Fall 2022 Swanson School CEE Newsletter

CEE

CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Pitt, Pa.

Turnpike Team Up to Make Mon-Fayette Expressway a Test

Bed

for Innovative Construction

Copyright Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2022, reprinted with permission.

When construction begins next year on the Mon-Fayette Expressway between Jefferson Hills and Duquesne, the new roadway will provide more than a new travel connection for residents of the Monongahela Valley.

The new toll road also will serve as a test bed for innovative transportation construction techniques that could use noise reduction walls to reduce pollution and produce electricity from trafficgenerated road vibrations for road signs, among other things.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike, which is building the toll road first discussed in the 1960s, approved a $2.7 million agreement last week with the University of Pittsburgh for a series of pilot

projects during highway construction. Turnpike engineers have been working for the past 18 months with the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering consortium based at the Swanson School of Engineering to select the projects.

“We were looking for something that’s actually doable and not some pie-in-the-sky kind of thing,” said Julie Marie Vandenbossche, a professor of civil engineering and former head of the consortium. “This is the largest thing we’ve done through IRISE.”

The turnpike has been part of IRISE since it formed in 2016 as a collaboration among the engineering school, construction firms and government transportation agencies, said Ed Skorpinski, an

engineer project manager for the turnpike. After watching the group work on smaller projects such as how to reduce and respond to landslides, the agency decided to use the group to design and test innovations, he said.

“We thought [building the expressway] could be a unique test bed,” Mr. Skorpinski said.

The plan is to test ideas – many of which haven’t been tried before – during construction of the expressway and decide whether they produce positive results for a reasonable price. If so, they can be included in future projects, Mr. Skorpinski said.

The turnpike is expected to advertise for bids for the first section of the toll road before the end

engineering.pitt.edu/civil

Annual Publication of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering

Mon/Fayette Expressway images courtesy Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission

Letter from the Chair

Colleagues,

On behalf of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, I am excited to recap an incredible year of news, research, and innovation. In last year’s edition I was “cautiously optimistic” about how 2022 would transpire, and I’m proud to say that we exceeded our expectations. Students are once again enjoying the full university experience while understanding the importance of vigilance to maintain public health, and our faculty are excelling in the lab, the field, and national recognition.

Our cover this year features the continued success of our Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) consortium. With infrastructure being one of the greatest multilevel challenges of our nation, especially across our major highways and interstates, we founded IRISE in 2016 to bring together researchers, government agencies, and construction and consulting firms to create a holistic approach to infrastructure research and development.

As one of the first civil engineering programs established in the U.S. – celebrating our 155th anniversary this academic year – our alumni have played a significant role in the development of our local, regional, and state infrastructure. And in only a few years IRISE has guided research from pavement markings and managing landslides to sustainable construction and digital modeling. Our outstanding faculty have helped government and industry understand the greater role that a research university can play in improving safety, reducing costs, and protecting the environment. Most recently we announced a $2.7 million agreement with the Pennsylvania Turnpike to utilize the new Mon-Fayette Expressway segments as a testbed for novel construction techniques, and a National Science Foundation RAPID award for Alessandro Fascetti’s first-of-its-kind digital twin study of the new Fern Hollow Bridge whose construction is being fast-tracked after the previous bridge collapsed last winter. I am indebted to the IRISE founding faculty and staff, including Julie Vandenbossche, Mark Magalotti, and Gary Euler, and our new director and former PennDOT District 12 executive, Joe Szczur. Their leadership has been pivotal to IRISE’s incredible success, and I look forward to their future impact. Also in this issue we explore several initiatives related to sustainability and energy security. Melissa Bilec established a new partnership with Covestro LLC to develop the first circular design PhD curriculum in the U.S. and has already recruited its first three students. Some of her other students, meanwhile, in collaboration with our Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, are studying energy use in the city core as part of the 2030 District initiative. Andy Bunger’s expertise in geological stresses resulted in a $1.3 million DOE award to study safer geothermal energy technologies with the Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy, and Carla Ng continues to grow her reputation and impact nationally and internationally in finding the solutions for the “forever chemical.” PFAS.

I hope you enjoy these and the other stories of innovation and accomplishments herein, and as conferences like Piervincenzo Rizzo’s structural health gathering in Palermo this summer escape the virtual confines of online platforms, I look forward to seeing more of you in person. Here’s to a great year ahead, and Hail to Pitt.

Sincerely, Radisav Vidic, PhD, P.E.

William Keppler Whiteford Professor and Department Chair

Former PennDOT District Executive Selected to Lead IRISE

Copyright Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2022, reprinted with permission.

The Swanson School of Engineering is taking advantage of a unique opportunity to put the administration of two innovative programs to improve roads and bridges under one director, freeing faculty to do more teaching and research.

The university has named Joe Szczur, a former Pennsylvania Department of Transportation district executive for Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties, to head the Center for Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure and the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering program. The center does specific research projects requested by agencies such as PennDOT, while IRISE is a consortium of public agencies, private companies and academic researchers that looks for solutions to long-term road and bridge issues.

Mr. Szczur retired from PennDOT two years ago, and after a year of observing and guest lecturing at Swanson was named to head the center in September. The university added IRISE to his duties last month.

“Joe was kind of the perfect person,” said Julie Marie Vandenbossche, a professor of civil engineering and former head of the consortium. “He has really endorsed innovation over the years. He acts as a great conduit [with academic, private and government consortium members].”

Mr. Szczur said he’s “humbled and honored” to head the programs.

“It’s intimidating – it’s exciting and intimidating,” he said.

Radisav Vidic, chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said CSTI, formed in 2017, is designed to find short-term solutions for specific problems identified by PennDOT and other agencies. IRISE, formed in 2018, can take longer looks at industry-wide concerns, “look at a little longer horizon,” he said.

Mr. Szczur said tops on his list will be finding ways the group can help to improve the condition of bridges and the handling of landslides, both longstanding problems in the region. The consortium already is working with PennDOT to develop a “digital double” of the new Fern Hollow Bridge so officials can simulate the stresses the new structure will face. It also is developing an inventory of landslides throughout the region so researchers can identify common issues and develop predictive models and solutions.

The consortium’s originators included PennDOT, Allegheny County, and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission on the government side and Golden Triangle Construction and Michael Baker International from private industry. Engineering firm CDR Maguire and the Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania also recently joined.

“You get all of that perspective, it doesn’t get any better than that,” Mr. Szczur said. “Knowing we can help out in those areas… that’s pretty neat.”

Dan Cessna, former PennDOT district executive for Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties, encouraged Michael Baker to join the group when he worked there and had CDR Maguire join after he recently became president of that company’s engineering division. He strongly endorsed Mr. Szczur’s new role.

