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ANSYS HALL
A Creative Epicenter Where CEE Students Bring Ideas to Life
Spring 2020
CEE NEWS
Spring 2020
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Dear Alumni and Friends, In this issue, we focus on big changes within CEE. ANSYS Hall, our creative epicenter, is now open and allows our students to collaborate in new and innovative ways. We’re growing in important new ways —and not just because of our new spaces. Faculty additions and achievements keep us among the leaders in civil and environmental engineering education and research. The addition of ANSYS Hall’s makerspace (p.4) gives students even more opportunity to learn, connect, and transform ideas into real-world solutions. Specialized equipment and training and an environment bright with natural light sparks creativity and gives students hands-on opportunities to build, test, learn and find new solutions. We are excited to announce the appointment of William Sanders as Dean of the College of Engineering. Dean Sanders is a leader in engineering research who has worked to ensure the strength and resilience of the U.S. power grid and to build university-business-government partnerships. He joins us from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. CEE faculty members are leaders. Professor Jeanne VanBriesen has been appointed Vice Provost for Faculty and is working to support faculty across the university in many ways. Professor Burcu Akinci continues as Associate Dean for Research for the College of Engineering and is the recipient of the ASCE 2020 Computing in Civil Engineering Award for her significant research contributions in computing, construction, and infrastructure management. Professor Pingbo Tang, who joined us in January, has been recognized by the ASCE Construction Institute and will receive the 2020 Daniel W. Halpin Award for Scholarship in Construction for his research and education activities that pioneer theories and practice of predictive civil infrastructure construction, operation and management. The ASCE Pittsburgh Section named Sean Qian Professor of the Year. Part of his research is on what drives the public’s use of transportation services, from buses to ride sharing (p.13). Professor Costa Samaras has been selected by the ASCE Transportation and Development Institute to receive the 2020 Harland Bartholomew Award for contributions to urban infrastructure resiliency design and alternative fueled, automated and connect vehicle planning. Professor Mario Berges and his students have been working to improve thermal comfort management in buildings (p. 16). His findings on the relationship between body shape and overall comfort levels could mean that too-cold or too-hot offices will become a thing of the past. Katherine Flanigan will join CEE as a new faculty member in Fall 2020. Her experience with deploying wireless sensor networks will help advance our education and research on smart cities. Heather Cain has joined CEE as our Alumni Relations and Events Manager. She is already enhancing our programming and support for CEE alumni across the U.S. and the world. 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
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Inside this Issue 10
College of Engineering Welcomes New Dean: William Sanders William Sanders, a leader in engineering research and academia, has been appointed Dean of the College of Engineering.
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Quantifying Transportation Relationships
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Heating and Cooling that Anticipates Your Needs
Sean Qian studied the relationship between Uber and public transportation, proving it can vary by time of day and location.
Mario Bergés, and his collaborators have created the first model that combines environmental information with data on an individual’s body shape to determine at what temperatures that person will feel most comfortable.
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Building Global Successes: Johnathan Tanner
26
Farming Data, Improving Production
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Alumnus Johnathan Tanner puts the skills he learned at CMU to work as a management consultant in the automotive, aerospace, travel, and information sectors for A.T. Kearney.
As a co-founder of foris.io, Arvind Murali Mohan (MS ’10, PhD ’13), is using technology to help farmers compile data to help even the playing field.
CEE Giving: Supporting Research and Innovation Inside CEE Since joining ExxonMobil in 2012, Omar De Leon has generously supported a number of student organizations and department initiatives and matched his gifts through his employer.
ANSYS HALL A Creative Epicenter Through glass walls and windowed learning areas, natural light streams into this impressive 36,000-square-foot building. Around computers and tables, you’ll find students debating drawings and digital designs.
2020 Program Rankings *
Our Faculty & Research
Civil Environmental 12th - UG 9th - UG 9th - Grad 7th - Grad
17 Full Professors 4 Associate Professors 3 Assistant Professors
* Source: U.S. News and World Report
Enrollment AY 2019-2020 Bachelors Masters Doctoral
90 123 76
CEE Students 52% of Are Women 64% Undergraduate Women 45% Graduate Women
2
Faculty with Active NSF Career Awards
$5.93M Annual Externally F unded Sponsored Research in FY19 SPRING 2020 03
ANSYS HALL
A CREATIVE EPICENTER Walk inside Carnegie Mellon’s ANSYS Hall and you’ll feel an energy in the air. Through glass walls and windowed learning areas, natural light streams into this impressive 36,000-square-foot building. Around computers and tables, you’ll find students debating drawings and digital designs. As the whirring of machinery and clanking of materials draws you further in, you’ll discover students using 3D printers and laser cutters, sawing wood, and welding steel. You’ll see others assembling finished products and complex prototypes of all sizes for course projects, independent research, club activities, entrepreneurship, and more. In each instance, students are learning what it takes to transform concepts into products and move ideas from paper to the physical world.
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Students can use the high bay to collaborate, build, and test their ideas
Reimagining Course Projects Fully opened in October 2019 as part of the College of Engineering’s larger maker ecosystem known as TechSpark, ANSYS Hall is a great boon for CEE courses. “What I can do with students just got bigger,” says Jim Thompson, who teaches the 12-401 Civil & Environmental Engineering Design capstone course. Last fall, Thompson’s students used the facility to complete a timed assembly and testing of the steel
Andrew Thompson collaborates with Lynn Rushkin (Left) and Lauren Heller (right) in the ansys high bay bridges they had designed in teams for their final senior project, with each bridge built to be 20 feet long and to hold 2,500 pounds. “At one time, our workspaces limited the type of projects we could do. In ANSYS, students have room to cut and drill everything, do the welding, and put the whole bridge together in one place,” says Thompson. Of course, before students work with any specialized equipment, proper safety and technical training are required. After completing their TechSpark training, students can scan their ID near the equipment needed and a green light will signal that they can proceed. A yellow light indicates that training is still ongoing, and a red light alerts the student that training is required before they can continue.
