or an autonomous driving computer program,” Katta says.

Navin Katta (MS ’09)

In addition, Katta and his team are readying their latest project for deployment as part of New York City’s Connected Vehicle Pilot.

This project uses data transmitted between cell phones and traffic signals to assist visually impaired pedestrians

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cross the street safely. Katta says the phones will receive information from traffic signals, alerting pedestrians to approaching intersections and letting them know when it is safe to cross. Cars will use connected vehicle technology to receive information from the traffic signals, alerting drivers to the presence of pedestrians and the status of the traffic lights.

Having already earned his B.Tech degree at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India, Katta says he was attracted to CEE for his master’s degree because of CMU’s interdisciplinary approach to education, an approach he feels is the best way to approach many issues we face today.

While earning his master’s, Katta was part of the Advanced Infrastructure Systems Group at CEE, where he learned about sensors, data acquisition, and data management. He also took a course in Applied Machine Learning. He says the combination of the two fields got him interested in intelligent transportation.

Katta credits professors and staff with encouraging him to explore his interests while at CMU. Interacting with professors helped him understand the need for a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving.

He emphasizes that having an open mind – whether it is about exploring a new culture or what to study, is imperative when considering whether to attend school internationally.

Having a goal in mind is important, he says, but students should be open to new ideas about how to achieve that goal.

“You also need to find what drives you,” Katta says about determining where to study. “You can design your program to whatever you want it to be.”

CEE NEWS

Alumnus Welcomes Students for Real World Engineering Program

Dorian Hemming

Dorian Hemming (MS ’11) understands the value of professional networking.

To help the next generation of CEE grads transition into the workforce, he was excited to host CEE students Charyl Tan, Andrew Thompson, and Annie Hu in Washington, D.C.—and show them a day in the life of a civil and environmental engineer at Brown and Caldwell.

helped students to see first-hand how their education will transition to the real world.

Hemming and vice president Bill Gilman (MS ’85) hosted students as part of CMU’s Real World Engineering: D.C. program, which connects undergraduate engineers with area alumni to learn more about working as a professional engineer.

“This experience allowed students to ask questions concerning their professional environment and enabled them to take the first steps in professional networking,” he says.

Hemming is hopeful that the students can turn the networking opportunities into future internships.

Students toured the engineering office and visited Alexandria Renew Enterprises’ water resources recovery facility to learn about an upcoming tunnels project.

Instead of focusing just on technical concepts, the students and mentors discussed how to interact with clients, solve problems in the context of public/community input, and work with a team.

Hemming recommends that current students gain hands-on academic experiences by taking on as many opportunities as possible. “Find where your passions and talents intersect— that will make you a competent engineer. Your people skills are what will make you a great engineer.”

Hemming says that the trip

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CEE Alumni Awards Showcase Graduates’ Successes excited to be improving lives and the economy in Pittsburgh—I couldn’t do that without my background at CEE.”

Mike Slenska consultant. “It’s a great honor to be honored by this great organization,” Campbell states.

Jeannine Hoey

Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible Distinguished Public Service Jeannine Hoey (BS ’83, MS ’95) 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.

Hoey is chief of the Engineering and Construction Division of the Pittsburgh District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She’s a U.S. Army veteran who earned distinction for her project management and structural engineering expertise. Hoey managed the $1.7 billion Lower Monongahela River Navigation Project and served as the program manager for the Inland Marine Transportation System Capital Investment Strategy Team. She’s also held numerous board positions in the Pittsburgh Post of the Society of American Military Engineers.

Hoey says that her father, a CEE grad, inspired her to become an engineer.

“I’m honored and it means so much to be singled out for this award. I’m 22

Jim Campbell

Outstanding Alumni Service This award was presented this year to Jim Campbell (MS ’80, PhD ’83) and Mike Slenska (BS ’89, MS ’90). The award recognizes CEE alumni who have made sustained contributions to the CEE department, the university, or the engineering profession over a period of time.