“Joe has always been known as an innovator and someone who always wants to go deeper and further,” Mr. Cessna said. “That will only help the university go further with these programs.”

IRISE Continues to Grow and Innovate

The Impactful Resilient Infrastructure

Science and Engineering (IRISE) consortium was established to develop innovative solutions that address the durability and resiliency challenges associated with aging highway infrastructure. Since then, it has grown, welcomed new partners, and propelled innovative research that will help to change the future of infrastructure, especially within Pennsylvania. Pitt and IRISE are joined by seven public and private organizations: Allegheny County, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), CDR Maguire Engineering, the Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania, Golden Triangle Construction and Michael Baker International, with the Federal Highway Administration as an ex-officio member. Representatives from these organizations help define and guide research and implement the results.

Under the direction of Professor Julie Vandenbossche, the inaugural Director who now serves as Director of Research, IRISE has grown its research budget to over $1.2 million. Joe Szczur was later appointed Director of the Consortium in May 2022 after retiring from his role as Director of PennDOT’s Engineering District 12.

Research that Hit the Ground Running

One of the earliest IRISE projects, co-funded by the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation

and conducted by Assistant Professors Sarah Haig and Steven Sachs, evaluated the feasibility of adding microbes into reinforced concrete to provide self-healing properties that could prevent water and chloride ingress through structural and/or environmental cracking.

Also in the area of pavement materials and durability, Assistant Professor Alessandro Fascetti, supported by Vandenbossche, is studying vibration operations in concrete pavements. This research will use three-dimensional characterization of the hardened concrete to identify the optimal construction process for each concrete mix. Results from this research could greatly improve the quality of new concrete pavements, increase their durability, and reduce maintenance costs.

In the area of bridge condition assessment, Assistant Professor Amir Alavi recently established a framework for integrating traditional non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and emerging automated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based techniques to provide improved performance assessment of bridges.

In the area of construction worker safety, Fascetti, supported by Professor Lev Khazanovich, is initiating a project to create and deploy a virtual reality (VR) test bed to provide advanced training to construction workers, inspectors, and other project site staff.

Preparing Future Generations

IRISE research is also providing funding to support post-doctoral fellows and graduate and undergraduate student researchers to prepare the next generation of engineers. Students participate in field visits conducted by IRISE members, and members have presented at student seminars, provided ideas for and worked with students on senior design projects, and provided real-world data for use in class design projects.

IRISE awarded its first Cooperative Education Scholarship to Gabriel Salgado, a rising CEE Department junior, who this summer completed the first of two six-month assignments with the Allegheny County Department of Public Works. IRISE PhD student Gloria Zhang won two prestigious awards for her work on Alavi’s Bridge Assessment project, including the James D. Cooper Student Paper Competition, an annual competition among college and university engineering students worldwide sponsored by The International Bridge Conference.

Additional information on all of the above can be found at: https://www.engineering.pitt.edu/irise/. IRISE welcomes ideas for new projects and student activities and especially new members. Contact either Joe Szczur, Director (joe.szczur@pitt.edu) or Gary Euler, Associate Director (gae13@pitt.edu) for more information.

Pitt, Pa. Turnpike Team Up... continued from page 1

of the year, while the test specifications are still being developed, so pilots likely will be included in later segments of the project. The southern leg of the highway, which will be built sequentially from Jefferson Hills north with more than a half dozen construction contracts, is expected to be finished by 2028.

1The four pilot projects will be: Redesigning noise walls using a hollow, honeycomb-like material to reduce sound and treating it with a catalyst that will capture nitrogen oxides generated by vehicles with combustion engines. The process will convert the pollutants into harmless nitrates that will dissipate naturally, similar to a car’s catalytic converter.

Sound barriers will be included toward the northern end of construction so their exact locations haven’t been determined yet.

Mr. Skorpinski said the pilot will determine how effective the system is at reducing pollution.

“It could have a good benefit in the future,” he said.

“It will definitely help to alert us to when problems are developing,” Mr. Skorpinski said. “It won’t slow down what is happening. It will help to let us know when we should be paying attention.”

2

Using the natural vibrations that vehicles cause on road surfaces to generate electricity for road signs. Researchers will test whether the sensors to capture vibrations work better with asphalt or concrete surfaces before they choose a location to try the system, which also would use recycled plastic.

The pilot will test the concept in small sections but if it works it could be used on longer stretches of the highway, Mr. Skorpinski said.

4 3

Creating a digital, three-dimensional model of a one-mile section of the highway as it is being built. The model will be used to simulate and monitor the wear and tear on the road over the years.

Testing which method works best for recharging electric vehicles as they drive over the road surface. The process involves putting charging elements just under the surface that are activated when electric vehicles drive over them and recharge their batteries as they drive.

This trial likely would be part of the construction of the northern section of the highway, from Duquesne to Monroeville, which isn’t expected to begin until 2030 or later. The turnpike already is working with the Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification program at Utah State and the Ohio Turnpike to develop a demonstration project on roadway electrification at the Pennsylvania-Ohio border over the next five years.

IRISE Director Joe Szczur called turnpike test projects “the basis of where the IRISE consortium is heading.”

“This is a good example of the kind of things we can do,” he said. “These are the things [road designers] need. That’s the reason IRISE was created.”

Or as Ms. Vandenbossche put it, “This is when research becomes fun.”

Mr. Skorpinski said trials are important for the turnpike, which manages more than 500 miles of roads across the state.

“This is stuff that hasn’t been really been done in this region,” he said. “Hey, if we find out this is something that works, we would absolutely look to incorporate it throughout our system.”

Pitt Uses Drone to Create 3D Model of New Fern Hollow Bridge Construction

Copyright Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2022, reprinted with permission.

Alessandro Fascetti didn’t know his career as a professor of civil and environmental engineering would lead to him to become a certified industrial drone pilot, but that has become a regular part of his job.

Fascetti, an associate professor at the Swanson School of Engineering, is part of a team preparing a digital model and history of the construction of the new Fern Hollow Bridge. The project involves piloting a hexacopter drone for 11½ minutes every

two weeks to record photo and laser images of the progress of construction, about 170 million pieces of information each week.

The project received a $141,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to create the digital model, believed to be the first of its kind in the country. Fascetti’s team is following the emergency replacement of the bridge after the previous structure collapsed in January.

The project is part of the work of the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering consortium, where the university works with private contractors and government transportation officials to develop new construction practices and solve problems. The goal is to have a kind of three-dimensional blueprint available over the life of the new structure so that engineers can look back at the construction to see how the project progressed and what might have allowed future problems to develop. continued on next page > > >

From left: John Brigham, Morgan Berger (MS student), Yingbo Zhu, and Alessandro Fascetti

“I don’t think anyone has done this on the construction of a bridge before,” Mr. Fascetti said. “We don’t even see all of the benefits right now.”