Knowledgeable TechSpark staff—a mix of professionals and trained students—are on hand to offer assistance and ensure safety procedures are followed, with the facilities open through 11:00 pm on most weeknights. “The tools, the expertise, and mostly the supervision let us do things we couldn’t have done before in our classes,” says Thompson. In addition to senior design, several other CEE courses benefit from the new maker space. In the Fall 2019 firstyear design course, students were taught about Arduino sensing by TechSpark staff, while the sophomore design course used the facility in several ways, including to build small-scale retaining walls capable of holding more than 100 pounds of sand. For that project, students used the building’s computer cluster to learn how to design in SolidWorks and AutoCAD. Then, to complete the assignment, they printed 3D components and used the wood shop and laser cutters to prepare materials
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“By seeing other disciplines and other approaches, our students are getting a better education.” Brian Belowich CEE Facilities and Lab Engineer
Benjamin Lawson (right) and Brian Lee (left) use laser cutter to create trusses like wood and cardboard for their builds. Sophomore design course instructor Sarah Christian hopes that using these tools now will make students more comfortable working with 3D printers and trying other new
technologies on the job. Beyond becoming familiar with industry tools, however, students are learning much bigger lessons in the maker space. Christian explains, “Once you have the ability to build something and
know how things go together, you design differently. You consider how things will be made, and you make decisions that simplify construction and save money on labor. Having experience making gives students a better understanding of how to do that.” Of course, as students work, mistakes happen, challenges arise, and projects often take longer than expected. “Things don’t go as planned,” says CEE sophomore Andrew Thompson. “You think you have it all figured out and then you get to build day. You meant to mark the wood at this inch, but then it’s a quarter-inch off and you’re suddenly making rapid-fire changes to your design. We had to learn to adapt and think on the fly.”
Sally Chen (center) holds her team’s first place award at the 2018 Rethink the Rink competition
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These moments offer another learning opportunity—highlighting the planning and care required for every step from design to construction, as well as the importance of a schedule and
budget that anticipates project risks. Through such experiences across their time in CEE, students not only learn how to avoid the temptation to overengineer, but also gain an appreciation of the methods, time, effort, costs, and safety considerations involved in construction and manufacturing.
Making Room for Creativity Outside of courses, CEE students can visit the ANSYS facilities for any number of other reasons, bringing their own materials to work on or purchasing supplies from TechSpark. Sometimes, they’re lucky enough to be able to reuse scraps left over from other completed projects. “The greatest thing is that students can learn on their own in the maker space courses and then do their own projects, even independently,” says Christian. CEE junior Benjamin Lawson is among the students employed in the maker space to enforce safety practices, perform equipment maintenance, and teach and help other students. An avid user of the space himself, he has taken nearly every class offered by TechSpark. He recently 3D-printed his own fidget toys, and after making an end table in the wood shop, a coffee table is now in the works. “Between classes and other responsibilities, it can be hard to find spare time for extra projects but I really enjoy it,” says Lawson. “It helps me relax.” CEE junior Brian Lee is another TechSpark worker who regularly stays in the maker space during his off-hours. He’s also experimenting with building a table and has made custom-engraved coasters for friends and family. “I like being able to make my ideas come true,” he says. “There’s so much opportunity to be creative and so much to learn about how each
tool works and how to adjust your drawings to make everything come together smoothly.” Beyond personal projects, students gather in ANSYS Hall to do work for organizations and activities they’ve joined, from making items and signs for fraternity and sorority events to preparing Ryan Rusali presents his team’s prototype for a safer hockey for Carnegie helmet at the 2019 Rethink the Rink competition Mellon’s annual Spring Carnival by building aerodynamic Buggy vehicles and elaborate Booth showpiece structures and decorations. Entering its third consecutive year, the Rethink the Rink project is another example of the types of collaborations that occur inside the maker space. Co-sponsored by the College of Engineering, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Covestro, a supplier of high-tech polymer materials, this event challenges students to develop prototypes of products that could make hockey safer without compromising game performance. With each year focused on a different aspect of player safety, crossdisciplinary student teams participate in a Make-a-thon over spring break, receiving guidance from coaches along with materials and technical expertise from Covestro. In 2018, CEE senior Sally Chen helped her team to re-envision the hockey rink dasher boards and glass. That year, students from 11 different
“You consider how things will be made, and you make decisions that simplify construction and save money on labor. Having experience making gives students a better understanding of how to do that.” Sarah Christian Teaching Professor
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we had several interactions with other people in the building,” CEE Professor Thompson recalls. “Because this is a resource for the whole college, everyone mingles more and each department gets exposure to the others. I think that’s a huge benefit.”
Computer lab overlooks ansys high bay
“It’s an incredible privilege to be able to use this technology and these machines. From scissors and markers to 3D printers, the maker space has everything you could need. I’m definitely going to use it more now that I’ve used it for class.” Greta Markey CEE Sophomore
departments participated. In 2019, the focus shifted to players’ equipment, and junior Ryan Rusali was part of the team whose helmet design received the Best Prototype Award. “It was a great opportunity to collaborate on a project that supports design thinking and engineering thought processes,” Rusali says. “It was everything I could have hoped for and captured all of the reasons why I came to CEE in the first place.” After the Make-a-thon, prototypes are submitted to the National Hockey League and USA Hockey, with the possibility of future testing at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex’s FedExRink in Cranberry, Pennsylvania.
Innovating Together Rethink the Rink is far from the only interdisciplinary collaboration inside the maker space. The open floor plan, computer cluster, and shared working areas naturally invite students across departments to draw inspiration from each other’s work and strike up conversations that lead to new ideas and new undertakings. “When we were assembling our bridges and doing poster sessions,
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CEE students too notice the benefits of spending time outside their comfort zone and the familiar walls of Porter Hall. After finishing up in the maker space, they stick around to chat with friends and often run into people they normally wouldn’t. “It’s a real collaborative spot, where you have people coming together who otherwise wouldn’t be working together,” explains Lawson. Sometimes, simply walking through the workshops can be educational, as students observe unfamiliar tools, materials, and methods. “We recently purchased a new material for one of our sophomores after he saw someone else using it in ANSYS. He had been unsure of his next move, but his research project is now taking off,” says CEE Facilities & Lab Engineer Brian Belowich. “By seeing other disciplines and other approaches, our students are getting a better education.” While ANSYS Hall is still new to many, more and more CEE students are getting comfortable with all this facility has to offer. “It’s an incredible privilege to be able to use this technology and these machines. From scissors and markers to 3D printers, the maker space has everything you could need,” says CEE sophomore Greta Markey. “I’m definitely going to use it more now that I’ve used it for class.” As students keep returning and the ideas keep flowing, the maker space is blossoming into its full potential as a shared collaborative hub for innovation, creativity, and learning—a place where vision and design become reality.