Slenska is a senior environmental manager with Three Rivers Management, Inc., focused on managing the design and construction of large-scale environmental remediation projects. He’s also worked in the geotechnical engineering industry.

Slenska praised the tight-knit CEE community for keeping him engaged as a student, graduate, and instructor.

“All the time I’ve been here, the department has been a close, family atmosphere. The instructors are supportive—they want you to do well knowing that it’s academically challenging.”

Campbell and Slenska taught CEE’s senior capstone design course and were recruited for the position

by Larry Cartwright because of their expertise in environmental remediation.

Campbell is president of Engineering Management, Inc. (EMI). He specializes in investigating and cleaning up former industrial facilities and disposal sites. He started EMI in 1992 to provide environmental liability services to corporations and Potentially Responsible Party Groups, as well as expert services to law firms.

He’s also worked as a corporate environmental manager, expert, and

Sylvia Yunlin Sun

Recent Alumni Award This award, recognizing CEE alumni who have a noteworthy achievement within ten years of receiving their highest degree from CEE, was given to Sylvia Yunlin Sun (MS ’14).

CEE NEWS

Today, Locus Technologies creates cloud software that monitors, collects, and organizes data on energy and water use, GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, waste, and other activities. It helps companies to improve their environmental footprints and better understand environmental risk management.

Duplan fondly recalls his time working with former CEE professor Paul Chrisitiano—a mentor who became a valued colleague and friend. “We met in Italy where I was an entrylevel engineer, working on a nuclear power plant project for Westinghouse. At a dinner one evening, he asked me if I’d like to come to graduate school in the United States. The following year I was at CMU.”

Duplan Named 2019 Distinguished Alumni Neno Duplan (MS ’83) has earned many awards during his career, but few have had the personal impact of being chosen CEE’s 2019 Distinguished Alumni. Duplan says that when he learned of the commendation, he immediately felt honored. “I know how many great CMU alumni are out there, especially here in Silicon Valley.”

He attributes his success to a well-rounded education—one that actually led him away from civil engineering and into computer science. As a student, Duplan’s passion for environmental stewardship evolved into a graduate thesis, and finally into the business plan for Locus Technologies. The company, founded in 1997, empowers organizations to track and mitigate the environmental impact of their activities and manage EHS (Environment, Health, and Safety) compliance. Duplan serves as founder and CEO.

Sun is an estimator and project engineer for Fay Construction, working on heavy highway and heavy civil cost estimation for projects in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. In addition to her achievements as an engineer, Sun was recognized for her continued efforts FALL 2019

He took courses in different areas of the university and built experience in areas that, at the time, were not the buzzwords they are today. “Professor Daniel Rehak implanted ideas about expert systems and artificial intelligence—the school broadened my horizons and put my career on the right path.”

Coming full circle, Duplan has now stepped into the role of mentor by providing leadership and advice to employees at Locus Technologies.

He says it’s one of the best parts of his job. “I believe it is very important to have mentors for young engineers.” Duplan also remains actively involved in the Carnegie Mellon alumni community, many of whom he met while working in Pittsburgh; Genoa, Italy; and Brussels, Belgium.

When he’s not working, Duplan is focused on fitness. He’s completed the Alcatraz to San Francisco swim marathon 15 times. He’s also a proud parent of a CMU graduate. His daughter, Siena, earned a master’s degree in business intelligence and data analytics in 2018.

to support minorities, women, and the economically disadvantaged through the Minority Outreach programs in the construction industry.

Sun’s achievements include being elected the 2018 ASCE Young Member Forum treasurer and fundraising

chair and being named the 2018 ASCE Pittsburgh Section Young Engineer of Year 2018. In her acceptance speech she encouraged engineering professionals to “pass on experience, thoughts, and wisdom. Share what you know with the next generation.”