As his colleague Associate Professor John Brigham put it, “There’s a lot of information here that technology hasn’t caught up with yet.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, which is managing the bridge replacement for the City of Pittsburgh, gave permission for the digital model but isn’t involved in that aspect of the project.

PennDOT has the construction of the new bridge on the fast track under an emergency declaration that allows contractor Swank Construction to build one section of it while designer HDR is developing plans for another section. Crews are pouring parts of the concrete road surface after prestressed concrete beams were loaded into place in August to support the deck, and the goal is to open it to traffic by the end of the year.

The National Transportation Safety Board is continuing to investigate why the bridge that carries Forbes Avenue between Squirrel Hill and Point Breeze collapsed into Frick Park below it, injuring 10 people.

Flight of Fancy

Fascetti, Brigham and doctoral engineering student Yingbo Zhu arrived a few minutes after 11 a.m. on a recent Saturday to deploy the drone from the Squirrel Hill side. They unloaded three large cases of equipment that contained pieces of the drone to assemble, a laptop and two antennae to communicate with it, and a tripod with a global navigation satellite system to double-check the GPS coordinates on the drone.

They install a battery on top, propellers on each of the six wings, and on the underneath side a high-speed camera, a laser imaging, detection and ranging device or LIDAR and a GPS bar to direct the drone not only to the precise coordinates of previous trips but also to balance the orientation to make sure the information is gathered from the exact same angles.

The antennae transmit a private radio signal, one to the drone and the other to the camera and LIDAR. Wi-Fi signals are spotty in that area and the team doesn’t want to risk any signal interruption that could disrupt gathering information.

After about 35 minutes of prep time, the drone takes off in a cloud of dust on a preprogrammed, computerized route 165 feet high that involves three passes over the construction site to gather information.

Mr. Fascetti and the team watch as the drone does its work. This is the first flight since the project began in late August that the wind has been nearly calm, but the 50-pound weight of the fully equipped drone has allowed it to remain stable in all conditions.

“[The manufacturer] gives you mandatory training, which is good,” Mr. Fascetti said. “It takes a couple of tries to think you know what you are doing.”

Beyond flying the drone, the team had to develop the protocol for what information it wants to collect, the flight plan and how to use the information once it is gathered.

“No one teaches you this because it hasn’t been done before,” Mr. Fascetti said. “It’s a lot of trial and error.”

Under the protocol the team established, the drone will take 300 to 500 photos during each flight and use LIDAR to check 25 million to 30 million individual points at the site to follow changes over time.

“The ability to compare over time is what is key here,” Mr. Fascetti said. “There are a lot of things you can measure more precisely this way. This will provide something you can’t see when the bridge is done.”

The drone creates another dust cloud when it lands, which means it will require a major wipedown before it flies again, but the propellers keep the camera lens and LIDAR clean while it is flying. The team takes apart the equipment and packs

up to leave after a total of about 85 minutes at the site.

“It takes about three times longer to prep than it does to fly,” Mr. Fascetti said.

Using Information

The real work begins the following Monday, when the team reviews the information it gathered during the flight and adds it to the database. A computer will meld the LIDAR images with the photos to eventually create a layered, 3D model of the new bridge as a permanent record that officials can use for reference decades later.

“It’s a big data base,” Mr. Fascetti said. “How much is too much? We don’t know. You start as large as you can and go from there to find out what is useful.”

The hope is the historical record of construction can be used over the years as normal wear and tear takes place on the new bridge so engineers can review what has occurred at various points and study whether changes in construction procedures can improve results in the future.

The old bridge collapsed unexpectedly, but it had been rated in poor condition for more than 10 years at the time, so a computer model also may have been helpful to monitor conditions and anticipate failures.

Fern Hollow is the first of what IRISE hopes is a series of projects to create databases for other construction projects including the Pennsylvania Turpike Mon-Fayette Expressway between Jefferson Hills and Duquesne that will include creating a 3D model of a one-mile section of the new toll road.

“That will be a much larger project,” Mr. Fascetti said.

Powering the Future Forging a Path toward Safe Geothermal Energy

An abundant and clean energy resource is under almost everyone’s feet. But harnessing it has proven to be a challenge for the last half century.

Geothermal energy utilizes the heat of rocks far below the Earth’s surface to create steam to spin turbines which generate electrical power. But tapping these vast resources thousands of feet below the surface is a challenge which requires a better understanding of the rocks and all the stresses on them.

Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh are joining a cohort of national laboratories, companies, and universities to support the geothermal research and demonstration program at the Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE), an underground field laboratory in Beaver

County, Utah. The Pitt team was awarded $1.26M from the U.S. Department of Energy for two collaborative projects that will characterize the stresses in the rock formation targeted by Utah FORGE.

At around two miles below the Earth’s surface, the targeted rocks are under enormous stress. They’re also hot –exceeding 200 degrees Celsius, or nearly 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Because geothermal wells are deep and expensive, you need to circulate large volumes of water for the energy produced to be economically viable,” explained Andrew Bunger, associate professor and Pitt’s principal investigator. “Designing these systems is difficult if you don’t know how the rock will react as the wells are drilled and you can’t simply dig a hole to collect a sample.”

Another challenge is that rocks hot enough to make good geothermal wells are also too hot for the underground sensors that would typically be used to collect data. Bunger’s team is focused then on developing lab-

based estimates of stresses to enable better analysis of subsurface measurements.

One of the most popular methods of testing in situ stress – or stress on the rock that is still in the ground – involves injecting just enough water to begin to crack the rock. Lab-based methods involve testing rock cores extracted from the formation targeted for geothermal development. Bunger’s group is working with scientists at Battelle Memorial Institute and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to improve these methods.

“The work we’re doing with Utah FORGE is really exciting because we’re using the best technology available to help fill knowledge gaps. Innovation always requires iteration, so you get better as you go,” said Bunger. “The prize is huge with geothermal, but we have to be much more sophisticated in our methods than ever before if we are going to develop it to the point we can rely on it to significantly contribute to our renewable energy portfolio. Funding like this gives us the space and resources to innovate so we can tap into this resource.”

Pitt Engineers Receive $1.26M to Collaborate with National Labs to Unlock Vast Geothermal Energy Resources

A Sustainable Solution for Oil and Gas Wastewater

Pitt Engineers Develop Method that Can Recycle Water Used in Fracking and Drilling

As demand for new energy sources grows, the wastewater co-produced alongside oil and gas (produced water) shows no signs of slowing down. The current volume of wastewater – the result of water forced underground to fracture rock and release the deposits – is estimated at 250 million barrels per day, compared to 80 million barrels per day of oil.

