2013-2014 Annual Report: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech by School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology

We are civil and environmental engineers dedicated to improving the human condition since 1898. People are our priority. The world is our laboratory. 2013-2014 ANNUAL REPORT

ANNUAL REPORT: JULY 2013 - JUNE 2014 LEADERSHIP Reginald DesRoches, Ph.D. Karen and John Huff School Chair and Professor Donald R. Webster, Ph.D., P.E. Associate Chair and Professor Kimberly E. Kurtis, Ph.D. Associate Chair for Graduate Studies College of Engineering ADVANCE Professor Susan E. Burns, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs Georgia Power Distinguished Professor

SCHOOL OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING AT THE GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 790 Atlantic Drive N.W. Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0355 communications@ce.gatech.edu ce.gatech.edu P / 404 / 894 2201 F / 404 / 894 2278 Joshua Stewart Writer & Editor Jess Hunt Designer & Photographer

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WELCOME

e’ve just completed our first full academic year in the new Mason Building, a wholesale reinvention of the place that has been the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s home for the last four decades. The freshness of this state-of-the-art—and more sustainable—building feels very much like the way we’re refreshing the School: keeping the strong bones that have helped make us a top program while sharpening our priorities in a way that pivots to the future. You’ll read in these pages about some of the incredible work already happening in our School—research on climate change and transportation, innovative teaching methods to meet the demands of a changing student body, students stretching themselves by traveling the world or inventing a product that could improve billions of lives. You’ll see the exciting new faces joining us in our journey to help solve grand challenges facing society, and you’ll learn about a truly unique opportunity for another teacher and researcher to use the vision of self-taught engineer Frederick Law Olmsted to inspire a new generation. You’ll also read about the course we’re charting for the months and years ahead. We’re realigning ourselves to better meet global challenges that don’t fit within the neat boundaries of one subject-matter area. We’re creating new courses to foster leadership among our students so they’re better prepared to step into prominent roles around the world, like so many of our alumni. Of course, much more happens in CEEatGT than we can fit in these pages. I invite you to visit our website to stay up to date all year long. And plug into our feeds @CEEatGT on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for the latest on our people and the work they’re doing to change the world.

Reginald DesRoches, Ph.D. Karen and John Huff School Chair and Professor School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology

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WELCOME

OUR SCHOOL

OUR STUDENTS

FACTS & FIGURES i

COFFEE WITH THE CHAIR: REGINALD DESROCHES TALKS ABOUT THE SCHOOL TODAY AND HIS VISION FOR THE FUTURE 1

OUR PROGRAMS 8

WELCOME ii

A PLACE TO CALL HOME: INSIDE THE $13.5 MILLION INVESTMENT INTO THE MASON BUILDING’S FUTURE 3

FORECASTING THE FUTURE OF ENGINEERING: FILMING INNOVATION 10 THE JOE S. MUNDY GLOBAL LEARNING ENDOWMENT 11 STUDENT NEWS & AWARDS 12

OUR RESEARCH

OUR FACULTY

OUR ALUMNI

WARMER SOIL: HOW MICROBES RESPOND (AND WHAT THAT TELLS US) 16

NEW FACES 21

CEE AT GT ALUMNI: DEFINING GLOBAL LEADERSHIP IN THE 21 ST CENTURY 33

BETTER, STRONGER, FASTER: ENHANCING A UNIVERSAL MATERIAL 17 SALT ROCK AND UNDERGROUND STORAGE: STUDYING DAMAGE AND HEALING IN A ‘MAGIC’ ROCK 18 GOING WIRELESS: SMALL, CHEAP, SOLAR-POWERED SENSORS COULD CHANGE THE GAME FOR BRIDGE INSPECTIONS 19 CLIMATE CHANGE: WHEN IT COMES TO WATER, MORE AND LESS WILL BE REALITY 20

FLIPPED CLASSROOM: DONALD WEBSTER PIONEERS NEW LEARNING MODELS 23 FACULTY NEWS & AWARDS 26 OUR FACULTY 29 NEW ENDOWED CHAIR NAMED FOR FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED 32

ALUMNI NEWS & AWARDS 34 2014 ALUMNI TRIP: PLANT VOGTLE & SAVANNAH, GEORGIA 37 CEE AT GT EXTERNAL ADVISORY BOARD 38

COFFEE WITH THE CHAIR Reginald DesRoches Talks About the School Today and His Vision for the Future

et’s talk about the new Mason Building. What does it mean for students and faculty to have this new renovated space?

Talk a little bit about the new endowed Olmsted Chair, named for Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture and sustainable urban design.

This space is amazing. It’s great space for the students to work—notice the lobby area and the student commons, places for students to gather and do their work and learn from each other. A lot of the learning that takes place at the Institute doesn’t necessarily take place in the classroom, and we’ve designed the spaces for students to be able to collaborate in a very unique fashion.

It’s really an exciting position that in many ways epitomizes the future of the profession of civil and environmental engineering. One of the things that we can stake claim to as a profession is that we work at the interface of the built, natural and social systems. I think this chair epitomizes that. It’s looking at not only the built environment, but also at how it interfaces with the natural environment and the social systems that surround it. We expect this person to work closely with the College of Architecture, the College of Sciences, economics, management. It’s a unique position around the world.

In addition to that, the new classrooms have great technology. They’re designed to be reconfigurable so we can look at different learning modes. The labs are updated. And it’s a much more sustainable building. We’ve hired some very exciting new faculty members in the last year. How are you attracting these highprofile leaders in their fields?

I think the School itself attracts them. They love the fact that this program is still a program on its way up. If you look at our peer institutions, many of them had established research programs for many decades. While we’ve always had a top undergraduate program, in some ways, we are new to the research game. We’ve been a top research program for around 20 years, and we continue to climb. I think they sense that momentum; they sense that drive that we have, the excitement of not only the program but Georgia Tech itself. And I think that sells.

“One of the things we want to focus on is globalization and leadership. One in 10 of our alumni are either CEOs or have their own companies, and we want to make sure our students are prepared and educated to be those future leaders.”

Budget pressures have been a significant challenge across the Institute and really everywhere in recent years. How has the School been doing what seems like more with what must be less?

We’ve had to make some tough decisions, had to cut back. We have to work smarter, and we’ve done that. But also, we’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of support from our alumni, and that’s really helped us to do some things that we haven’t been able to do in the past. Our [External Advisory] Board has been very helpful in identifying opportunities for us to seek external funding, so we’ve been able to really continue to deliver a great program to our students. Let’s pivot to the future—where are we going as a school?

One of the things we want to focus on is globalization and leadership. If you look at our alumni base, one in 10 of our alumni are either CEOs or have their own companies, and we want to make sure our students are prepared and educated to be those future leaders. We’re developing a leadership track within the School where students can take a number of classes related to management

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and leadership—somewhat focused on civil engineering, but broad enough that people around campus can take them. That’s one of the things that we’re really excited about.

So what’s at the very top of your to-do list for the next 12 months?

The other is really trying to foster an opportunity for our faculty to work across the disciplines that we have in the School. Most civil engineering programs, almost all, are aligned across what we call affinity groups—structural engineering, transportation, water resources, environmental, construction, geotechnical engineering—and we’re really trying to configure the school and develop programs that allow us to have much more cross-disciplinary work within the groups to address the [National Academy of Engineering] Grand Challenges. We’re really at the beginning of trying to do that in a much better fashion.

I think at the top of my list is looking at our curriculum. We haven’t made substantial changes in our curriculum in many years, and I want to make sure that our curriculum is one that excites the students, that gets them engaged early on in the profession and gets them engaged early on in addressing some of the grand challenges. Let’s take a look at our curriculum and make sure it reflects what we want to reflect in terms of our mission in the School. As told to Joshua Stewart.

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LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW In an extended interview, hear how CEEatGT is attracting more undergraduate students: ce.gatech.edu/annualreport

A PLACE TO CALL

HOME

Inside the $13.5 Million Investment into the Mason Building’s Future

ur state-of-the-art civil and environmental engineering programs now have a state-of-the-art facility to foster collaboration, in-depth research activities, and the highest level of teaching. Four decades after it opened, the Jesse W. Mason Building has been reinvigorated, thanks to the vision of the School’s alumni. “We just thought it was up to CEE alumni and friends—people who’ve really benefited—to take the next step, to make sure we had a building that truly reflected CEE’s stature. Adequate wasn’t good enough,” said John Huff, B.S. 1968, who spearheaded the renovation campaign with Howard Tellepsen, B.S. 1966. Mason houses the School's main office, administrative and faculty offices, classrooms, and instructional and research labs in a five-story building with an appended two-story, high-bay out building.