SENIOR DESIGN Seniors in the Fall 2019 12-401 capstone design course were tasked with building a bridge for the new dinosaur-themed Jimrassic Park. The teams designed, fabricated, constructed, and erected bridges meeting specific criteria-including load requirement and construction methods. Extra points were given for sustainability. See the project unfold online: bit.ly/jimrassic-park
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disciplinary boundaries to yield impactful, world-changing results,” says Sanders. “I am humbled and honored to serve as the next dean of engineering and look forward to working collaboratively across the college and university to create major research and education initiatives that will raise engineering’s impact and stature to new heights worldwide.”
College of Engineering Welcomes New Dean
William Sanders William H. Sanders, the former Herman M. Dieckamp Endowed Chair in Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the interim director of the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) in the University of Illinois System, has been appointed as the next dean of the College of Engineering. Sanders has spent the past 25 years of his career as a tenured professor at Illinois. His research interests include secure and dependable computing and security, as well as resiliency metrics and evaluation, with a focus on critical infrastructures. Sanders has also directed work at the forefront of national efforts to make the U.S. power grid smart and resilient. He was the founding director of the University of Illinois’ Information 010 CEE NEWS
Trust Institute in 2004 and was head of the university’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2014-2018. He also co-founded the Advanced Digital Sciences Center in Singapore in 2009, which is Illinois’ first international research facility. “Bill is a proven leader in engineering research and academia who builds strategic public-private partnerships. He’s also a well-respected collaborator in higher education,” says Carnegie Mellon Provost James H. Garrett, Jr. “I am fully confident that Bill will effectively shape the vision of our College of Engineering to ensure that its unparalleled advances in academic and research areas will continue to rise to the challenges of our fastchanging world.” “CMU’s College of Engineering has a unique culture that is interdisciplinary to the core and breaks traditional
Sanders earned his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering; master’s degree in computer, information, and control engineering; and doctoral degree in computer science and engineering, all from the University of Michigan. He is an elected fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His awards include the 2016 IEEE Technical Field Award, Innovation in Societal Infrastructure, for “assessment-driven design of trustworthy cyber infrastructures for societal-scale systems.” Sanders is also an entrepreneur and the cofounder of Network Perception Inc. “Bill is recognized as a leader in his field, and the committee was drawn to his wealth of experience and his collaborative nature,” says CEE Burcu Akinci, professor and associate dean for research in the college. “Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a strong commitment to diversity and has an impressive track record of nurturing inclusivity. Bill also has outstanding technical skills and a proven ability to galvanize faculty, staff, and students in pursuit of solutions to societal challenges.”
Flanigan to Join CEE Faculty in Fall 2020 Katherine Flanigan, who will join CEE’s faculty this fall, was attracted to the university thanks to its philosophical discussions surrounding the identity and role of the civil and environmental engineers in a changing world. “The growing needs of society are changing the ways in which we carry out research and train students to serve the common good,” she says. “CEE is one of the first programs to rigorously embrace these technological advancements in both its research and curriculum.” As an instructor, she plans to help create a new generation of civil and environmental engineers who are able to draw upon tools and technologies from across engineering disciplines. “I use teaching as an opportunity to convey the relevance of technological, computational, and analytical advancements by pushing students to continue to develop and retain advanced interdisciplinary skills. These enable them to be technological leaders within the modern engineering environment.” Her doctoral work focused on the problems associated with data-driven decision-making for infrastructure management. During her time at
the University of Michigan, Flanigan worked on projects with both technical and nontechnical stakeholders in the field. “My research and associated deployments of wireless sensor networks have reached full scale and demonstrate my ability and eagerness to advance the academic community’s presence in smart cities,” she says. She plans to bring her field experience into the classroom, helping students to connect course topics with real-world case studies. “The CEE community is delighted to have Katherine Flanigan joining our faculty. She is bringing new dimensions and research activities in Advanced Infrastructure Systems and Smart Cities,” says Dave Dzombak, CEE department head. Flanigan mentions that collaborations between CEE, CMU, and other local partners provide instructors and students the chance to research alongside with diverse stakeholders. “Citizens, communities, and city
government engage with our research and leverage Pittsburgh as a living laboratory.” Flanigan earned a BSE in CEE from Princeton University, and master’s degrees in Civil Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan. She will conclude her PhD studies in Civil Engineering Intelligent Systems from the University of Michigan in Spring 2020.
SOPHOMORE DESIGN 12-200 CEE Challenges built and tested prototype retaining walls.