Research led by Radisav Vidic, professor and department chair, introduces a new way to reduce the environmental impact of drilling and fracking by cleaning the produced water for reuse, and it’s already being tested in Pennsylvania, Texas and North Dakota.

Membrane distillation is an emerging technology that can treat complex and highly contaminated wastewater and enables drillers to filter and reuse the produced water in the oil and gas industry, in agriculture, and other beneficial uses.

“It is of critical importance to develop alternative strategies for the management of produced water that would reduce the overall cost, allow recovery of valuable resources, and reduce the environmental footprint of this industry,” said Vidic. “Right now, the industry is not being presented with financially feasible options. This project proves that those options can and do exist.”

The project began in the lab about eight years ago and was first brought into the field for pilot-scale testing, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, in Texas and North Dakota oil fields. The group has now begun implementing the same technology in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale drilling on-site in New Stanton, Pa.

A number of researchers have spent time working to bring this technology to the field, but the current team includes PhD candidates Ritesh Pawar and Zhewei (Joey) Zhang.

“We were both working on membrane distillation (MD) for years before this on-site project. In the lab, MD just means research topics and experiments,” said Zhang. “But not until we started this project with a pilot scale unit and on a real fracking site did we realize how much this technology could mean to human society and to the environment.”

As Vidic’s group worked to scale up the technology so that the work translates to the field, Vikas Khanna, associate professor and Wellington C. Carl Faculty Fellow, used modeling to envision what these systems would look like at scale and what the economic benefit would really be if the industry adopted the technology. Northeastern counties in the state – those farthest from disposal wells – stand to benefit the most from using this technology, saving nearly $16 million per year in disposal costs.

Reshaping the Plastic Lifecycle Into a Circle

360 million metric tonnes of new plastic was produced in 2018. Here’s where it all went, and why the world must transform plastic use from linear to circular.

In 1950, two million metric tonnes of new plastic were produced globally. In 2018, the world produced 360 million metric tonnes. Because of their low cost, durability and versatility, plastics are everywhere – including in the environment – and only nine percent of the plastic ever generated has been recycled. The vast majority ends up in landfills, where its slow degradation allows it to accumulate, while pervasive microplastics have been found everywhere, from inside living bodies to the bottom of the ocean.

“At our current rate of plastic waste generation, increasing waste management capacity will not be sufficient to reach plastic pollution goals alone,” said Associate Professor Vikas Khanna. “There is an urgent need to take actions like limiting global virgin plastic production from fossil fuels and designing products and packaging for recyclability.”

New research led by Khanna gives a bird’s-eye view of the scale of plastic creation globally, tracing where it’s produced, where it ends up, and its environmental impact.

The researchers found the staggering greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of plastic in 2018: 170 million metric tonnes of primary plastics were traded globally in 2018, with associated greenhouse gas emissions accounting for 350 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent –about the same amount produced by nations like Italy and France in a year.

“And if anything, our estimation is on the lower end. Converting primary plastic resins into end use products will result in additional greenhouse gases and other emissions,” warned Khanna.

The work was recently published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

“We know plastics are a problem, and we know keeping materials in a circular economy instead of the take-make-waste model we’re used to is a great solution,” said Khanna. “But if we don’t understand the current state of the system, then it’s hard to put numbers to it and understand the scale. We wanted to understand how plastics are mobilized across geographical boundaries.”

Since international trade plays such a critical role in making material goods available, including plastics, the researchers applied network theory to data from the UN Comtrade Database to understand the role

Covestro LLC and Pitt Establish

Groundbreaking Circular Economy Program

The rise of circular economy principles –where materials are kept in continuous use by design – across industries has led to a new collaboration between Covestro LLC and the University of Pittsburgh. Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) and Swanson School of Engineering will house the new Covestro Circular Economy Program.

The Covestro Circular Economy Program is the first in the U.S. to specifically address the challenge of global waste and material use. The program aims to create opportunities for the research, education, and innovative advancement of circular economy principles that begin with academia and fuel real-world solutions designed to save the planet.

“I am very excited to apply the fundamental research we’ve developed in circular economy and expand it to create a holistic program with potential global impact,” says Melissa Bilec, William Kepler Whiteford Professor and MCSI co-director. “I believe that, like Covestro, other organizations will see the benefit of engaging in such a program that trains scholar-workers in the many possibilities that circular economy presents.”

The initial funding will help to establish a transdisciplinary initiative to prepare students with circular economy training and expertise to carry into academia, industry, government and NGOs. Pitt and Covestro are also seeking to collaborate with corporations, foundations, and governments to expand the program’s reach and potential.

According to Bilec, professional training in the relevant sciences has not included holistic training in circular approaches. While the private sector embeds circular design principles into its innovation approach, academia has yet to integrate design principles in advanced degree programs. By establishing the program, Covestro and Pitt are providing a dedicated academic setting for passionate students and professionals to innovate new approaches to materials, design, and planning.

Through the program, Covestro and Pitt plan to create new fundamental science that supports the assembly of new tools to aid circular design. It will enable graduate students at Pitt to become experts in circular economy principles, informed by Covestro’s advances in this area, and ultimately

create circular, sustainable products and service solutions. The first graduate students started their circular economy studies in fall 2022.

“Circular design involves a paradigm shift in thinking for everyone, from individuals to corporations to societies,” says Richard Skorpenske, head of Sustainability and Public Affairs at Covestro LLC. “As a leader in driving toward a circular economy, we see the Covestro Circular Economy Program as an important multiplier to build a robust foundation of circularity-focused thinkers, and we are proud to launch it alongside Pitt as founding partner.”

SMALL THINGS BIG IMPACTS

It’s Urgent To Act On PFAS – But How? New Study Proposed Global Roadmap

Despite decades of research on PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), effective actions to reduce harm from these highly persistent chemicals are still lagging. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology proposed new approaches to break the logjam of “paralysis by analysis” and move forward in reducing the production and use of PFAS.

“Knowledge deficits are often put forward to delay concrete measures,” said co-author Dr. Martin Scheringer. “But we already know enough about the harm being caused by these very persistent substances to take action to stop all non-essential uses and to limit exposure from legacy contamination.”

“A striking feature of PFAS is how they can cause harm to so many systems within our bodies – our livers, our kidneys, our immunity, our metabolism,” said Dr. Linda Birnbaum, Scientist Emeritus and former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“One path forward proposed in this study is to link up all of the research tools – biomonitoring, epidemiology, animal studies, in vitro studies, computer modeling, etc. – to help us understand the consequences of our exposures.”