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A redesigned lobby, above, includes video message boards and a variety of seating to foster collaboration among students.

THE NEW MASON BUILDING INCLUDES: • A new student commons offering 18 plug-and-play computer workstations, a lounge area, and three group project rooms reserved online and accessed via student ID. • Improved 30-, 66- and 70-seat classrooms that offer an average of 15 percent more workspace. • New instructional equipment and audio/ visual systems in classrooms. • New teaching laboratories for geotechnical engineering and construction materials. • New faculty and graduate student offices to accommodate CEE’s ongoing growth and encourage interdisciplinary collaborations. • An additional conference room with videoconferencing and presentation equipment. • New IT infrastructure, creating the most efficient wireless connectivity of any building on the Georgia Tech campus.

The theme of collaboration carries over into the Student Commons, above, where students can plug in their laptop, use a computer or reserve a project room.

The renovated Mason Building illustrates the School’s commitment to sustainability, incorporating recycled materials into renovations. We also took special care to preserve the structural floor, roof decking and exterior walls. Other sustainability measures include:

• Modern and efficient air handling units that use variable air volume systems. • A new refrigeration unit in the physical plant that eliminates chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions.

• Installation of more than 350 low-emissivity, double-pane windows.

• New water fountains with bottle refill spouts and a digital counter that records the number of disposable bottles saved from landfills.

• A reflective, white rubber membrane roof that absorbs less heat and reduces cooling costs.

• An outdoor air delivery system that utilizes new flow-measuring stations and CO2 monitoring.

• Motion-detecting lavatory faucets, powered by batteries that recharge by harnessing energy from water flow. These can last up to 40 years.

• Low-emitting building materials including low volatile organic compound (low-VOC) adhesives, sealants, paints and coatings. CEE AT GT 6

• Modernized exhausts in custodial rooms, entry walk-off mats, and minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) filters at air handling units, each of which reduce indoor chemical and pollutant sources. Our building is named for Jesse W. Mason, dean of the Georgia Tech College of Engineering during the early 1950s. Mason’s commitment to fostering academic excellence reached beyond the practice of teaching, and his tenure was crowned by the opening of the Mason Building in 1969.

INSIDE THE MASON BUILDING

ce.gatech.edu/annualreport

OUR STUDENTS

Source: Georgia Tech Institute Research and Planning, as of fall 2013

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OUR PROGRAMS CEE’s undergraduate and graduate programs are among the largest and highest-ranked programs of their kind in the country. While other universities have similar programs, our combination of size, quality and diversity at the undergraduate and graduate level is rare, particularly for a statesupported institution. In U.S. News & World Report’s most-recent rankings, we had the No. 3 undergraduate civil and environmental engineering programs, the No. 4 graduate environmental engineering program and the No. 5 civil engineering program in the nation.

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RO P LED E L T O UA ENR D S A NT GR STUDE ED ERR

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6 AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION

• CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING • ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING • ENVIRONMENTAL FLUID MECHANICS AND WATER RESOURCES • GEOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING • STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING, MECHANICS AND MATERIALS • TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Source: Georgia Tech Institute Research and Planning, as of fall 2013

Top: Heidi Vreeland by Connelly Crowe, www.cccfotographie.com. Bottom: Allie George by Annie McGrew.

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THE FUTURE OF ENGINEERING

he prize-winning video in the first-ever CEEatGT foreCAST competition suggests using consumer and mobile-phone data to improve the way we plan our transportation systems. Recent graduate Josephine “Josie” Kressner, Ph.D. 2014, suggests that combining those two sources of data could provide a cheaper, more accurate picture of how and where people travel than the current approach, which involves expensive household travel surveys collected every decade or so. “Videos create buzz. Everyone enjoys watching an entertaining video. I have an idea that I want others to hear about, so when the competition came up it made sense to make one,” Kressner said. She had produced a similar video before, which she said gave her a head start. And now Kressner plans to use the $3,000 prize money to invest in Transport Foundry, a company she has created to research how feasible her idea is in the real world. Three other video-makers received $2,000 each as runners-up in the foreCAST competition, which has been made possible by a $50,000 gift from one of the School’s alumni. Anika Dhamo and Heidi Vreeland used their video to highlight their Engineers Without Borders (EWB-GT) project creating a new cook stove for Nicaraguans. “We needed to acquire funding and increase awareness of what we will be doing,” Vreeland said. “The video competition has been a great opportunity to address some of our needs in successfully launching our new EWB program.”

Josephine Kressner’s short film, “Transportation Planning: The Idea,” won the first round of CEEatGT’s foreCAST Initiative. Students submitted original videos about the impact civil and environmental engineers have had on the world (and can have in the future). Photo by Abbie Kressner, abbiekressner.com.

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Vreeland and Dhamo donated their winnings toward a return trip to Nicaragua in August, where they will assess how their new stoves are working. Annie McGrew and Jessie Spruill also gave their prize money to EWB-GT to support the clean-water project in Uganda that was their film’s focus. The other runner-up, Jonathan DiGioia, paid student fees with his winnings and supported friends on a summer mission trip. A second round of films will be judged in November. CEE AT GT 10

FORE CAST STANDS FOR: ELEBRATING ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENTS DVANCING SOCIETY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION OLVING GLOBAL CHALLENGES THROUGH INNOVATION AND COLLABORATION HEORIZING THE IMPACT OF OUR WORK ON FUTURE GENERATIONS

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WATCH THE FIRST-ROUND WINNING SHORT FILMS ce.gatech.edu/annualreport

THE

JOE S.

MUNDY GLOBAL LEARNING

ENDOWMENT

he $4 million Mundy fund gives students the perspective-broadening opportunity to travel abroad for educational and cultural experiences that help them develop into leaders in the global community. Focused primarily on undergraduates, the fully funded endowment adds value to the degrees students earn at CEEatGT by giving them a more well-rounded view of the world.

BY THE NUMBERS

60+ COUNTRIES

$4 MILLION ENDOWMENT

STUDENTS 6 CONTINENTS 100+ FUNDED TO DATE VISITED ON

APRIL GADSBY

Australia | New Zealand | Fiji

RYAN SAGER

Guangdong, China Sager and a group of fellow students spent a semester developing a comprehensive plan for the city of Maoming. Students had no economic, population or traffic data because the central Chinese government did not give local officials permission to release it. And they discovered an economically devastated area when they ultimately arrived in Maoming. They built their plan around the remaining villagers, who subsisted by farming and fishing. But when they made their presentation, the students discovered city officials wanted to raze everything to make way for resort hotels and luxury condos. “We had worked long hours, interviewed the locals, traced all available resources and put our best skills forward to complete the task, only to realize that the government was not willing to budge. In our Americanized education, we had been taught to listen to the people, to design for their needs, and not to repress the individual citizens. We had designed our projects with the locals in mind, and not with the intention of wiping clean the project site for new luxury developments. It was a tough lesson to swallow, realizing that no matter how in-depth your project goes, if you don’t understand the local government’s wishes and proceedings, your work may amount to nothing.”

Gadsby used Mundy funds to participate in Georgia Tech’s Pacific Program, completing a compressed summer semester over 12 weeks in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand. “Balance was of the upmost importance while abroad, because I still needed to do well in my classes, but I was there to learn outside the classroom as well. I am hoping to bring that balance with me to school next year as well as in my life as a professional.” The trip also gave Gadsby insight into what she wants to do with her engineering degree. “I finally decided in Sydney that I want to focus on transportation engineering. The [Harbour Bridge] didn’t excite me in the way it should’ve if I wanted to focus on structures. What really got me excited was thinking about ways the transportation systems could be improved. As a traveler reliant on public transportation, it was noticeable what areas had good systems and what areas did not.”

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nvironmental engineering major Brandie Banner (center) was part of Team Sanivation, the winners of the 2014 InVenture Prize for their innovative product: an inexpensive, more sanitary toilet for the developing world. Other members of the team included industrial design majors Jasmine Burton (left) and Erin Cobb. They earned $25,000 and a place in a Georgia Tech startup accelerator program.