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Quantifying Transportation Relationships CEE’s Sean Qian studied the relationship between Uber and public transportation, demonstrating variance by time of day and location. In our modern world, it’s easy to get across town. With companies such as Uber and Lyft, known as transportation network companies (TNC), passengers have plenty of options on how they will travel. Both TNCs and public transportation leaders rely on data to influence their policies, so Associate Professor Sean Qian set out to study the relationship between TNCs and public transportation in Pittsburgh. In a recently published paper in the journal Transportation, Qian’s Mobility Data Analytics Center
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focused on whether consumers were substituting public transit with TNCs, making last-minute decisions to choose a TNC over public transportation based on fares. TNCs and public transportation can have a complementary relationship— that is, the TNC can help fill service gaps in public transportation. It is impossible for buses, subways, and light rail to easily connect every single street, but TNCs can cover the first and last portion of the trip. Between public transportation and short TNC rides, consumer costs can be kept
to a minimum, while maximizing accessibility to the community. However, according to CMU PhD student Rick Grahn, it can be difficult to understand the relationship between TNCs and public transportation; sometimes there may be no relationship at all. “Some of the current literature says bus riders are quite different from people who would use Uber, so maybe there’s not a lot of interaction between the two,” Grahn says. “It’s hard to make any definitive conclusion of what drives travelers’ choice and how those choices may vary from time to time, and from location to location.” Researchers can look at the bus ridership before and after TNCs begin servicing an area, but changes may not be directly related to the TNC, making it almost impossible to tell why bus ridership changed. The best way to learn about the relationship between TNCs and public transportation is to analyze trip-level data, but such data can be difficult for researchers to access. To acquire trip-level-like information, Qian and his team used Port Authority data that counts how many people board passing buses and tracked Uber prices at 10 different hand-picked locations around Pittsburgh. There are many variables that decide if a person takes the bus or a TNC, so Qian accounted for the weather, nearby events, traffic, and other bus stops. To smooth out daily inconsistencies, data was taken over a six-month period. Qian was most interested in learning what an increase, or surge, in TNC prices does to bus ridership. Surge pricing works by comparing how many drivers are in an area with how many people need rides. Because an increase in TNC riders results in an increase in price, it might seem natural that bus ridership
Heat map showing morning bus demand. More demand shown in redder regions. would increase during these surges. However, that doesn’t always seem to be the case. At stops on a university campus, which were filled with students, this assumption held. Qian states that this is probably related to students’ low budgets and the fact that Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh students have unlimited public transportation use incorporated into their tuition. However, at locations that connected local buses and downtown along a dedicated busway, there was a decrease in bus boarding, suggesting a substitutional relationship between TNC and public transportation. This might also indicate that TNCs are providing last-mile services to passengers using the dedicated busway. Otherwise, no correlation was found between price surges and bus boarding. While these results may be unique to Pittsburgh, researchers can apply the same model to other cities to find relationships there. According to Grahn, once the relationship
is understood, targeted policies can be applied at a neighborhood level, ensuring a complementary and efficient relationship between transportation options. “Congestion fees can be applied to TNC trips in specific congested areas during commute times to promote more space efficient modes of travel,” Qian and his co-authors conclude. “Data-informed policies that consider emerging modes of travel are central to limiting rising congestion costs and improving mobility for vulnerable populations.” At the locations where significant changes in bus ridership occurred, the trend was restricted to specific times of the day and either weekdays or weekends. This fact alone is important, according to Qian. Large macroscopic research may not yield the significant, small-scale trends his team found. “The main thing this research is showing is that it is important to look throughout the day and at all these neighborhoods with different characteristics,” Grahn says. SPRING 2020 013
Akinci has published extensively on civil engineering computing topics and has successfully worked with industry partners. In her work, she has established a body of knowledge that is of pedagogical importance and is causing a paradigm shift in systems research in civil engineering.
Akinci Earns 2020 Computing in Civil Engineering Award Professor Burcu Akinci was named the recipient of the ASCE 2020 Computing in Civil Engineering Award in recognition of contributions at the interface of computing, construction, and infrastructure management. Her research is focused on developing approaches to model and reason about information-rich histories of facilities—with the goal to streamline construction and facility management processes. Akinci’s main contributions have been in building information modelling and laser scanning and sensing applied to civil infrastructure systems. Her research in sensing in construction and its integration with management and design continues to make substantial global contributions to research and to practice. “CEE congratulates Professor Akinci for this honor, which not only showcases her outstanding work, but also the innovative research taking place in CEE. We’re fortunate to have professors who are recognized experts in their fields, leading studies that benefit our students, our city, and the world,” says Dave Dzombak, Hamerschlag University Professor and CEE Department Head. 014 CEE NEWS
Qian Named ASCE Pittsburgh Section Professor of the Year Associate Professor Sean Qian was honored as the ASCE Pittsburgh Section Professor of the Year at the Engineers’ Week awards banquet. The award is presented in recognition of Qian’s established reputation in transportation systems analysis and engineering, as well as his contributions to the Mobility Data Analytics Center (MAC), advancements in civil engineering through publications, and dedication to his students. Qian’s research is focused on datadriven analytic methods to improve upon transportation and other infrastructure systems. He also leads the MAC and is part of Traffic21 and the USDOT-funded University Transportation Center on Improving Mobility. “Not only is Professor Qian a leader in
his field, he’s a mentor and inspiration to his students,” says Dave Dzombak, Hamerschlag University Professor and CEE Department Head.
VanBriesen Named Vice Provost for Faculty and Appointed to Key NSF committees Professor Jeanne VanBriesen was named the Vice Provost for Faculty. 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. She will work with Provost James 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. VanBriesen was also tapped to join two National Science Foundation committees. She joined the Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education (AC-ERE),
whose mission is to advise, make recommendations, and provide oversight for NSF’s environmental research and education efforts. She was also asked to join the Directorate for Engineering Advisory Committee (AdCom) where she will be acting as a liaison with the AC-ERE. AdCom advises the Directorate for Engineering (ENG) on such issues as how the ENG’s mission, programs, and goals can best serve the community. This committee also helps to promote quality graduate and undergraduate education in engineering.
sensing, computer vision, human systems engineering, multi-source data analytics, and information modelling technology to support predictive management of construction workspaces, constructed facilities, and civil infrastructure systems. His research efforts have produced automation techniques that enable automated 3D imagery data collection, processing, and interpretation for supporting efficient and effective bridge inspection and construction quality control.
Hendrickson honored with two Awards Professor Emeritus and Traffic 21 Director Chris Hendrickson has been named the 2019 2019 recipient of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association’s S.S. Steinberg Award in recognition of his significant contributions to transportation education.
Tang wins ASCE Construction Institute’s 2020 Halpin Award Associate Professor Pingbo Tang (PhD ‘09) has been selected to receive the ASCE Construction Institute’s 2020 Daniel W. Halpin Award for Scholarship in Construction. Tang is being recognized for research and education activities that pioneer theories and practice of predictive civil infrastructure construction, operation and management through integration of human-centered automation, structural engineering, automated spatiotemporal data analytics and management science. His research explores the remote
Samaras Honored With Bartholomew Award Associate Professor Costa Samaras (PhD ‘08) has been honored with the ASCE 2020 Harland Bartholomew Award for contributions to urban infrastructure resiliency design and alternative fueled, automated and connect vehicle planning. Samaras has made substantive contributions to three areas of critical importance for urban planning and development in the civil engineering domain. His research includes systems and infrastructure impacts of the transition to autonomous vehicles. Including transition to low-carbon energy systems and civil infrastructure systems design and resiliency for climate change impacts.
He was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Transportation Education and Research from the Council of University Transportation Centers. This award honors his significant and lasting contributions to transportation education and research. Hendrickson has co-authored eight books and over 200 articles. His research has focused on construction project management, including green design, pollution prevention, and environmental management. His work in construction project management emphasized the importance of the owner’s viewpoint throughout the project lifecycle. He also pioneered dynamic traffic demand models, as well as software tools and methods for sustainable construction.
This award is presented by ASCE T&DI Pittsburgh Section.