The study highlights gaps in information that act as barriers to tackling the “PFAS problem” and proposes a practical research and policy agenda. For example, scientists still do not know how much PFAS have been produced globally, which means major “hotspots” of PFAS contamination are probably being missed. Since industry often avoids providing basic information on specific PFAS produced and in what volumes, scientists must put together emissions estimates and track PFAS contamination.

“It is critical to prioritize our efforts so as not to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem,” said Associate Professor and lead author Carla Ng. “This paper identifies where focus is needed to effectively minimize environmental and human exposure to PFAS.”

But, who pays the cost of PFAS contamination? Because industries are often located in poorer areas, the burden of PFAS is often borne by the most disadvantaged. Though these highly persistent chemicals are produced by only a limited number of companies, the pollution they produce is distributed globally. With this pollution comes enormous costs to human health and the irreversible deterioration of natural resources, including drinking water.

The study proposes an actionable agenda for researchers and policymakers around the world to move forward to reduce non-essential use of PFAS, to stop human and environmental exposure from getting worse, and to more equitably distribute the associated costs.

Building for a Sustainable Future

Visualizing Our City’s Energy Use

The building sector in the U.S. accounts for 39 percent of energy use, with commercial buildings responsible for about half of that. As cities grapple with climate change, making commercial buildings more efficient is a key part of the solution.

Researchers at the Swanson School of Engineering and the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation used the city of Pittsburgh to create a model built upon the design, materials and purpose of commercial buildings to estimate their energy usage and emissions. While other models may be hindered by a scarcity of data in public records, the researchers’ Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM) uses street-level images to categorize and estimate commercial buildings’ energy use. Their paper, “Urban building energy model: Database development, validation, and application for commercial building stock,” was published in the journal Energy & Buildings.

“We found that in the existing literature, the scale of commercial buildings was always one of the

challenges. It’s cumbersome or even impossible to find and process detailed information about hundreds or thousands of buildings in an urban environment,” said Rezvan Mohammadiziazi, lead author and graduate student. “Researchers need to rely on assumptions based on when buildings were built or what the mechanical and electrical systems look like. Our hope is that by using image processing, we can build a framework that reduces some assumptions.”

The researchers used publicly available Geographic Information System (GIS) data and street-level images to develop their UBEM, then created 20 archetypes of buildings that comprised eight commercial use types.The buildings were sorted into groups based on categories including use type and construction period.

With street-level images to determine the building material, window-to-wall ratio, and number of floors, and LiDAR data from the U.S. Geological Survey to determine building height, the researchers were able to simulate and map

the annual energy use intensity of 209 structures in Pittsburgh. They had just a seven percent error rate when they validated their findings.

The focus on commercial buildings, as well, was an important addition to the field of research.

“A lot of good work has already been done in this field, but there are fewer studies focusing on commercial buildings, because data about them is more difficult to capture than residential buildings. They’re bigger and have more diverse uses,” explained Mohammadiziazi. “We wanted to determine if an urban model for commercial buildings could be accurate based on acceptable errors, and it was.”

With their design, the research team plans to help the City of Pittsburgh meet its ambitious energy goals. Pittsburgh has joined 22 other U.S. cities as a 2030 District, pledging to reduce energy use, water consumption and transportation emissions by 50 percent by the year 2030.

“We are fortunate – and have worked diligently – to have a strong partnership with the City of Pittsburgh, along with our own University of Pittsburgh’s Facilities Management,” said Bilec, who is also Roberta A. Luxbacher Faculty Fellow and deputy director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation. “We will not meet or exceed our climate and energy goals without aggressive action and solid planning in the building sector. Models, like this one, are intended to aid in the planning process to meet our goals.”

Joining Bilec and Mohammadiziazi as coauthor is civil engineering undergraduate Samuel Copeland, who began working with Bilec as a high school student through the Pitt EXCEL program.

Turning Non-Conventional into Non-Negotiable

In most industrialized countries where manufacturing facilities are commonplace, construction materials like wood, steel, and concrete are dominant. As a result, about 20 percent of global greenhouse emissions are due to the construction industry, about half of which is from the cement industry alone. Yet across the globe – in high and low income countries alike –there are alternative “nonconventional” materials that respect local customs, are environmentally friendly, and historically durable: bamboo and earthen materials among them.

The 18th annual Non-Conventional Materials (NOCMAT) Conference returned in a virtual format over six days this past June where researchers from around the globe discussed the latest innovations in a science that seeks to develop safe, sustainable, and affordable construction in

harmony with the environment. Primary sponsors are the Swanson School of Engineering and the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez. The theme was ‘Turning Non-conventional into Non-negotiable.’

“With the continued growth and redistribution in the global population, there will always be a construction boom somewhere. For the past four decades NOCMAT has been exploring how to meet this challenge while reducing emissions, and also highlighting natural resources such as those developed in regions throughout Asia and Central and South America that serve just as well a purpose as conventional materials, if not better,” noted Professor Kent Harries, conference co-chair. “NOCMAT promotes a continued international dialogue and we are excited to share the latest findings in the field.”

Reshaping the Plastic Lifecycle

... continued from page 10

of individual countries, trade relationships between countries, and structural characteristics that governed these interactions. The global primary plastic trade network (GPPTN) that they created designated each country as a “node” in the network and a trade relationship between two countries as an “edge,” allowing them to determine the critical actors (countries) and who is making the biggest impact.

The researchers examined 11 primary thermoplastic resins that make up most plastic products. They found that the most influential nodes in the model are exporting more plastics than they import: Saudi Arabia is the leading exporter, followed by the U.S., South Korea, Germany, and Belgium. The top five importers of primary plastic resins are China, Germany, the U.S., Italy, and India.

In addition to the greenhouse gas emissions, the energy expended in the GPPTN is estimated to be the equivalent of 1.5 trillion barrels of crude oil, 230 billion cubic meters of natural gas, or 407 metric tonnes of coal. The carbon embedded in the model is estimated to be the carbon equivalent of 118 million metric tonnes of natural gas or 109 million metric tonnes of petroleum.

“The results are particularly important and timely, especially in light of the recent discussions during Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow and the importance of understanding where emissions are coming from in

key sectors,” said co-author Melissa Bilec, Co-director of Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and William Kepler Whiteford Professor. “The collaboration with Dr. Khanna and his lab allows us to learn new systemslevel modeling techniques as we converge towards understanding solutions to our complex challenges.”

This paper, “Quantifying Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Embodied in Global Primary Plastic Trade Network,” (DOI: 10.1021/ acssuschemeng.1c05236) is supported by the NSF convergence research project on the circular economy, which is led by Bilec.