STUDENT

NEWS & AWARDS

BRIDGE, CANOE SHINE AT ASCE REGIONAL CONFERENCE

he Georgia Tech American Society of Civil Engineers Student Chapter represented CEEatGT at the Carolinas Regional Conference in March, producing the overall first-place steel bridge and placing second with their concrete canoe. The bridge team’s work also received first place for lightness, economy and efficiency, with second-place ratings for stiffness, display and construction speed. The students’ concrete canoe placed 2nd in the co-ed sprint, propelled by Alyssa Perkins, Brad Englund, Sarah Ecker and Gabe Hoffman. Georgia Tech’s canoe was one of only a few that did not require any supplementary flotation. “I think you could have put the front line of the Tech football team in the canoe and it would have maintained sufficient freeboard this year,” said Professor Don White, the group’s adviser. The canoe’s artwork was inspired by the S.S. Minnow of Gilligan’s Island fame, and Captain Chris Kiser donned a matching skipper hat for the events.

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NSF SELECTS 3 FROM CEE AT GT FOR GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS

he National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Graduate Research Fellowships to three CEEatGT graduate students in 2014. Courtney Miller is studying environmental fluid mechanics and water resources under Professor Aris Georgakakos. Jennifer Moutinho is an environmental engineering student working with Professor Armistead “Ted” Russell. La Sasha Walker studies structural engineering, mechanics and materials with School Chair and Professor Reginald DesRoches and Professor Kim Kurtis. NSF fellows are selected early in their graduate careers based on the agency’s assessment of “their demonstrated potential for significant achievements in science and engineering.” Miller’s research will improve the understanding and modeling of wetland hydrologic and ecological functions and responses using satellite and in situ data. The improved modeling technique will be applied to the Sudd Wetlands in South Sudan and integrated into a decision-support system for the Nile River Basin. Moutinho’s research focuses on characterizing the dispersion of multiple traffic pollutants using a range of sampling sites across the Georgia Tech campus, which is adjacent to the most congested highway in Atlanta. Walker’s research seeks to develop sustainability guidelines for the application of Recycled Concrete Aggregates (RCA) for structural concrete, including the environmental impacts of using RCA, the expected structural performance, and life-cycle cost analysis.

ALSO OF NOTE Five students—Julius Doan, Alice Grossman, Prabha “Popa” Pratyaksa, Janille Smith-Colin and Carly Queen—received 2014 Eisenhower Transportation Fellowships from the Federal Highway Administration. Candace Brakewood, Elizabeth Nadelman and Laura Redmond won more than $20,000 in scholarship support for their graduate studies from the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation. Lauren Dermody Helen Grenga Outstanding Engineer Award Jamie M. Fischer Participant, 22nd Eno Leadership Development Conference; Eno 2014 Rodney E. Slater Award Mariel Friberg Air & Waste Management Association Scholarship Alice Grossman and Alexandra Frackelton Ken Cross Scholarship from the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professions Aliaksandr Malokin Gordon W. Schultz Fellowship from Parsons Brinckerhoff Fawad Niazi Named Top Author in 2013 by the ASCE Coasts, Oceans, Ports & Rivers Institute Alejandro Martinez International Student Leadership Award Seungdae Oh Best Ph.D. Thesis, Sigma Xi Research Awards Mohammed Rashidi 2014 Sam Nunn Security Program Fellow Peizhe Sun Environmental Chemistry Graduate Student Award, American Chemical Society Pictured left with Professors Spyros G. Pavlostathis and Ching-Hua Huang

WARMER SOIL: HOW MICROBES RESPOND (AND WHAT THAT TELLS US) By Brett Israel

s scientists forecast the impacts of climate change, one missing piece of the puzzle is what will happen to carbon in the soil and the microbes that control the fate of this carbon as the planet warms. Scientists studying grasslands in Oklahoma have discovered that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius in the air temperature above the soil creates significant changes to the microbial ecosystem underground. Compared to a control group with no warming, plants in the warmer plots grew faster and higher, which put more carbon into the soil as the plants died. The soil’s microbes responded by altering their DNA to enhance their ability to handle the excess carbon. “What we conclude from this study is the warming has an effect on the soil ecosystem,” said Kostas Konstantinidis, an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering who holds the Carlton S. Wilder Junior Faculty Professorship in Environmental Engineering. “It does appear that the microbes change genetically to take advantage of the opportunity given to them.” The study was first published online in December, in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The research was sponsored by the Department of Energy and involved collaboration with several universities, including the University of Oklahoma. The findings are the culmination of a 10-year study that seeks to understand how the most intricate ecosystem in nature—soil—will respond to climate change.

A single gram of soil is home to a billion bacterial cells, representing at least 4,000 different species. In comparison, the human gut is home to at least 10 times fewer different species of bacteria. Scientists have little idea what microbes in the soil do, how they do it, or how they respond to changes in their environment, Konstantinidis said. This limits the predictive capabilities of climate models. “In models of climate change, it is a black box what happens to the carbon in soil,” Konstantinidis said. “One reason that models of climate change have such big room for variation is because we don’t understand the microbial activities that control carbon in the soil.” Complicating matters, 99.9 percent of the microbes in the soil cannot be grown in the lab, so scientists must study them where they live. The molecular and genomic techniques to do so are a specialty of Konstantinidis’ lab. “There are complex interactions between plants and microbes, and we need to understand them better to have a more predictive understanding of what’s going on,” Konstantinidis said. “This is the first study trying to do that, but we are not close to the complete understanding yet.” Above: Study lead author and former graduate student Chengwei Luo (left) and Associate Professor Kostas Konstantinidis show petri dishes with E. coli cells. Photo by Gary Meek. This research is supported by the Department of Energy under award number DE-SC0004601. Any conclusions or opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the DOE.

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BETTER, STRONGER, FASTER: ENHANCING A UNIVERSAL MATERIAL By Rick Robinson

imberly Kurtis, a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is pursuing multiple research projects involving a ubiquitous composite material: concrete. Her research involves studies that range from chemistry and structure at the nanoscale to appraising massive structures such as dams and buildings at the macroscale. “Our work is very multiscale, and like other materials researchers, we’re constantly trying to better define the relationship between structure and properties,” Kurtis said. “To do that, we study the broader class of all cement-based materials—not just concrete, but anything that contains a mineral, non-biological cement—to link the chemistry of various cements with their structural performance.” In one National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored project, Kurtis and her team studied the use of titanium dioxide nanoparticles as partial replacements for cement. They found the material significantly alters the way that the cement reacts, reducing the time it takes to cure and potentially reducing the amount of cement needed to build a structure.

The team is also studying the role of titanium dioxide and concrete’s nanostructure in potentially reducing nitrogen oxide effects. Nitrogen oxides, a group of compounds that are major byproducts of vehicle emissions, can damage human health. Tailoring the interactions between concrete and its environment could lead to new approaches for improving air quality. Among several other projects, Kurtis is working with NSF support to develop better statistical and probabilistic descriptors of concrete and its constituents, with a focus on nanoscale and micron-scale porosity. Concrete is heterogeneous, she explained, and its composition varies on multiple scales, from coarse aggregate to paste. Data on these related factors can be used in computer models to predict performance. “An exciting thing about being at Georgia Tech is that you’ve always got one foot in science and one foot in practice,” Kurtis said. “You want to make sure that what you’re doing is relevant to the broader needs of society.” Nanotechnology is an essential element in many of the materials research projects taking place at Georgia Tech. Professor Kimberly Kurtis of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering is using titanium dioxide nanoparticles to enhance the ubiquitous but essential material known as concrete. Photo by Gary Meek.

SALT ROCK AND UNDERGROUND STORAGE: STUDYING DAMAGE AND HEALING IN A ‘MAGIC’ ROCK By Joshua Stewart

hloé Arson spends a lot of time thinking about salt.