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Heating and cooling that anticipates your needs
According to a recent survey, about half of Americans feel their office is either too hot or too cold. A number of factors play into this issue of thermal comfort, but the hardest factor to control for is the one we’re most interested in: humans themselves. Clothing choice and body shape are intrinsically tied to an individual’s most comfortable temperature. Professor Mario Bergés believes that our indoor environments should be more adaptive and consider not just our presence but also our physical characteristics, clothing, and thermal comfort preferences when deciding how to condition the spaces we are in. Bergés and his collaborators have created the first model that combines environmental information with data on an individual’s body shape to determine at what temperatures that person will feel most comfortable. The information is then aggregated to find the temperature that most occupants possible will find comfortable, in a system his team has dubbed OccuTherm. Crucially, the system can estimate bodyshape information from depth-imaging sensors mounted on doorways, which is less privacy-invasive than other sensing approaches such as traditional cameras. As Bergés and fellow researchers note in a recent paper presented at the ACM International Conference, thermal
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comfort has a significant effect on the physiological and psychological well-being of an individual and affects occupants’ health, satisfaction, and performance. Studies have shown that optimal thermal comfort conditions can lead to an increase in concentration and productivity, while poor thermal comfort conditions can lead to lethargy and distraction. OccuTherm works by estimating the circumference of an individual’s shoulders from above, then combining it with height and weight estimates to infer the optimal temperature for that individual’s comfort. Just as society has come a long way in embracing differences that were once brushed over or ignored, this system demonstrates the need to acknowledge that each person has a different body shape, with different needs that must be met on their own terms. It incorporates a much deeper level of human understanding than traditional heating and cooling methods, which use generic set-temperature models that have been in place for decades. OccuTherm is a dynamic system that personally factors each individual entering or leaving a room into the system’s temperature setting. OccuTherm is more effective than leading state-of-the-art approaches, which may also employ restrictive wearables or require constant user interaction. The system, the authors note, “works without the need for frequent user comfort feedback reports and leverages data from depth-imaging sensors, which are quickly becoming commonplace in indoor environments.” A smarter temperature control system like OccuTherm could also help reduce energy costs and, by
extension, carbon emissions. About 50 percent of energy used in humanoccupied spaces is expended on heating, cooling, and ventilation. Thermostats are usually turned to a set temperature for the whole building, even if most of the area is unoccupied. Eliminating wasteful, outdated methods and putting the individual needs of the occupants first could yield not only a more content and productive workplace, but also major savings for both managers and the environment. Bergés and his colleagues plan to integrate more advanced features as the system continues to improve that can also take into account an individual’s clothing choices. Allowing users to provide direct feedback could further refine OccuTherm’s ability to help people reach optimal thermal comfort. Ultimately, the system will help to close the gap between human needs and the spaces built to satisfy them, providing a more comfortable and livable environment for all. “Buildings can do a better job in keeping us comfortable while using less energy, and we have a lot to learn still, including replicating this study on a larger population,” says Bergés. “These results are promising and show that there’s potential for non-intrusive technologies to obtain comfort-predictive attributes for occupants.”
“These results are promising and show that there’s potential for non-intrusive technologies to obtain comfort-predictive attributes for occupants.”
Professor Mario Bergés
The OccuTherm research team includes doctoral candidates Jonathan Francis of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, Matias Quintana of The National University of Singapore, and Nadine von Frankenberg of the Technical University of Munich, as well as Senior Research Scientist Sirajum Munir from the Bosch Research & Technology Center.
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Cain Ready to Connect with CEE Alumni When Heather Cain joined CEE to build alumni relations, she had one goal in mind—to cultivate relationships and invigorate the connection between alums and the department. Cain was immediately taken by CEE’s close-knit community, which extended from the staff and faculty to current students and alumni. “I was looking for an environment in which everyone was passionate about what they are doing. I found that at CEE,” she says.
You can connect with Heather at hcain@andrew.cmu.edu
She’s currently focused on streamlining the process to help alums connect with each other—a request she says she’s heard many times from CEE grads. Cain believes that these connections will lead to organic growth and networking, which is especially valuable to new grads. To facilitate these types of
CEE Scores at CIT Staff Awards
CEE was well represented at the College of Engineering staff awards luncheon on January 22. This annual event honors staff members for their leadership, innovation, continued
connections, Cain is organizing regional alumni events for former students to discover new ways to remain involved with CEE. “I want to increase opportunities for alumni to work with the department through volunteering at events, sitting on a panel discussion, attending a mix-n-mingle with students, or acting as a mentor,” she adds. Cain, a western Pennsylvania native, attended the University of Pittsburgh and is excited to have moved “down the street” to work at CEE. She encourages alumni to reach out and share information—even if it’s just updated contact information—to remain engaged with CEE. “We love to learn about new jobs, milestones, accomplishments, and awards. CEE takes great pride in its alumni and we’re always excited to learn of the impact one is making!”
excellence, and spirit, as well as for length of service. This year five staff members were nominated for various awards: Brian Belowich, Sheryl Benicky, Nick Lockwood, Cathy Schaefer, and David Vey. The faculty and staff of CEE were delighted that Director of Finance and Administration Cathy Schaefer was selected as the winner of the Inspirational Leadership Award, and Director of Graduate Programs David Vey was selected as the winner of the Continuous Excellence Award. Beth Hockenberry was recognized for five years of service.
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In Their Words
HOW DO YOU THINK ENGINEERS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD FOR BETTER, AND HOW DO YOU PLAN TO CONTRIBUTE? Engineers build, and make things work. That’s how engineers can change the world for better. I’m working on separating and composting the food waste in China, and aiming at reducing 25,000 tons of food waste per year sent to landfills/incinerators in Guangzhou by 2021.
HAOCHENG YOU // Master’s Student (CEE/ETIM)
The place I grew up in Nepal, there is a river called Aadikhola with a school on the other side. To get to the other side, people tend to use large stones to cross, instead of walking to the bridge a mile away. I will design and construct a bridge over the river so I can provide safe access for students to their school. The students will not have to fear while crossing Aadhikhola River.
BIMOCHAN POUDYAL // Master’s Student I want to move to a larger city and work for a firm that works more with performance venues, to be the one who goes to old theaters and takes on projects where I know that I will make a difference. As engineers, our ethical code tells us that we need to do what’s best for the situation, and I believe that applies to finding new and innovative solutions that will help more than just the initial client, but also all the people who will be affected by our decisions.