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How We Spent Our Summer Sharika Hegde - undergraduate Sharika Hegde, CEE senior with a minor in computer science, spent her summer interning as a contractor at the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center in Washington, D.C.. She was part of a team that focused on national connected and automated vehicle (CAV) research.

Sharika’s main project involved working on a variety of data visualization and CAV research projects—including FHWA’s Cooperative Automation Research Mobility Applications (CARMA) platform.

Jade Xiaoyao Peng - PhD Candidate PhD candidate Jade Xiaoyao Peng spent her summer as an intern for the Department X Computational Physics Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

Her work focused on extending the current phase field dislocation dynamics method (PFDD) library to include anisotropy, heterogeneity, and new materials. Jade also performed simulations to demonstrate the new features and strength of the library—which included many hours of coding and debugging.

Russell Orlick - undergraduate CEE junior Russell Orlick spent his summer working with Clark Foundations, learning the ins and outs of the construction industry.

Clark Foundations, with locations across the country, has completed more than 100 of the country’s most sophisticated support of excavation systems.

Through this experience, Russell had the opportunity to participate in field engineering work, shadow a field engineer, and work with 3D modeling.

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CEE NEWS

CEE Giving

Creating a Legacy With Service and Support When Don Coffelt started his PhD program at Carnegie Mellon, he had no idea how transformational the experience would be.

“It’s difficult to describe the impact that the CEE Department has had on me and the way they embraced me as an adult student, along with my wife and children. The Department often refers to themselves as family, and it really felt that way.”

A member of the University staff since 2003, Coffelt is currently Associate Vice President for Facilities Management and Campus Services and takes great pride in creating an environment that supports the innovative work for which Carnegie Mellon is known. Coffelt has also served as a CEE Adjunct Faculty member since finishing his PhD in 2008.

“Teaching allows me to be part of the CEE family in an ongoing way,” he says. “To teach and to mentor students brings me a great deal of joy.”

As a PhD student, Coffelt was advised by then department head Chris Hendrickson. Today, helping to grow the Chris T. Hendrickson Undergraduate Travel Fund is just one of the many ways Coffelt and his wife, Connie, support CEE. Their generosity has extended to collegelevel initiatives, as well as CEE lab renovations, the Lawrence Cartwright Support Fund for Teaching Professors, and an annual undergraduate scholarship for a CEE student.

“Don and Connie Coffelt have supported the mission of Civil FALL 2019

Don Coffelt with wife Connie and daughter Grace in New Zealand and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon in many ways,” says Dave Dzombak, Hammershclag University Professor and Department Head. “Much of their philanthropic support has been focused directly on students. They have helped numerous students at a critical stage in their development.”

what attending this school has meant for my son and his career,” Coffelt says. “The Carnegie Mellon culture is one of inclusion, collaboration, and communication, and I’ve never seen a place where student access to senior faculty is as open as it is here.

It may sound cliché to say I’m paying it forward, but we can’t pay it back.”

The Coffelt family also supports the Tartan Athletics Department, through which their son Jake, a 2010 BS in Mechanical Engineering graduate, participated in the Kiltie Band.

Additionally, Coffelt has assisted in the University’s fundraising efforts as a board member for the Andrew Carnegie Society since 2013.

For Coffelt, the choice to give is simple: If you are able to be philanthropic, you should do it. “My advice is to establish a personal philosophy of giving based on your value system. I value the mission and purpose of this institution, and our contributions reflect my feelings about the College of Engineering and specifically the CEE Department. It’s my home.”

“I think about the incredible impact Carnegie Mellon has had on me and

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A Journey Worth Remembering: The 1956 St. Lawrence Seaway Construction Tour

Stan was the navigator; I was the driver. We got lost only once.

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- Russel Jones

Their senior courses at Carnegie Tech wouldn’t start for another week, but 19 members of the Civil Engineering class of 1957 had reunited early. Each one had brought a suitcase. They greeted each other, talking excitedly about the journey ahead, and, one after another, stacked their luggage in a growing pile in the covered back of a pickup truck.