And when it comes to the seemingly simple combination of sodium and chlorine, “The more you know, the more you don’t know,” she says. Arson is an assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on damage and healing models for rocks. Salt rock, as it happens, is a perfect subject for her inquiries. “It turns out that salt rock is a kind of magic rock, because under constant stress and temperature conditions, it can re-bond the cracks that are in it,” Arson said. “So it is a good model material to study healing processes in minerals and in rocks in general.” Understanding how salt rock can fix cracks in its structure and how it behaves under stress has important real-world implications. Oil and gas companies use salt caverns and old salt mines to temporarily store natural gas and oil when supply outstrips demand. Nuclear power plants can use the underground spaces for long-term nuclear-waste storage. The salt caverns can even act as a sort of battery for wind energy, holding compressed air collected when there’s more wind than energy demand and then using that stored air to create energy when it’s needed.

Photo by Mark A. Wilson.

All that loading and unloading of the caverns puts stress on the rocks, but Arson’s work could help engineers understand how frequently they can do it while taking advantage of the salt rock’s natural healing tendencies. Arson said scientists still don’t understand many of the processes that govern how the rock behaves. They can observe what happens to salt rock’s microscopic structure under pressure or at specific temperatures in the lab. They can also observe changes at a larger scale. But they can’t yet link the two. “How do these two scales interact? That could be the key to many questions we have,” Arson said. That’s where the mathematical models she’s developing come in, connecting the dots between processes so engineers will have a better understanding of how salt caves will behave in real-world use. This spring, Arson and some colleagues at Texas A&M University received National Science Foundation funding to study how salt rock cracks, deforms and re-bonds. They want to connect specific ways rocks deform to the underlying microscopic processes that lead to that damage. “The goal is really, for engineering purposes, to be able to control somehow this material that you have in the field,” she said. “A cavity is not a steel structure in which you design your steel members in a factory and then you use them. You’re using something that is already in place, so if the rock deforms in a way that you were not expecting, you need to be able to monitor that and then to have plan B’s and relate that to what you know of the rock.”

GOING WIRELESS: SMALL, CHEAP, SOLAR-POWERED SENSORS COULD CHANGE THE GAME FOR BRIDGE INSPECTIONS By Joshua Stewart

t often takes a basket lift, hammers and chisels, and lots of safety equipment when a work crew inspects one of the nation’s 600,000 bridges. The federal government requires such analyses every two years for each of those spans, a costly and timeconsuming endeavor. But what if we could install sensors that would deliver data wirelessly on a bridge’s condition, allowing transportation engineers to monitor its health all the time? A group of researchers in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEEatGT) has developed such a system. And they’re preparing to test it on a U.S. Highway 78 bridge with support from the School’s National Center for Transportation Systems Productivity and Management and transportation departments in Georgia and Alabama. The technology has the potential to be a game-changer in nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Research and Technology. “In this country, the average age of our bridges is 42 years old. They’re getting older and older, and there’s no budget to fix them all,” said Yang Wang, a CEEatGT associate professor who’s leading the project. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates it will take more than $20 billion a year for 15 years to eliminate the nation’s backlog of deficient bridges. In its 2013 infrastructure report card, ASCE also noted governments are currently spending just $13 billion. The wireless sensing devices Wang has been developing could help those governments make decisions about the most critical needs. “The idea is to have low-cost systems that can be instrumented on the bridge and monitor the bridge’s condition so that we can use the limited resources [we have] on the most dangerous situations,” Wang said.

Wang has been working with CEEatGT professor Laurence Jacobs on the project, along with collaborators from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The sensing nodes cost just a few hundred dollars each, and they eliminate an expensive spider web of cabling and data processing for traditional sensor systems. The wireless nodes instead transmit their data to a small local gateway nearby that sends the data directly to researchers or engineers over cellular networks. The project gets at the infrastructure-health problem another way, too, actually weighing the vehicles that traverse the bridge. Their data about the structure’s real-time response to traffic feeds a sophisticated computer model of the bridge, allowing for the calculation of gross vehicle weights and axle loading. These data are called Bridge Weigh-in-Motion (BWIM), and they allow authorities to track—and police—overweight trucks. That could help save money for local governments, allowing for fewer of the weigh stations common alongside highways and reducing wear and tear on roads and bridges in the first place. Even with all the savings, however, Wang’s sensor systems probably won’t eliminate the need for trained eyes judging how the nation’s bridges are faring. They’ll just inform the process—and make it cheaper. “We’re not trying to say we’re going to replace human evaluation,” Wang said. “I think there’s a certain value to human eyes, [which can see problems] that may be difficult for sensor to detect. But this can provide information so that there’s more data available for us to evaluate the bridge’s health.”

At left, graduate research assistants Xiaohua Yi and Chunhee Cho and Associate Professor Yang Wang inspect strain- and crack-testing specimens used in research on wireless sensors. Photo by Gary Meek. Above, one of the wireless sensing nodes Wang and his team developed to collect BWIM and NDE data.

CLIMATE CHANGE: WHEN IT COMES TO WATER, MORE AND LESS WILL BE REALITY

Excerpts from the National Climate Assessment Water Resources Chapter

he federal government released the National Climate Assessment in May 2014, a deep analysis of the present impacts of climate change on the United States and a look at future concerns. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Aris Georgakakos served as one of two convening lead authors for the water section. That section highlights 11 key impacts of climate change, excerpted below. Impacts on the water cycle: • Annual precipitation and river-flow increases are observed now in the Midwest and the Northeast regions. Very heavy precipitation events have increased nationally and are projected to increase in all regions. The length of dry spells is projected to increase in most areas, especially the southern and northwestern portions of the contiguous United States. • Short-term (seasonal or shorter) droughts are expected to intensify in most U.S. regions. Longer-term droughts are expected to intensify in large areas of the Southwest, southern Great Plains and Southeast. • Flooding may intensify in many U.S. regions, even in areas where total precipitation is projected to decline. • Climate change is expected to affect water demand, groundwater withdrawals and aquifer recharge, reducing groundwater availability in some areas. • Sea level rise, storms and storm surges, and changes in surface and groundwater use patterns are expected to compromise the sustainability of coastal freshwater aquifers and wetlands. • Increasing air and water temperatures, more intense precipitation and runoff, and intensifying droughts can decrease river and lake water quality in many ways, including increases in sediment, nitrogen and other pollutant loads.

OBSERVED CHANGE IN VERY HEAVY PRECIPITATION

Impacts on water resources use and management: • Climate change affects water demand and the ways water is used within and across regions and economic sectors. The Southwest, Great Plains and Southeast are particularly vulnerable to changes in water supply and demand. • Changes in precipitation and runoff, combined with changes in consumption and withdrawal, have reduced surface and groundwater supplies in many areas. These trends are expected to continue, increasing the likelihood of water shortages for many uses. • Increasing flooding risk affects human safety and health, property, infrastructure, economies, and ecology in many basins across the United States. Adaptation and institutional responses: • In most U.S. regions, water resources managers and planners will encounter new risks, vulnerabilities, and opportunities that may not be properly managed within existing practices. • Increasing resilience and enhancing adaptive capacity provide opportunities to strengthen water resources management and plan for climate change impacts. Many institutional, scientific, economic and political barriers present challenges to implementing adaptive strategies.

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Graphic: U.S. Global Change Research Program

ce.gatech.edu/annualreport

“The atmosphere [at Georgia Tech] is one of innovation, collaboration and creative inquiry, and the result is world-class research that makes a difference. I can’t imagine a better setting for training the next generation of globally conscious engineers.” - Joe Brown

OUR FACULTY:

NEW FACES

JOE BROWN

YONG K. CHO

Ph.D. Environmental Sciences and Engineering University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, 2007

Ph.D. Civil Engineering University of Texas at Austin, 2000

Joe Brown joined the School in January after serving as a lecturer in the Department of Disease Control, Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Yong Cho returned to the School from his most recent work at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Cho earned his master’s in civil engineering from Georgia Tech in 1997.

Brown’s research and teaching interests are at the intersection of environmental engineering and public health, including water and sanitation infrastructure sustainability, detection methods for pathogens and pathogen indicators in the environment, drinking water treatment technology characterization and innovation, and human health effects of exposure to waterborne pathogens. His current global work spans four continents and eight countries. He serves as principle investigator on a new $2 million U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) project to study health impacts of urban sanitation expansion in Mozambique.

A 2011 recipient of the NSF Early Career Award, Cho’s research interests include building energy, construction automation, and transportation. He is leading the development of a new paradigm in these research areas by challenging the current understanding of science and engineering technologies in construction and sustainable built environments. Among the challenges he is investigating: robotizing several critical construction tasks and developing sustainable energy improvement methods for buildings.