DARIA VANALLMAN // Undergraduate Student (Sophomore) Engineers can design cutting-edge solutions and blend knowledge from many different areas to solve problems in new and creative ways. We can do this to make the lives of everyone better, whether it be giving people more time to spend with their families every day through designing more efficient roads, or changing lives by giving people access to reliable and affordable clean water and power who otherwise would not have it.
GRACE TAYLOR // Undergraduate Student (Senior) Engineers can make a huge impact on the world by participating in projects that have a positive effect on the welfare of others and their environment. I plan to contribute by building resilient communities with a strong physical and socioeconomic infrastructure.
VERONICA SEWARD-APONTE // Master’s Student
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Student News progress monitoring, and facility management. Wei earned his Bachelor’s of Civil Engineering degree from Tongji University, China.
and Mathematics and a minor in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.
ABHISHEK ARORA
Ellegood Doctoral Fellowship Abhishek Arora is advised by Professor Amit Acharya and his research looks to understand stressed, dynamical interactions in small collections of line defects comprising dislocations or cracks in two and three dimensions, and to study the emergent collective behavior of dislocations leading to patterning, e.g. cell formation, at small and large strains. Arora earned his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering University at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, India and his master’s in Engineering Mechanics at IIT Delhi, India.
YILIN ZHANG
Mao Yisheng Graduate Fellowship
YANYU WANG
Smith Graduate Fellowship Advised by Associate Professor Pingbo Tang, Yanyu Wang uses simulators to model air traffic to better understand accidents on the runway as well as take-off and landing. Wang earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Civil Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China.
RADHIKA KATTI YUJIE WEI
Liang Ji-Dian Graduate Fellowship Yujie Wei, advised by Professor Burcu Akinci, is focused on using unstructured visual data, such as images captured by cellphones and tablets, to reconstruct a semantically rich 3D model of construction sites. These will be used for providing accurate as-built information to support change documentation, 020 CEE NEWS
Miller Presidential Fellowship Radhika Katti is working with Professors Sean Qian, Costa Samaras, and Scott Matthews looking at integrating autonomous vehicles into daily life from a traffic systems perspective and how to use autonomous vehicles to control a mixed traffic flow. Katti received her undergraduate degrees in Systems Engineering
Yilin Zhang is currently advised by Professors Gregory Lowry and Robert Tilton (ChemE) and is developing functional polymer structures for environmental applications, including temperature-responsive drug delivery in plants and mercury removal from water and liquid hydrocarbon. Zhang completed his bachelor’s in Environmental Engineering at Beihang University, China.
SOFIA MARTINEZ
Liang Ji-Dian Graduate Fellowship Sofia Martinez is co-advised by Professors Sean Qian, Costa Samaras, and Scott Matthews. She is focused on analyzing changes that would result from America’s public transportation transitioning to an autonomous, electric bus fleet. Martinez earned her Bachelor’s of Civil Engineering degree from the University of Portland in Oregon.
RAMI ARISS
VASI VIJAYASHANTHAR
SADHANA SAINARAYANAN
Advised by Professor Matteo Pozzi, Rami Ariss researches the theory and practice of interconnected systems.
Vasi Vijayashanthar, who is jointly advised by Professors Jeanne VanBriesen and Mitch Small, is working to improve understanding of the natural geochemical processes that affect lead dissolution and presence in water systems.
Sadhana Sainarayanan, who is in the Engineering & Technology Innovation Management Master’s Program, is advised by Professor Scott Matthews.
D’Appolonia Graduate Fellowship
His work explores the interdependencies among cyberphysical civil systems that impact people and identifies opportunities to improve controls and decisions across energy and transportation systems. By using various methods to discover how these systems are connected, his work aims to improve security, reliability, and market designs necessary for effective operation. Ariss completed his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering and master’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Cohon Graduate Fellowship
He is also introducing innovative computational tools to mitigate and prevent public health risks from lead exposure. Vijayashanthar received his Bachelor’s in Environmental Science from New York University and Master’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering at State University of New York, Buffalo.
Parnika ACS Legacy Fellowship
Currently, Sainarayanan is working to developing traffic color light detection from dash-cam video streams. She creates ground-truth labels for traffic colors and trains aggregated channel features to detect the traffic light colors in live dash-cam videos. Sainarayanan earned her undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Chennai, India.
Master’s student Kwaku Jyamfi was awarded first place at Duke University’s Energy Week research poster competition. “I presented a solution to the problem of energy poverty in developing nations,” explains Kwaku Jyamfi. “With about one billion people not having access to cheap and reliable electricity, Farm-to-Flame Energy addresses this by utilizing the waste chains of these underserved areas to generate electricity. We do it differently than others, with a patented combustion process that sets us part in emissions and energy efficiency.” Jyamfi, who is advised by CEE Department Head and Hamerschlag University Professor Dave Dzombak, completed his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering at Syracuse University
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Hegde Presents Data Privacy Paper at 2020 TRB Conference
DARYN LEE
Miller Presidential Fellowship Daryn Lee is co-advised by professors Sean Qian and Costa Samaras. Her research focuses on developing methods for more reliably evaluating the accessibility and equity impacts of transportation projects, and optimizing transportation improvements in low-access areas. Lee received her undergraduate degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley.
CEE senior Sharika Hegde’s summer internship at the Federal Highway Administration’s Saxton Transportation Operations Laboratory in McLean, Virginia not only allowed her to work with connected and automated vehicles—it also sparked her interest in the data privacy implications of connected vehicle data logs. This led to a research paper focused on vulnerabilities within the existing connected vehicle communication standard created by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE J2735).
UWAKMFON IBEKWE
Miller Presidential Fellowship Uwakmfon Ibekwe is working with professors Jeanne VanBriesen and Costa Samaras and she is looking at the impact of climate change on drinking water infrastructure. Ibekwe completed her undergraduate studies at Stanford University with a degree in Civil Engineering.