Using more recycled plastics instead of creating new resins that eventually make their way to landfills would be substantially better for the environment; however, financial, and behavioral barriers both need to be addressed before a true circular economy for plastics can become a reality.

“Even though emerging chemical recycling techniques promise to recover more material in an economically and environmentally sound way, we need to make it so that using recycled materials is as cost-effective as using virgin plastic resins,” said Khanna. “Our next step is to understand the interaction between the GPPTN and the plastic waste trade network to identify the opportunities where investment could encourage a circular plastics economy.”

The Virtual Water Impact of the US Beef Network

Animal-based products constitute a large portion of the average American’s diet, as well as the resources necessary to get them from field to table. As food systems in the US become more interconnected and complex, what we choose to put on our plates impacts the environment in previously unknown ways, especially with respect to water footprints.

Industrial beef has a large water footprint. A group led by Associate Professor Vikas Khanna designed a model that reports the industry’s impact on virtual water flows – the hidden movement of water in food production – by tracing beef supply chains from calf production to beef consumption at the county level.

“Understanding beef demands and the spatial distribution of both feed and cattle production are key for evaluating the environmental sustainability of food systems and developing improvement strategies,” Khanna noted.

All animal production requires great quantities of water, with the vast majority used to produce feed. The irrigation process for feed requires blue water, which is water found in surface and ground reservoirs.

“To irrigate feed crops for each ton of boneless beef eaten in the U.S., approximately 3.5 cubic meters of blue water is needed.” Anaís Ostroski, lead author and PhD student, said.

Using an optimization-based framework and publicly available datasets, the model revealed a major disconnect between consumption and production counties, with more than 22 billion cubic meters of virtual blue water transferred in 2017 alone.

The team next plans to apply the developed framework to understand environmental impacts of other animal-based production practices and identify improvement opportunities.

Faculty Feature Relentlessly Paying It Forward

David Sanchez’s faith and drive to serve others is the force behind what brought him to his role as associate director of Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.

That career path has been a fruitful one, giving Sanchez two honors: the Swanson School of Engineering’s Outstanding Educator Award and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Award for Outstanding Teaching in Environmental Engineering & Science.

“Dave has had a tremendous impact on his department, school, university, and community. He has taught thousands of students in laboratory, capstone and design courses, independent research, community engagement and study abroad,” says Radisav Vidic, department chair. “He leads by example, and his tireless commitment to personal and professional education of his students inspires a new standard of teaching excellence in Environmental Engineering, Sustainability and Science.”

In addition to teaching first year engineering courses, he teaches several courses including the Environmental Engineering Lab, Sustainability capstone, and a study abroad course to Micronesia all while managing his research in Sustainable Design Labs. In his time here he has taught thousands of students. He also advises and mentors students in his role as the undergraduate coordinator for Pitt’s Certificate in Sustainability, the graduate coordinator for the Master’s in Sustainable Engineering where he advises and mentors students.

He directs the John C. Mascaro Faculty Fellows program, the Global Engagement program, and student prototyping programs. active in the school’s Innovation, Product Design and Entrepreneurship program, leading the annual Makerspace and Mindsets Bootcamp.

“Students often think, ‘But I’m only one person, to that I respond, ‘Who are the 100 people you most influenced? Extrapolate that – let’s imagine these people, your family, your community. If you start there and affect them, and they affect 100 others, and so on, suddenly you’ve changed the country,” says Sanchez. “If you keep going, you’ve changed the world, with room to change the next generation.”

2021-2022 CEE PhD Graduates

Spring 2022

Suhaib Alshayeb – Environmental performance measures in optimizing traffic signals for fuel and emissions efficiency

Advisor - Alex Stevanovic

Farzaneh Azadi – Comprehensive arterial traffic control for fully automated and connected vehicles

Advisor - Alex Stevanovic

Nemanja Dobrota – Enhancement of traffic signal retiming process using novel methods and traffic signal performance measures

Advisor - Alex Stevanovic

Liuyan Hu – An investigation of interactions between plants and hydrological processes with emphasis on droughts using a new coupled ecohydrological and biogeochemical model

Advisor - Xu Liang

Yao Huang – Analysis of sleeve fracturing and burst experiments for measurement of in-situ stress and rock fracture toughness

Advisor - Andrew Bunger

Hoda Jalali Najafabadi – Applications of granular crystals for nondestructive evaluation, structural health monitoring, and mechanical wave control

Advisor - Piervincenzo Rizzo

Manoochehr Khazaee – Investigating the impacts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (pfas) on biological systems by complementary in vivo, in vitro, and in silico approaches

Advisor - Carla Ng

Qiao Lu – Impact of weak interfaces and layered rock properties on hydraulic fracture containment and height growth

Advisor - Andrew Bunger

Elmira Mohammadi Shamlou – Optimization based analysis of desalination technologies for unconventional oil and gas produced water treatment

Advisor - Vikas Khanna

Yipei Wen – A study of agricultural watershed health and sustainability using a new catchmentscale hydro-biogeochemical model

Advisor - Xu Liang

Student Feature Taking Inventory of a Sustainable Campus

Jessica Vaden has sifted through a lot of data in the past two years, poring over spreadsheets that were so packed with information they struggled to load. The data includes information about every department at the University of Pittsburgh – down to even how much paper was used.

“Excel has become my best friend,” she joked.

Vaden is a third year PhD student in Melissa Bilec’s Built Environment and Sustainable Engineering Group and the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI). This is the second year she’s been tasked with completing Pitt’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory, an overview of Pitt’s GHG emissions as it works toward carbon neutrality by 2037.

The GHG Inventory for Pitt’s 2020 fiscal year (FY20, tracking emissions from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020), shows that Pitt is on its way to meeting this goal: GHG emissions were reduced by 31.9

percent compared to FY08, the first year the inventory was completed, and reduced by 13.6 percent from FY19. This work has been financially supported by MCSI and Pitt’s Office of Sustainability.

“Pitt’s now annual greenhouse gas inventorying process is incredibly important in helping the Carbon Commitment Committee and other University bodies evaluate how we’re reducing GHG emissions campus-wide – and plan for where we might need to focus more attention in going forward so we reach carbon neutrality for the Pittsburgh campus by 2037,” said Aurora Sharrard, director of sustainability at Pitt, who noted that the FY19 Inventory was the springboard for the forthcoming Pitt Climate Action Plan.

According to the inventory, the Pittsburgh campus emitted 186,068 metric tons of carbon dioxide in FY20, with the largest decrease resulting from decreased commuting, travel, and study abroad during the pandemic. For this inventory, only 3.5

months of COVID-19 impacts were included, due to FY20 timing. Beyond COVID-19’s impacts, the FY20 report also showcases the effects of other University sustainability efforts.