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“Georgia Tech possesses such a strong sense of who it is and commands such respect both in academic circles and in the community at large. I am looking forward to working with new combinations of students, faculty, research staff, funding agencies, and ideas, and I have tremendous anticipation for the fascinating and useful discoveries and applications that will result.” - Patricia Mokhtarian

PATRICIA L. MOKHTARIAN

LAUREN K. STEWART

Ph.D. Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences Northwestern University, 1981

Ph.D. Structural Engineering University of California, San Diego, 2010

Patricia Mokhtarian came to the School from the University of California, Davis, where she was a professor emeritus, served as the associate director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, and was a founding chair of the interdisciplinary M.S./Ph.D. program in Transportation Technology and Policy.

A renowned expert in blast research, Lauren Stewart joined the School after serving as a postdoctoral scholar and lecturer at UCSD. She is also a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow.

Mokhtarian has specialized in the study of travel behavior for more than 30 years. Her key research interests include the impacts of land use on travel behavior (particularly including residential location and residential self-selection issues), the impact of telecommunications technology on travel behavior, commuters’ responses to congestion or to system disruptions, attitudes toward mobility, and travel multitasking. She has directed or participated in several dozen projects related to these areas, involving extramural funding totaling about $8 million.

Stewart has been involved in many blast and earthquake experimental projects, including blast testing of steel structural columns, steel-stud wall systems, and high-performance concrete panels using the UCSD blast simulator. She has also conducted advanced finite element analysis for the World Trade Center 7, the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate small munitions program, and programs supported by the Technical Support Working Group. Since 2007, she has served as a senior blast-engineering consultant to a variety of organizations.

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DONALD WEBSTER PIONEERS NEW LEARNING MODELS By Elana Burton

iscarding an ages-old and widely accepted teaching model—the classic lecture format— is not for the academically faint of heart.

in length. Once in class, Webster demonstrates a practice problem, and then students work in groups of two to tackle additional examples.

Nor is designing and implementing an innovative teaching model to replace it.

Tables designed for two people reflect the course’s emphasis on paired learning. Limiting group size to two students encourages engagement and openness. “There’s nowhere for a third student to hide or sit on the sideline,” Webster said.

Yet that is what faculty members on Georgia Tech’s campus are increasingly choosing to do, adopting what’s called an “inverted” classroom model. This model asks students to watch pre-filmed lectures at home, then treats class time as a dedicated problem-solving workshop. It was Donald Webster, associate chair and professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who pioneered the inverted course concept in fall 2012. “Even as a professor with a lot of experience, [it was] a little terrifying, definitely a leap of faith,” Webster said. “But problem-solving—that’s how students learn.” Encouraged by fellow faculty members, Webster spent six months planning the design and schedule of his new model. In spring 2013, he launched his first inverted course, a fluid mechanics class, and coined the term “flipped.” It was a learning experience. “A lot of things went really well, some things changed,” Webster said. But from the start, he said, it was “vital, that, as an instructor, I was thoughtful about the setup of the course and how students accessed information.”

CLASSROOM ENVIRONS The dynamic of Webster’s classroom looks something like this: Before coming to class, students view a handful of short lecture videos, typically eight to 11 minutes

Wheeled chairs, however, allow groups the flexibility to maneuver around and collaborate with students at other tables. When this happens, students effectively become one another’s learning resources, acting as teaching assistants to their peers.

STUDENT EXPERIENCE Student feedback on the model has been overwhelmingly positive. Webster attributes this to two factors: the active problem solving, which lets students see if they’ve truly grasped the concept, and individual control of the lecture videos, which students can pause, rewind or watch again. Diane Jlelaty, a third-year civil engineering student, agrees with that assessment. She has taken two of Webster’s inverted courses. In her view, any technically heavy course can benefit from the inverted format, specifically for the increased opportunity to practice problem-solving. “On exams, we’re not asked to describe theory, we’re asked to perform question problems,” she said. “There’s a lot of difference producing a solution yourself, since it has to come from your own understanding of the materials and learning via lecture.”

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Of the less positive feedback from students, most seems to stem from surprise that they had enrolled in a flipped course. Currently, the course registration system doesn’t indicate when an instructor plans to use the inverted model.

LESSONS LEARNED It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. In Webster’s third semester teaching the inverted course, students did poorly on the midterm exam, which he said could have shaken his faith in the whole model. But after a firm talk with the class, he readministered the exam, and scores were remarkably better than those earned by students in a regular lecture format. Webster continues to refine his design. He has begun to require attendance after seeing that students who come to class perform remarkably better on exams. Wendy Newstetter, director of Learning Sciences Research for the College of Engineering, said the situated feedback enabled by the inverted model allows for just-in-time teaching tailored to student needs. “When you first flip, the classroom setting becomes a window on the problems students are having on a grand scale, and that’s a moment we’ve never had before,” she said. “It’s eye-opening.”

Top: A lecture video from one of Webster’s flipped classes. Bottom: Webster tours progress of the Jesse W. Mason Building renovation with CEEatGT faculty and staff.

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SANTAMARINA DELIVERS TERZAGHI LECTURE AT ASCE GEO-CONGRESS

rofessor J. Carlos Santamarina received the American Society of Civil Engineers Geo-Institute’s highest honor in February, when he presented the Karl Terzaghi Lecture at the group’s 2014 Geo-Congress. The Terzaghi Lecturer is an individual honored for their exemplary contributions to the field of geotechnical engineering for more than 50 years. Santamarina’s presentation focused on the emerging field of energy geotechnology. The coming decades will see worldwide population growth and associated economic development that will result in a pronounced increase in energy demand. Santamarina explained the central role geotechnical engineering can play in that evolving energy challenge, from resource recovery and infrastructure development to energy storage and waste management. Santamarina is the third Terzaghi Lecturer from Georgia Tech. George F. Sowers delivered the speech in 1979 and G. Wayne Clough delivered it in 1994.

WATCH SANTAMARINA’S LECTURE

ce.gatech.edu/annualreport

FACULTY

NEWS & AWARDS

BERKELEY INDUCTS KOON INTO ACADEMY OF DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI

CRITTENDEN AMONG FEW NONNATIVES TO JOIN CHINESE ENGINEERING ACADEMY The Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) doesn’t elect many members from outside the country. But Professor John Crittenden is one of six who joined this year.

Four decades after he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley’s doctoral program, Professor John Koon was recognized as one of the university’s most-accomplished alumni.

Overall, fewer than 6 percent of the academy’s 807 members hail from outside of China, so it’s a rare honor for Crittenden. And it’s the highest academic title for the field of engineering in that country.

A 1971 Ph.D. graduate of Berkeley’s environmental engineering program, Koon holds a professional engineering license in five states and is a board certified environmental engineer. He has worked with industry, municipalities and federal facilities in the United States as well as industrial clients in Western Europe, Canada, Latin and South America, and the South Pacific.

“I am deeply honored to be inducted into the Chinese Academy of Engineering,” said Crittenden, director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems at Georgia Tech. “It is my hope that through my involvement in the CAE, I may work with my colleagues to further the development of sustainable cities that will benefit not only the coming generations of the people of China, but all the future city-dwellers in our rapidly urbanizing world.” CAE extends membership to prominent scientists from other countries in an effort to bolster international collaboration in engineering, science and technology. The academy only installs new lifelong members— from China or elsewhere—every two years. Crittenden, Hightower Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Environmental Technologies, was inducted into CAE in early June in Beijing. It was the culmination of a whirlwind summer tour of conferences, speeches and meetings in China.

“John joins a small group of inductees among the many thousands of successful alumni from this program,” said Reginald DesRoches, CEEatGT’s Karen and John Huff School Chair and a fellow Berkeley graduate. Koon has authored or co-authored more than 50 technical publications, many in peer-reviewed journals. He is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a fellow of the Water Environment Federation, and a member of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology’s executive committee since 2009.