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Hegde developed an algorithm that pieces together snippets of vehicle location data to understand the trajectory of various system users. “That information poses a huge security threat that infrastructure owner-operators must consider when deciding what to do with connected vehicle data logs,” she states. “Are privacy concerns outweighed by the benefits of high-quality data?” Connected vehicles are constantly creating new networks between pedestrians, vehicles, and infrastructure that result in large amounts of precise location data. According to the SAE J2735 standard, these vehicles utilize a periodically changing random
vehicle identification number to communicate and exchange messages. Hegde’s algorithm exploits these identification numbers to reconstruct a vehicle’s trips through publicly available connected vehicle message logs, exposing potential location-based privacy issues for the car’s users. The response to her poster presentation was positive and gratifying—especially from individuals within state and local infrastructure who are familiar with connected vehicle communication standards. CEE’s interdisciplinary and datadriven coursework—especially Professor Sean Qian’s Smart Cities class—helped prepare Hegde for the research and presentation. “I learned how to consider problems not only from a civil engineering perspective, but also through the lens of emerging technology. In this case, I was able to point out data privacy considerations that others in the field should also consider,” she states. Hegde plans to continue her studies by pursuing a PhD in Transportation Systems starting in Fall 2020. “I want to continue to be in the research space, working on similar projects in the transportation domain throughout my career.”
This Is Jeopardy! Emma Farrell, CEE senior, bested over 18,000 applicants to earn one of the 15 competitor spots in the Jeopardy 2020 College Championship. Farrell will go up against students from schools including Yale University, Princeton University, and Northwestern University. Alex Trebek will host the championship. The competition filming took place
CEE/EPP senior Simone Stein was awarded the George Washington Prize at the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania awards dinner. The honor is presented yearly to a College of Engineering senior who demonstrates qualities of academic excellence, service, and leadership. A member of Habitat for Humanity since her first year, Stein recently completed a successful term as president. In the past year, she has organized and led six Pittsburgh-area trips, recruited other members to lead additional Pittsburgh trips, and prepared members to lead trips in other parts of the United States.
Stein Wins Washington Prize
As a sophomore, Stein led her first Habitat for Humanity trip to assist in the Houston area in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Stein has made an impact on the greater Pittsburgh community and several other U.S. communities through her work with Habitat for Humanity. Stein excels in her courses, and often helps younger students when they are struggling with a problem or concept. Students comment that working in the CEE Department Undergraduate Collaboration Room is beneficial because of the availability of other students, such as Stein, who can help when needed.
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in Los Angeles in February and the championship hits the airwaves starting on Monday, April 6. The $100,000 grand prize and the opportunity to compete in the next edition of the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions is up for grabs. Farrell is a native of Telford, PA and double majors in Civil Engineering and History.
Stein is the vice president of the CEE student chapter of Chi Epsilon, the civil engineering honor society. She helps to coordinate the popular Chi Epsilon faculty seminar series which undergraduates can use to fulfill their experiential learning requirement. In these seminars, faculty members share their research as well as their life experiences. The series helps students to understand the research that happens in the department and gives them the opportunity to get to know their faculty better. Showing tremendous CMU spirit, Stein capped her three years with the Kiltie Band by serving as president. She worked with the band director and school administration to coordinate Kiltie Band shows, managed the band’s budget, and led the executive board. She also reinforced the strong alumni base of the Kiltie Band by organizing a Homecoming meet-and-greet for current and alumni band members. The George Washington Prize is named in honor of the first president of the United States. It reinforces the importance of engineering and technology in sustaining and enhancing the visibility of the profession.
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Building Global Successes: Johnathan Tanner at CMU, both as a student and as a member of the Tartans’ football team. He uses modeling and analytics to analyze large data sets, which are utilized to help clients make determinations about their business plans. He says he does a lot of analysis for clients in terms of entering new markets, reducing costs, and improving logistics. He credits both his engineering and business background with giving him the skills to be effective for his clients.
As a management consultant in the automotive, aerospace, travel, and information sectors for A.T. Kearney, Johnathan Tanner (CE/EPP BS ‘15, ETIM MS ‘15) brings to bear his background in engineering and business to help clients control costs. The projects on which he has worked have ranged from helping clients develop research labs to developing new business units. The fact that he has the opportunity to work abroad—in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia for more than a year—is a bonus, he says. It has been exciting to see, and be part of, change in the region, he adds. “I am most proud of being part of developing a research and development ecosystem for several million people,” he says. “It’s a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity.” It is the variety of the work Tanner enjoys, as well as the real-world realization of all he learned while
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As a student-athlete, he learned how to set priorities and manage his time. He credits professors and academic staff, as well as coaches and members of the athletic department’s staff, with helping him develop the skills that have helped him find professional success, as well as the support he needed to excel during his time at CMU. “CMU definitely prepared me for what I am experiencing now,” he said, adding, as an example, that his current team is composed of people from Russia, Italy, and India. “The value of CMU is that I learned the real value of hard work and the ability to collaborate in an environment with people who don’t think or look like me.” Regardless of where he ends up, Tanner says he plans to continue making his regular visits to Pittsburgh. He maintains close relationships with friends from school as well as faculty members who encouraged and helped him to keep him focused on his goals. “The support you get from the faculty is amazing,” he says. “I will never forget the time that they took to make sure I was okay. I will always appreciate that.”
Pearlman Receives ASCE’s 2020 Wallace Hayward Baker Award Seth Pearlman (BS '78, MS '79), President and CEO of Menard Group USA, has been selected by the GeoInstitute Board of Governors at the American Society of Civil Engineers to receive the 2020 Wallace Hayward Baker Award for Ingenious Innovation in the Field of Ground Modification.
Pearlman was chosen for this award due to his substantial contributions in the practice of design build ground improvement. Pearlman has more than 40 years of engineering experience with the last 33 being in the geotechnical design and build construction industry.
Leech Awarded ESWP Metcalf Award CEE adjunct instructor and alumnus Thomas Leech, PE, SE (BS ‘69) was honored with the ESWP 2020 William Metcalf Award at the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania (ESWP) awards dinner on February 6th. Leech enjoyed a long and distinguished career, retiring as the Chief Bridge Engineer of Gannett Fleming, Inc. During his 48 years at Gannett Fleming, he designed major bridges, tunnels, and highways and conducted forensic studies. Leech led various infrastructure design projects throughout Western Pennsylvania, including the Bloomfield Bridge, the Joe Montana Bridges, the Hulton Bridge, the Toll 43 Monongahela River Crossing,
the North Shore LRT Viaduct at Allegheny Station, the Fort Pitt and Squirrel Hill Tunnel Rehabilitation, and the forensic evaluation of the collapse of the Kinzua Viaduct. He has published over 50 articles in national and international journals, conference proceedings and magazines, and has delivered numerous presentations at national and international conferences. He recently was the editor of the book “Reflections...of the Greatest Engineers and Architects of the 20th and 21st Centuries” as well as a contributing author to the “Geology of Pittsburgh.” The William Metcalf Award is named in honor of the first ESWP president and is awarded to a Western
Pennsylvania engineer whose career accomplishments are connected to steel, aluminum, power, coal, electrical equipment, chemical, glass, or construction.