The largest source of Pitt’s GHG emissions is from its electricity use, accounting for 45.5 percent of emissions. But, it’s been decreasing – even as campus grows. Renewables accounted for 21 percent of this energy usage (up slightly from the previous year), which contributed to a 39 percent reduction in GHG emissions from electricity since FY08.

Another factor in this year’s reduction in GHG emissions is something that was once ubiquitous on a college campus: paper. Decreases in consumption and an ongoing shift to carbon neutral and recycled paper led to the lowest ever GHG emissions from paper use; it accounts for just 0.27 percent of total emissions.

HONORS AWARDS

Faculty

Associate Professor Leanne Gilbertson was named one of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists’ (AAEES) inaugural 40 Under 40 who have, either personally or as part of a team, been responsible for helping to advance the fields of Environmental Science or Environmental Engineering in a demonstrable way within the last 12 months.

Professor Lev Khazanovich received the International Society of Concrete Pavements (ISCP) Eldon J. Yoder Award for Best Paper at the 12th International Conference on Concrete Pavements. The paper, “Re-evaluation of Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavement Structural Model“ was recognized with co-authors Lucio Salles de Salles and José Tadeu Balbo (University of Sao Paulo).

Professor Piervincenzo Rizzo was elected as a Fellow of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT) in the Class of 2022. ASNT members with at least 15 years of professional experience in nondestructive testing and 10 years of membership are eligible to be nominated as Fellows. Selected Fellows have demonstrated their support for the organization through contributions and participation.

Associate Professor and MCSI Co-Director David Sanchez was recognized this year for his contributions to engineering education. He

received the 2022 Award for Outstanding Teaching from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, and the 2022 Outstanding Educator Award from the Swanson School of Engineering.

Professor John Sebastian, director of the McKamish Construction Management Program a, received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award for co-creating the Experiencing Architecture summer program and leveraging his extensive industry experience and network to mentor students and benefit Pitt’s construction management program. Sebastian also serves on the board of the Sarah Heinz House, the ACE Mentor program, the Mascaro Construction Academy and Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh, on which he chairs its governance committee.

Associate Professor Aleksandar Stevanovic was awarded Best Paper Award at the 2nd International Conference on Civil Engineering Fundamentals and Applications (ICCEFA’21) (Virtual Conference), November 21-23, 2021. (Dobrota, N., and Stevanovic, A., (2021). “Modelling of Delay for Protected/Permitted Left Turning Vehicles using Multigene Genetic Programming.”

Students & Alumni

Recent PhD graduate Farzaneh Azadi was named a 2022 Lifesavers Traffic Safety Scholar and will attend the Lifesavers National Conference on Highway Safety Priorities, March 12-15, one of 43 U.S. and international students selected through a competitive application process. The Lifesavers Conference showcases the latest research, evidence-based strategies, proven countermeasures, and promising new approaches for addressing the nation’s most pressing traffic safety problems.

Kaveh Barri PhD ’22 (advised by Dr. Alavi) secured a postdoctoral position in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Yashar Aucie, Kaveh Barri, and Gloria Zhang (advised by Dr. Alavi) won the 2022 Randall Family Big Idea Competition for developing a new class of 3D-printed self-powered metamaterial implants.

Greg Banyay PhD ’19 (advised by Dr. Brigham) has taken a position as an Assistant Research Professor at Penn State University’s Center for Acoustics and Vibration.

Alireza Enshaiean (advised by Dr. Rizzo) won the 2nd place for the Best Student Paper at the 2022 SPIE Smart Structures + Nondestructive Evaluation Conference for the paper: Enshaeian, A., Belding, M., and Rizzo, P. (2022). “A novel vibration-based

method to measure stress in rails,” Proceedings Volume 12048, Health Monitoring of Structural and Biological Systems XVI; 120481C (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2612296, SPIE Smart Structures + Nondestructive Evaluation, 2022, Long Beach, California, United States.

Aron Griffin BSCE ’22 received a GEM Fellowship Award which provides students funding for graduate school through corporate sponsorships and university partnerships in order to promote opportunities for individuals to enter industry at the graduate level. Griffin’s fellowship is sponsored by Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, where he will intern as a design engineer, and Carnegie Mellon University, where Griffin will pursue a MS in computational mechanics.

Yao Huang, (advised by Dr. Bunger) won 2022 American Rock Mechanics Association Neville GW Cook Best Dissertation Award for her thesis entitled “Analysis of Sleeve Fracturing and Burst Experiments for Measurement of In-Situ Stress and Rock Fracture Toughness.”

Fiyinfoluwa (Fiyin) Odeniyi (CEE undergrad) won the New York Association of Transportation Engineers (NYSATE) Adopt-an-Undergrad Scholarship.

Jemimaedere (Mima) Ohwobete (advised by Dr. Haig) was awarded a Pitt STRIVE PhD fellowship.

Soumaya Ouhsousou and Rodrigo Arauz Sosa (advised by Dr. Brigham) were both finalists for the 2022 ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Elasticity Committee Student Paper Competition.

Isaiah Spencer-Williams (advised by Dr. Haig) won first prize for his presentation at the Pennsylvania Water Environment Association’s 93rd Annual Technical Conference (PennTec)

James Thomas BSCE ’09 was named to the Charleston (SC) Regional Business Journal Forty Under 40 Class which honors top young business professionals across the Charleston region who excel in their chosen profession and provide service to their community. Thomas is a Principal and Project Manager at Thomas & Hutton in Charleston, a privately held professional services company providing consulting, planning, and engineering design services related to land and infrastructure. continued on page 20

2021-2022 CEE PhD Graduates

Summer 2022

Nathalia Aquino de Carvalho – Towards rational and sustainable design of graphitic carbon nitride for antibacterial applications

Advisor - Leanne Gilbertson

Kaveh Barri – Self-sensing and self-powering multifunctional mechanical metamaterials

Advisor - Amir Alavi

Delal Gunaydin-Tulu – Self-organization mechanisms within magma driven dyke and hydraulic fracture swarms

Advisor - Andrew Bunger

Jason Mash – Repair strategies for corroded steel bridge girder end regions

Advisor - Kent Harries

Rezvan Mohammadiziazi – Modeling energy and material use of buildings at urban scale Advisor - Melissa Bilec

Zhe Wan – Poroelastic modeling of multilayered pavement systems  Advisor - Lev Khazanovich

Qianyun Zhang – Multi-sensor data interpretation and fusion frameworks for bridge deck condition assessment

Advisor - AMir Alavi

Zhewei Zhang – Calcium scaling in direct contact membrane distillation (dcmd) at high salinities

Advisor - Radisav Vidic

AWARDS HONORS

Research Funding

Lei Fang

“Toward the Two-Way Coupling between Active Matter and Transport Barriers,” National Science Foundation, $361,476.