GEORGIA BOARD OF REGENTS APPOINTS RUSSELL TO REGENTS PROFESSORSHIP The University System of Georgia’s governing board voted in September to name Professor Armistead “Ted” Russell a Regents Professor. The designation is reserved for tenured full professors whose scholarship, research and other contributions to their field have been recognized as exemplary by their peers. “If you look at what I’ve been able to accomplish, you’ll see that it’s often been a team effort, between myself and other faculty in CEE and with professors in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and certainly with our colleagues at Emory. And then there are the students,” said Russell, who holds CEEatGT’s Howard T. Tellepsen Chair. “I’ve been able to work with some of the brightest minds, and they’ve gone on to do tremendous things. “

“Dr. Russell has created an excellent record of scholarship, education and service,” said Gary May, dean of the College of Engineering. “His research has driven significant advances in air quality regulation in the state, the nation and around the world. He is an outstanding mentor to students, research staff and faculty.” In nominating Russell for the Regents Professorship, his colleagues recognized his dedication to public health. Russell has helped lead a number of national and international committees dealing with air quality, including the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the National Particle Toxicity Report Review Committee, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Subcommittee on Atmospheric Monitoring and Methods, the EPA Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis, and the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

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Top left, Associate Professor Hermann Fritz. Bottom left, Professor Lawrence Kahn. Below, Assistant Professor Kari Watkins.

ALSO OF NOTE The Georgia Board of Regents appointed Associate Chair and Professor Susan Burns to the Georgia Power Co. Distinguished Professorship, an award given to a CEEatGT faculty member whose research and teaching impacts the power industry.

The American Concrete Institute (ACI) selected Professor Lawrence Kahn for the 2013 Delmar L. Bloem Distinguished Service Award, recognizing his leadership of an ACI committee that produced the first-ever standards guiding the evaluation, repair and rehabilitation of concrete buildings.

On the 50th anniversary of the Great Alaska Earthquake, Karen and John Huff School Chair Reginald DesRoches offered testimony on advances in earthquake science to members of the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. DesRoches has also been appointed to the newly created National Academies Resilience Roundtable.

The National Academy of Sciences recognized Associate Professor Kostas Konstantinidis as one of the nation’s leading young scientists, inviting him to the German-American Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium in April.

The European Geosciences Union gave Associate Professor Hermann Fritz its 2014 Plinius Medal for his natural hazards research. Atlanta-based Pedestrians Educating Drivers on Safety gave Professor Randall Guensler and his research team a 2013 Golden Shoe Award for their Sidewalk Quality and Safety Assessment project, an effort to catalog more than 2,500 miles of Atlanta sidewalks’ cracks, potholes and other problems. Guensler also became associate director of the new National Center for Sustainable Transportation funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. ASME (originally the American Society of Mechanical Engineers) elevated College of Engineering Associate Dean and CEEatGT Professor Laurence Jacobs to an ASME Fellow for his outstanding engineering achievements.

The Frontiers of Engineering Symposium organizing committee invited Professor Kim Kurtis to the group’s fall gathering. Kurtis is also taking on a new leadership role in the College of Engineering as associate dean for faculty development and scholarship. Mass Transit Magazine included Assistant Professor Kari Watkins on its 2013 40 Under 40, an annual list of professionals who have made significant contributions to the public transit industry. Georgia Tech recognized four CEEatGT faculty members this spring for their excellence in teaching and service. Principal Research Scientist Michael Rodgers won the CETL Undergraduate Educator Award. Assistant Professor Kari Watkins received the CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. Associate Chair and Professor Donald Webster won the Geoffrey Eichholz Faculty Teaching Award. And Associate Professor Michael Hunter received the Institute Outstanding Service Award.

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OUR FACULTY DR. MUSTAFA M. ARAL Professor PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology DR. CHLOÉ ARSON Assistant Professor PhD, Navier Laboratory (CERMES), École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées DR. DOMINIC ASSIMAKI Associate Professor ScD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology DR. NELSON C. BAKER Dean of Professional Education & Associate Professor PhD, Carnegie Mellon University DR. MICHAEL H. BERGIN Professor PhD, Carnegie Mellon University DR. RAFAEL L. BRAS Provost & Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, K. Harrison Brown Family Chair ScD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology DR. JOE BROWN Assistant Professor PhD, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill DR. SUSAN E. BURNS Associate Chair & Georgia Power Distinguished Professor PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology DR. YONGSHENG CHEN Associate Professor PhD, Nankai University DR. YONG K. CHO Associate Professor PhD, University of Texas at Austin DR. JOHN CRITTENDEN Director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems; Hightower Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Environmental Technologies PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

DR. REGINALD DESROCHES Karen and John Huff School Chair & Professor PhD, University of California, Berkeley

DR. LAURENCE J. JACOBS CoE Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Professor PhD, Columbia University

DR. FRANCESCO G. FEDELE Associate Professor PhD, University of Vermont

DR. LAWRENCE F. KAHN Professor PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

DR. HERMANN M. FRITZ Associate Professor PhD, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

DR. ADJO A. AMEKUDZI KENNEDY Professor PhD, Carnegie Mellon University

DR. J. DAVID FROST Professor PhD, Purdue University

DR. KOSTAS T. KONSTANTINIDIS Carlton S. Wilder Junior Faculty Professorship & Associate Professor PhD, Michigan State University

DR. LAURIE A. GARROW Associate Professor PhD, Northwestern University DR. ARIS P. GEORGAKAKOS Director, Georgia Water Resources Institute & Professor PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology DR. LEONID GERMANOVICH Professor PhD, Moscow State Mining University DR. BARRY J. GOODNO Professor PhD, Stanford University DR. RANDALL L. GUENSLER Professor PhD, University of California, Davis DR. KEVIN A. HAAS Associate Professor PhD, University of Delaware DR. CHING-HUA HUANG Professor PhD, Johns Hopkins University DR. HAIYING HUANG Associate Professor PhD, University of Minnesota DR. MICHAEL P. HUNTER Director, National Center for Transportation Systems Productivity and Management & Associate Professor PhD, University of Texas at Austin

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DR. JOHN H. KOON Professor of the Practice PhD, University of California, Berkeley DR. KIMBERLY E. KURTIS Associate Chair & CoE ADVANCE Professor PhD, University of California, Berkeley DR. JORGE A. LAVAL Associate Professor PhD, University of California, Berkeley DR. JOHN D. LEONARD CoE Associate Dean for Finance & Administration & Associate Professor PhD, University of California, Irvine DR. STANLEY D. LINDSEY Professor of the Practice PhD, Vanderbilt University DR. JIAN LUO Associate Professor PhD, Stanford University DR. PAUL W. MAYNE Professor PhD, Cornell University DR. PATRICIA L. MOKHTARIAN Professor PhD, Northwestern University DR. RAFI L. MUHANNA Associate Professor PhD, Higher Institute for Structure and Architecture, Sofia, Bulgaria

DR. JAMES A. MULHOLLAND Professor PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

DR. YI-CHANG JAMES TSAI Professor PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology

DR. SPYROS G. PAVLOSTATHIS Professor PhD, Cornell University

DR. JINGFENG WANG Associate Professor ScD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

DR. PHILIP J. ROBERTS Professor PhD, California Institute of Technology DR. LISA G. ROSENSTEIN Senior Academic Professional Engineering Communications PhD, Emory University DR. ARMISTEAD G. RUSSELL Howard T. Tellepsen Chair & Regents Professor PhD, California Institute of Technology DR. J. CARLOS SANTAMARINA Goizueta Foundation Faculty Chair & Professor PhD, Purdue University DR. DAVID W. SCOTT Associate Professor PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology DR. JIM C. SPAIN Professor PhD, University of Texas at Austin DR. LAUREN K. STEWART Assistant Professor PhD, University of California, San Diego DR. MARC STIEGLITZ Associate Professor PhD, Columbia University DR. TERRY W. STURM Professor PhD, University of Iowa DR. PHANISH SURYANARAYANA Assistant Professor PhD, California Institute of Technology

DR. YANG WANG Associate Professor PhD, Stanford University DR. KARI E. WATKINS Assistant Professor PhD, University of Washington DR. DONALD R. WEBSTER Associate Chair & Professor PhD, University of California, Berkeley DR. DONALD W. WHITE Professor PhD, Cornell University DR. ARASH YAVARI Associate Professor PhD, California Institute of Technology DR. SOTIRA YIACOUMI Professor PhD, Syracuse University DR. ABDUL-HAMID ZUREICK Professor PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

IN MEMORIAM

Dr. Stanley D. Lindsey died in early July 2014 at his horse farm in Bluffton, South Carolina. He was reportedly on his way to care for his beloved animals. Stan joined CEEatGT in 2002 after decades as a distinguished structural engineer. We join his many family and friends in mourning his passing.