Belowich Promoted at Michael Baker International Jessica Belowich (BS ‘05, MS ‘06) has recently been promoted to Department Manager, Traffic at Michael Baker International. Belowich will focus on growing the Company’s traffic engineering practice within the greater Pittsburgh region, while identifying new opportunities for innovation. Belowich has been with Michael Baker
for 15 years, most recently serving as Acting Department Manager, Traffic. During her tenure with the company, she has been involved with the design of numerous transportation projects. She is currently the Lead Traffic Engineer for the I-2 Design-Build Project in Texas and the Highland Park Interchange Reconstruction Project in Pittsburgh.
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FARMING DATA, IMPROVING PRODUCTION In farming, the difference between success and failure is often in the margins—the fine line between not enough water on the crops and too much, finding exactly the right amount of fertilizer, or identifying small shifts in temperature and climate.
For Arvind Murali Mohan (MS ’10, PhD ’13), using technology to help farmers compile previously siloed data into one central platform means the chance to help even the playing field in an industry where so many inputs are beyond their control. As a co-founder of foris.io, a Silicon Valley—based precision agriculture startup that helps farmers with field management and crop performance, Mohan heads up research and development for the company. Farmers have embraced technology in a multitude of ways, from GPS in tractors and other vehicles, to weather stations, to soil-moisture sensors, and more. “The amount of technology farmers actually use is mind-boggling,” he says, telling the story of riding on a tractor that was harvesting tomatoes and separating the tomatoes by color in real time. “That was really amazing.” The company collects data from deployed technology throughout a farm’s operation and aggregate it in one place. With all the data in one place, foris.io helps farmers determine how to optimize inputs such as water and fertilizers, which is critical to crop
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performance and carry significant costs. The company also uses data to optimize soil health year-over-year. The company is piloting its software with a large family-owned tomato farm in California, and is helping navigate changes to the climate which have brought more severe droughts and increasingly virulent wildfires. Mohan says that last year’s harvest was supposed to take place in late August—right about the time wildfires and smoke were ravaging the area and causing a two-week delay to harvest. Such delays cause problems throughout the system, because if farmers can’t deliver crops when promised, processors may decide not to take the crops. The company is continuing to develop programs to help farmers navigate these varied issues through data. Additionally, foris.io is working on enabling traceability information for crops. Information is collected about not just how much water or fertilizer is being used on a given crop, but also the quality of the water, and what kind of chemicals and fertilizer are put on the fields. Consumers, farmers and authorities can track where problems may have occurred along the route from farm to store shelves in the case of a product recall.
A cadre of top researchers focused on water, as well as the strong emphasis on research, drew Mohan to CEE for his graduate education. He says the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature at CEE allowed him to learn things he may not otherwise have been able to at another university. “That helped me to think about problems a little differently,” he says, adding that the faculty support was “amazing.” Mohan pursued the research under CEE Professor Kelvin Gregory, who he says encouraged him to develop new ideas and pursue external collaborations. Ultimately, he says, CEE allows students to not fear tackling problems or topics in which they don’t immediately have expertise. “I think CMU does that: you have the confidence to pick up something new and that you can structure problemsolving,” he says. “You learn at CMU to be comfortable with uncertainty. You won’t know where to begin, but you are still comfortable that you will figure it out.”
CEE Giving
Supporting Research and Innovation Inside CEE “When I was getting my master’s degree, I saw that there was something special about Carnegie Mellon. There is this culture of innovation and creativity and this passion for research and technology across all of the departments and throughout the whole university,” says Omar De Leon (MS ’11). Omar noticed those elements everywhere on campus—from the CEE faculty to the curriculum to how researchers approached the intersection of research, industry, and government, searching not only for big ideas but also for practical and creative ways to apply those ideas in real life.
After graduating, Omar took that same mindset into his career, joining ExxonMobil in 2012 as an Environmental & Regulatory Advisor. Now a Staffing & Development Systems & Processes Manager, part of what has fueled Omar’s success at ExxonMobil has been an ability to innovate in the company and the industry. By finding strategic opportunities to do things differently and building connections between people and ideas, Omar excels at developing practical solutions and overseeing sound implementations, no matter what his role or task. “Being able to challenge the norm and having the mindset to look at a
process and see how to optimize and improve it, how to update established ideas, and how to be more creative in how we tackle problems—those skills grew out of the CMU culture,” he explains. For Omar, giving back to Carnegie Mellon after gaining so much feels only natural. Together with his wife, Omar has made numerous donations to student organizations and department initiatives over the years. “I give back because I value my experience and everything that CEE has done for me,” he says. “CMU also makes it simple to give directly to the organizations and causes that matter to you.” Additionally, the De Leon family gifts are generously matched by ExxonMobil. “Knowing that we can give any little bit and the match program will multiply the impact to the university is also a key reason why I like to give,” says Omar. “It would be almost a shame for that opportunity to go to waste.” Most recently, the family was inspired to give to CEE’s Environmental Engineering lab renovations, supporting the department’s goal of providing upgraded facilities and technology for the innovative work done by CEE faculty and students.
Vanessa, Sofia, and Omar De Leon
“Right now, you can see that it’s a key moment in the department,” says Omar. “For my family to be part of that is an awesome opportunity. It’s something meaningful where maybe one day we can take our daughter here and say, ‘Look, we helped support this effort.’ I want her to go back to CMU and see it and understand why we give.” SPRING 2020 027
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IN CREA S E YOU R I M P A C T W ITH COM P A N Y M A T C HIN G GIF TS YO U GIV E. Y O U R EM PLOYE R MAT CHE S. YO UR GI FT G O ES E V EN F U RT HE R. Your gift to Carnegie Mellon University can go even further to support world-class engineering research and education. Many companies sponsor matching gift programs and will match contributions made by their employers. Some companies may also match gifts made by retirees, board members and/or spouses or partners. Ask your employer if they will match your gift to Carnegie Mellon and make your gift online at giving.cmu.edu. 028 CEE NEWS