Before long, the students were on the road and on their way to tour the St. Lawrence Seaway project, whose construction was at its peak that summer of 1956. The site visits had been planned by their Civil Engineering professor

Elio D’Appolonia, and these seniors would be the first group—student or otherwise—to tour each of the project’s American and Canadian work sites.

When it came to the logistics of meals, hotels, and transportation, the students had been on their own but had successfully crafted a plan. As they set out from Pittsburgh, Russel Jones (BS ’57, MS ’60, PhD ’64) and his roommate, R. Stanton Over (BS ’57, MS ’63), led the caravan in the pickup that Jones had borrowed from his father.

Three cars followed them, including two with six people crammed inside.

CEE NEWS

“Stan was the navigator; I was the driver,” recalls Jones. “We got lost only once.”

The St. Lawrence Seaway project was undoubtedly a sight worth seeing.

With 22,000 workers involved, 6 million cubic yards of concrete poured, and over 210 million cubic yards of earth and rock moved from 1954 to 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway is today counted among the top engineering feats of the 20th century.

On their trip, the students visited numerous locks, dams, and canals from Monday through Friday. They toured multiple sites every day and, rather than sticking to overlooks, got up close to the work in progress.

“In class, we had studied construction projects and Dr. D’Appolonia often brought in his own consulting projects and discussed them with us, but actually getting down there in the trenches during the construction of the locks and dams was an amazing experience,” recalls Jones.

At each stop, Dr. D’Appolonia arranged for top engineers to lead lectures and discussions on topics

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like concrete, soils and foundation engineering, geology, construction planning, and problems encountered.

At the Moses-Saunders Power Dam, they even met with the dam’s namesake Robert Moses, who was overseeing its construction as head of the New York Power Authority.

“The locks we saw being built were massive, and we not only saw the construction underway, but met and talked with the designers and the people doing that construction,” Jones recalls. “It showed us what civil engineers actually do in the concrete, not the abstract.”

For Jones, the trip and Dr. D’Appolonia had a lasting impact.

For starters, the experience helped secure his decision to stay in civil engineering rather than enter the aerospace field.

Later, as a professor, Jones followed in the footsteps of Dr. D’Appolonia by sharing his own consulting projects with his students—something he says he benefited greatly from in Dr. D’Appolonia’s courses.

What’s more, the St. Lawrence Seaway trip was Jones’ first foray into travelling; he has since visited 108

Elio D’Appolonia countries and helped found several universities abroad.

Jones’ roommate, Stan Over, was also inspired by Dr. D’Appolonia. He went on to lead a multi-disciplinary consulting firm of more than 200 engineers and technicians for over 20 years. He was responsible for, and was personally involved in, the design of more than 100 highway and bridge construction projects.

“I’ve made my alumni contribution to the Dr. Elio D’Appolonia Graduate Fund since it was set up in 2012—and I will continue to do so,” Jones says.

“Dr. D’Appolonia was by far one of my favorite faculty members because he made what we were studying come alive.”

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Give strategically, Support generously.

“WHEN YOU GO TO A SCHOOL THAT IS AS SPECIAL AS CARNEGIE MELLON, YOU ALWAYS LOOK BACK WITH A SENSE OF PRIDE.”

Bob Pease (CE ’49) knows how to make a mark.

—BOB PEASE

World War II. At Carnegie Mellon University, Bob

With a 60-year career in urban redevelopment, he has shaped cities around the world, including participation in redesigning Pittsburgh after has created a lasting legacy through a gift in his estate plan that will create new opportunities for students and faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Bob's gift will also fund undergraduate student scholarship support throughout the university.

PORTRAIT PHOTO CREDIT: SHAMUS FATZINGER

BOB PEASE

Learn how easy it is to achieve your philanthropic vision through a planned gift by visiting giftplanning.cmu.edu.

Contact the Office of Gift Planning today at 412.268.5346

College of Engineering

or askjoebull@andrew.cmu.edu.

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