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EMERITUS FACULTY DR. G. WAYNE CLOUGH President Emeritus PhD, University of California, Berkeley DR. BRUCE R. ELLINGWOOD Professor Emeritus PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign DR. JAMES LAI Professor Emeritus PhD, Brown University DR. F. MICHAEL SAUNDERS Professor Emeritus PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign DR. KENNETH M. WILL Associate Professor Emeritus PhD, University of Texas at Austin Denotes National Academy of Engineering member

RESEARCH ENGINEERS & SCIENTISTS

JIABAO GUAN ANGSHUMAN GUIN YONGTAO HU MEHMET T. ODMAN MICHAEL O. RODGERS FRANK SOUTHWORTH WONHO SUH ANN XU CHUANG-SHENG (WALTER) YANG HUAMING YAO GUANGXUAN ZHU ADJUNCT FACULTY

JOHN E. ABRAHAM JOHN D. EDWARDS MAOHANG FAN JOSEPH B. HUGHES JAEHONG KIM ROBERTO T. LEON JOHN Z. LUH JUSTIN V. REMAIS GLENN J. RIX COSTAS TSOURIS (AFFILIATE) PAUL A. WORK

“We strongly believe that the most critical

advances occur at the INTERSECTION of

DISCIPLINES . The problems that will be addressed by the OLMSTED CHAIR are at the INTERFACE of the built environment, natural system and SOCIAL SYSTEMS .”

NEW ENDOWED CHAIR NAMED FOR FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED

Symposium lays out the challenges—and solutions—that will inform the work of the new chair.

he School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEEatGT) celebrated the father of landscape architecture and began the search for a new endowed faculty member in June. The Frederick Law Olmsted Symposium assembled six thought leaders in sustainable urban infrastructure to talk about Olmsted’s work and the concepts he created. It was also the start of a conversation about who can best advance the ideas of sustainability in our cities and suburbs as the new Olmsted Chair. “The speakers were carefully selected to touch on different but complementary topics related to the research and teaching we envision the chair-holder doing,” said Reginald DesRoches, Karen and John Huff School Chair. DesRoches and Ellen Dunham-Jones, professor of architecture and urban design in the College of Architecture, are leading the search for the new faculty member.

The parkway was also one of the three major 19th-century Olmsted innovations passed into the 20th century, Allen said. The others? Public parks—a new kind of public space that was empty, free and open to suggestion—and the planned garden suburb— Olmsted’s attempt to combine the best aspects of rural life in New England with urban life. “[Olmsted’s] own education was unorthodox,” said Frederick Steiner, dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin and another symposium speaker. “But his singular brilliance and scope of accomplishments are worthy of this [endowed chair].” CEEatGT’s new Olmsted Chair is made possible through a gift from Jenny and Mike Messner, B.S. 1976. Their vision is for the teacher and researcher selected for the position to instill in their students— and advance through their academic pursuits— Olmsted’s concern for engineering urban spaces that have long-term public benefits.

Though the Olmsted chair will be housed in CEE, the position will serve as a link for faculty and research in engineering, economics and the College of Architecture. “We strongly believe that the most critical advances occur at the intersection of disciplines,” DesRoches said. “The problems that will be addressed by the Olmsted Chair are at the interface of the built environment, natural systems, and social systems.”

OLMSTED’S WORK AND LEGACY “[Olmsted’s] real genius was in figuring out what was needed to solve a problem and then assembling the people and resources necessary,” said Douglas Allen, professor emeritus in the School of Architecture and keynote speaker at June’s symposium. “Along the way, Olmsted attempted to do what any good poet does: he tried to tag poetic language to regular language. So a sewer becomes a parkway.” That was one of Olmsted’s ideas: a new kind of street that accommodated many modes of travel, “piggybacked onto the concept of a park and a sewer system,” Allen said. CEE AT GT 32

LEARN MORE AND WATCH THE SYMPOSIUM ce.gatech.edu/annualreport

CEE AT GT LEADERSHIP ALUMNI IN THE 21 CENTURY DEFINING GLOBAL

Where a CEEatGT education has taken just a few of our alumni to leading roles around the world.

Learn more about our new Global Engineering Leadership Development program, with courses beginning fall 2014, at ce.gatech.edu.

AFRICA

EUROPE

NORTH AMERICA

SOUTH AMERICA

LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

MONTREAL, CANADA

BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA

MICHAEL CAMP ‘78 New Operations Advisor ExxonMobil Corporation ASIA + MID EAST AL KHOBAR, SAUDI ARABIA

PATRICK MURRAY ‘75 Vice President, Regional Director Process Plants & Industrial Mustang Engineering DAMMAM, SAUDI ARABIA

AHMED MOHAMED ‘87 Senior Officer, Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation HYDERABAD, INDIA

SOBHANADRI JONNALAGADDA ‘85 Managing Director Novo Agritech Ltd. MANAMA, BAHRAIN

LUAY KHOURY ‘84 President/CEO Projacs International

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE ‘77 Commander, U.S. European Command & NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe GALWAY, IRELAND

PADRAIC O’DONOGHUE ‘85 Department Head Civil Engineering National University of Ireland, Galway ISTANBUL, TURKEY

ALI MANÇO ‘01 Architect & Managing Partner Manço Architects, Inc.

TIMOTHY AMBRIDGE ‘78 Director, Process and Tools Bombardier Aerospace Security PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

JOS É M. BERN ‘95 Vice President, Empresas Bern NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

CHARLES “WICK” MOORMAN ‘75 Chairman & CEO, Norfolk Southern

JACOB TZEGAEGBE ‘13 Marshall Scholar University College London ZUG, SWITZERLAND

GUIDO BULGHERONI ‘85 Deputy Head, Economic Promotion, Department of Economic Affairs

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA

DANIEL BOADA ‘74 President, Promotora la Alborada CARACAS, VENEZUELA

GONZALO ULIVI ‘53 Vice President, Cines Unidos

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

KEN WHISENHUNT ‘84 Head Coach, Tennessee Titans SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

LONDON, ENGLAND

LEONIDAS OYAGA ‘81 Partner & Latin America Leader The Partnering Group

STACIE SIRE ‘96 Director & Chief Engineer 767/777 Airframe, Boeing PONCE, PUERTO RICO

EMILIO VENEGAS ‘77 President, Venegas Construction WASHINGTON, DC

G. WAYNE CLOUGH ‘64 President Emeritus, Georgia Tech Secretary, Smithsonian Institution

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LIMA, PERU

RAÚL DELGADO SAYÁN ‘68 President and CEO CESEL Ingenieros SANTIAGO, CHILE

ANDY PHELPS, PE ‘76 Principal Vice President Bechtel Corporation SANTIAGO, CHILE

BENJAMIN COHEN ‘11 Co-Owner & CEO, TOHL

ALUMNI

NEWS & AWARDS

BREEDLOVE ASSUMES COMMAND OF NATO, U.S. EUROPEAN FORCES Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, B.S. 1977, took over as the leader of the United States’ armed forces in Europe and as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in spring 2013.

Stavridis told Breedlove. “You’re about to sit at Eisenhower’s desk, in the seat of a lifetime. You will be superb, and I’m proud to turn this command over to you.”

He replaced retiring Navy Adm. James Stavridis.

Breedlove grew up in Forest Park, Georgia, and was commissioned in 1977 as a distinguished graduate of Georgia Tech's ROTC program. He has completed 10 overseas tours and commanded a fighter squadron, an operations group and three fighter wings. He is a command pilot with more than 3,500 flying hours, primarily in the F-16.

Breedlove previously served as the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Africa and in leadership roles in Italy and Germany. “I will endeavor to continue the tremendous work of Adm. Stavridis to foster and strengthen partnerships both locally and across the region,” Breedlove said at the change-of-command ceremony in May. For his part, Stavridis offered praise and encouragement to his successor at the ceremony in Stuttgart, Germany.

In addition to his bachelor’s from Georgia Tech, Breedlove earned a master’s in aeronautical technology from Arizona State University in 1991 and a master’s in national security studies from the National War College in 1995. Breedlove served as a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seminar XXI at Washington D.C. in 2002.

“You’ve had a lot of great seats in your life, in your high performance aircraft and on your Harley,”

Special thanks to U.S. European Command and Stars and Stripes for material used in this story.