”Improving Coordination and Cooperation in Heterogeneous Crowds of Soldiers and Robots” US Department of Defense, $587,500.

Alessandro Fascetti

“RAPID: Data Fusion for Structural Assessment of Fern Hollow Bridge Replacement During Construction” NSF, $141,479.

Leanne Gilbertson

“Combining Materials Science and System-Level Analysis to Sustainably Supply Safe Drinking Water” NSF CAREER Award.

“Sustainability from the Bottom Up: A Holistic Solution to Balancing the N-Cycle” NSF, $1.7 million.

Sara Haig

“Well-exposed - a pilot study to assess the chemical and microbial quality of well water,” Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination (University of Iowa), $30,000.

“Microbial concrete sealer” (with Steven Sachs), Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, $81,799.

“PAthogen Storm: Linking Basement FloodingAssociated Infection to Environmental Inequities” Pittsburgh Foundation, $50,000.

Vikas Khanna

“Integrated Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR)- electro-assisted fermentation platform for total resource recovery from diverse wastewaters,” US Department of Energy, $349,975.

“FACT CIN: Beescape NexGen: Creating Decision Support Tools To Manage Bee Health And Ecosystems Through Transdisciplinary Action” US Department of Agriculture, $175,000.

Xu Liang

“Land Ecosystem Models based On New Theory, obseRvations and ExperimEnts (LEMONTREE),” Virtual Earth System Research Institute, $500,000.

Carla Ng

“Robust and Cost-Effective Encapsulated Protein Sorbents for PFAS Removal” (with Meng Wang), Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), $700,000.

“Sustainable Treatment Approaches for Renewing PFAS-Impacted Construction Materials” (with Julie Vandenbossche and Ian Ross, Tetratech), SERDP, $1.16 million.

“Studying AFFF Fate and Exposure to Pursue Outcomes that Restore Trust: SAFE PORT” (with Sarah Haig, Dr. Jeanine Buchanich (Biostatistics) and Dr. James Fabisiak (Environmental and Occupational Health), NEIHS R21, $443,000.

“Mapping PFAS Occurrence and Fate and Transport in the Pittsburgh Region,” Heinz Endowments, $40,000.

continued

“PFAS Eco-Risk Framework: Developing Ex-Vivo Approaches to Support PFAS Water Permitting and Effluent Monitoring for Industrial Site Application,” CONCAWE (Science Division of European Fuel Manufacturers Association), $61,000.

David Sanchez

“Water Quality in Monaca,” Heinz Endowments, $50,000.

“Sustainability in Micronesia,” Global Center Grant, $40,000.

“Realizing Regional Resilience: Appalachia Bridges to the Future,” Appalachia Regional Commission, $9,700.

Radisav Vidic

“Field testing of Air Gap Membrane Distillation Technology” US Department of Energy, $206,302.

”Scale up and Demonstration of Membrane Distillation” US Department of Energy, $73,512.

Meng Wang

“Engineering Subcellular Bioreactors for Selective Metal Recovery as Metallic Particles” (with Leanne Gilbertson), Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation Seed Grant, $55,000.

Living Structure for the Human Body

Smart Implants to Monitor Healing

Spinal fusion – fusing two vertebrae together – can treat a wide variety of spinal disorders. Surgeons typically use a cage to provide support where the disk once was between the vertebrae. But what if those cages could support the spine’s healing in more ways than one?

Researchers at the Swanson School of Engineering are creating patient-specific 3D-printed smart metamaterial implants that double as sensors to monitor spinal healing. A paper about their work was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

“Smart implants can provide real-time biofeedback and offer many therapeutic and diagnostic benefits,” said Assistant Professor Amir Alavi, whose iSMaRT Lab led the research. “But it is very challenging to integrate bulky circuits or power sources into the small area of implants. The solution is to use the implant matrix as an active sensing and energy harvesting medium. That’s what we’ve been focused on.”

The Intelligent Structural Monitoring and Response Testing (iSMaRT) Lab has developed a new class of multifunctional mechanical metamaterials, which act as their own sensors, recording and relaying important information about the pressure and stresses on its structure. The

“meta-tribomaterials,” a.k.a. self-aware metamaterials, generate their own power and can be used for a wide array of sensing and monitoring applications.

The material is designed such that under pressure, contact-electrification occurs between its conductive and dielectric microlayers, creating an electric charge that relays information about the condition of the material matrix. It also naturally inherits the outstanding mechanical tunability of standard metamaterials. The power generated using its built-in triboelectric nanogenerator mechanism eliminates the need for a separate power source, and a tiny chip records data about the pressure on the cage – an important indicator of healing. The data can then be read noninvasively using a portable ultrasound scanner.

Not only is the proposed cage unique in its sensing capabilities, but it’s also made of a highly tunable material that can be customized to the patient’s needs.

“Spinal fusion cages are being widely used in spinal fusion surgeries, but they’re usually made of titanium or PEEK polymer materials (a semi-crystalline, high-performance engineering thermoplastic) with certain mechanical properties,” explained Alavi. “The stiffness of our metamaterial interbody

cages can be readily tuned. The implant can be 3D-printed based on the patient’s specific anatomy before surgery, making it a much more natural fit.”

Because the material itself is incredibly tunable and scalable, the smart sensor design could be adapted to many other medical applications in the future, like cardiovascular stents or components for knee or hip replacements.

“This is a first-of-its-kind implant that leverages advances in nanogenerators and metamaterial to build multifunctionality into the fabric of medical implants,” said Alavi. “This technological advancement is going to play a major part in the future of implantable devices.”

Swanson School of Engineering

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

742 Benedum Hall 3700 O’Hara Street Pittsburgh PA 15261 engineering.pitt.edu/civil

Piervincenzo Rizzo Lauds Successful International Conference on Structural Health Monitoring

More than 600 researchers from around the world gathered in Palermo, Italy, for the 10th European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (EWSHM2022) to exchange ideas in the field of structural health monitoring, nondestructive evaluation, and sensing technologies.

The four-day conference, originally scheduled for July 2020, finally commenced on July 4, 2022, at the University of Palermo on the island of Sicily. Despite the two years of Covid-related delays and ongoing travel restrictions, the conference welcomed over 600 researchers from all around the world, doubling the attendance of the previous EWSHM conference in 2018.

“This conference presents an excellent opportunity to share ideas, to see what other people have done, and to be inspired by other peoples’ work in nondestructive evaluation,” said Piervincenzo Rizzo, professor of civil and environmental engineering, who organized the conference. “I was so happy that so many researchers were able to make their way to Palermo to learn from each other and enjoy the beautiful surroundings.”