Photo: U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Aaron Forrest Wainwright

Suzanne Shank with her parents and Buzz at the 2014 College of Engineering Alumni Awards Dinner.

ALUMNI NEWS WHISENHUNT HIRED AS TITANS HEAD COACH Ken Whisenhunt, B.S. 1984, joined the NFL’s Tennessee Titans as their new head coach in January. The Augusta, Georgia, native played tight end for Georgia Tech from 1980 to 1984 while a student in the civil engineering program. Upon graduation, he was selected by the Atlanta Falcons in the 1985 NFL Draft and played nine seasons for the Falcons, Redskins and Jets. In 2007, he became head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, leading the team to a record 12 wins and a Super Bowl XLIII appearance during the 2008 season plus 49 total game wins—the most of any coach in the history of that franchise. He spent the 2013 season as the San Diego Chargers' offensive coordinator.

SHAILENDRA JOINS BOARD OF REGENTS Gov. Nathan Deal appointed Sachin Shailendra, B.S. 2001, to the University System of Georgia’s governing body in April. He’s now one of the 19 members of the Board of Regents, who set policy for Georgia’s 31 state universities—from establishing tuition rates to hiring campus presidents. The board also oversees the Georgia Public Library System and the Georgia Archives. Shailendra is president of SG Contracting, a full-service construction management and general contracting company based in Atlanta. He is involved in a wide variety of community organizations, including the boards of the Atlanta Opera and the Children’s Healthcare Sports Network. He’s also on the advisory council for Woodward Academy in Atlanta, his alma mater.

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HUFF ELECTED TO THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING

2014 COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING ALUMNI AWARDS

John R. Huff, B.S. 1968, joined the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in October.

Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni Award Orlando R. Mendez COO, Dorado Beach Resort and Club

“Few people have had as great an impact on the field of deep-water exploration as John,” said Reginald DesRoches, Karen and John Huff School Chair. “Throughout his career, he has demonstrated impeccable instincts and creativity as an engineer, a businessman and a problem-solver.”

Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award Suzanne Shank CEO, Siebert Financial 2014 Engineering Hall of Fame Award Knox W. Tull Jr. President, Jackson and Tull

The current chairman and retired CEO of Oceaneering, Inc., Huff was recognized by the Academy for his contributions to the development of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for deep-water explorations. Huff originally supported the development of the vehicles as a means to improve the extraction of oil and gas deposits. But he quickly recognized their value in other enterprises.

ALSO OF NOTE

The Oceaneering ROVs have been employed to explore the Titanic, the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger, and even the remains of the H.L. Hunley, a Civil War-era submarine.

One of the 10 ASCE New Faces of Civil Engineering for 2014 was CEEatGT alumna Lanelle Ezzard, B.S. 2010. She works in the water resources group at AECOM in Atlanta.

“Our mission, as a company, was to be ‘the solver of problems in harsh environments,’” Huff said. “The deep ocean was a harsh environment. The first thing we did was to shift from being a provider of a commodity to being the provider of technical solutions.”

CNN Money/Fortune Magazine featured TOHL, a company founded by Benjamin Cohen, B.S. 2011. The company makes clean water a reality across the globe using a unique approach with flexible tubing and helicopters. TOHL can quickly deploy clean water after disasters or in areas where it is not readily available.

Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions for an engineer, according to NAE president Charles M. Vest. Membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, engineering literature,” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

Georgia Trend Magazine named External Advisory Board emeritus member Douglas Hooker, M.S. 1985, one of its 100 Most Influential Georgians in 2014. The Atlanta Business Chronicle also named Hooker one of its 100 Most Influential Atlantans. Hooker is executive director of the Atlanta Regional Commission.

In addition to his pioneering career, Huff has been a staunch supporter of his alma mater, endowing a chair for CEEatGT and helping lead efforts to upgrade the Jesse W. Mason Building.

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2014 ALUMNI TRIP Plant Vogtle & Savannah, Georgia

ur 2014 alumni trip took us to the construction site of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first new nuclear reactors in a generation (above). We toured Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Waynesboro, Georgia, where Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power and its partners are working to put the first Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors into service. Scheduled to go online in 2017 and 2018, the two units will provide more than 2,200 megawatts of powerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;enough to provide electricity for more than 1.5 million homes. Similar units are also under construction in South Carolina and China. The trip also included our spring External Advisory Board meeting in nearby Savannah with a dinner cruise down the beautiful Savannah River aboard the Savannah River Queen (right). CEE AT GT 37

CEE EXTERNAL ADVISORY BOARD

he CEEatGT External Advisory Board is a vital component of the School. Its members work in both the public and private sectors and provide an important outside perspective that is essential to maintaining the relevance of CEEatGT programs to industry. Board members play a significant role in vetting programs designed for students, alumni and corporate constituencies to ensure we maintain the highest quality standards in our curriculum, practice and outreach. MR. JOSĂ&#x2030; M. BERN B.S. 1995 Executive Vice President Empresas Bern

MR. JOHN U. HUFFMAN B.S. 1981 President and CEO Pepco Energy Services

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE B.S. 1977 Commander U.S. European Command & NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe

MR. CHARLES H. HULING, PE B.S. 1974 Advisory Board Chair Executive in Residence, Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute

MR. BLAKE VAN LEER PECK M.S. 1978 President & COO McDonough Bolyard Peck Inc.

MS. SELMA A. JABALEY B.S. 1974 President Jabaley Consulting LLC

MR. ANDREW PHELPS, PE B.S. 1976 Principal Vice President Bechtel Corporation

MS. SHARON JUST, PE B.S. 1989 President Just Engineering & Associates, Inc.

MR. WILSON L. PRESLEY B.S. 1979 Vice President, Nuclear Operations, Chicago Bridge & Iron Co.

MR. GREGORY J. KOCH, PE B.S. 1990, M.S. 1992 Managing Director Global Water Stewardship The Coca-Cola Company

MR. JOSH ROWAN, PE B.S. 1996 Branch Manager McDonough Bolyard Peck, Inc.

MS. JENNIE LEE COLOSI, PE B.S. 1977 President & Treasurer E.T. & L. Corporation MR. GROSVENOR FISH B.S. 1990, M.S. CoM 2000 Vice President of Engineering Operations, Sterling Infosystems MR. PAUL FLOWER, PE B.S. 1968 President/CEO Woodward Design + Build MR. RICK L. GARCIA B.S. 1973 Retired Delta Airlines MR. ULYSSES GRADY JR., PE, MCE B.S. 1979, M.S. 1981 Vice President of Construction Operations Pentagon 540, LLC MR. ROBERT G. GRAHAM B.S. 1976 President Cone & Graham, Inc. MR. JOHN A. GRANT III, PE, RPLS B.S. 1974 Owner Grant Engineering Company MR. JAMES R. HAMILTON, PE B.S. 1977 Associate Kimley-Horn & Associates, Inc.

MR. RAYMOND J. LAWING, PE M.S. 1977 Senior Consultant AMEC Environment & Infrastructure MR. TODD I. LONG B.S. 1989 Deputy Commissioner Georgia Department of Transportation MR. JAMES MAUGHON B.S. 1968 Retired Hayes James & Associates MR. MICHAEL G. MESSNER B.S. 1976 Partner Seminole Capital Partners MR. JAMES L. MITCHELL B.S. 2005 Sustainability Director Skanska

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MR. CHARLES W. NELSON, PE B.S. 1970 Chairman Waldemar S. Nelson and Company, Inc.

MS. STACIE SIRE B.S. 1996 Director & Chief Engineer 767/777 Airframe, Boeing MR. RONALD S. STUFF, ESQ B.S. 1982 General Counsel Sundt Construction MR. W. RICK TOOLE, PE B.S. 1979, M.S. 1980 President W. R. Toole Engineers, Inc. MR. EMILIO VENEGAS B.S. 1977 President Venegas Construction Corp. MR. RICHARD E. ZALESKY B.S. 1978 General Manager Crude Supply & Manufacturing Strategy Chevron Downstream & Chemicals

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he School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech has a long tradition of excellence in engineering education. We believe that our strong reputation is based on several factors, including our attention to engineering fundamentals, investments in state-of-the-art technology, and the world-class scholars that comprise our faculty. ce.gatech.edu

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