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COVID RESEARCH
CCS JOINS FORCES WITH SANIBEL-CAPTIVA FOUNDATION ON COASTAL SOLUTIONS
CUTTING-EDGE DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS COMBINE TO SUSTAIN FLORIDA’S COASTAL COMMUNITIES
Florida coastal communities need clean water to preserve residential lifestyles, tourism, fishing, and a host of other activities in the Sunshine State. Recognizing the importance of water quality as a significant component of South Florida’s current and future economy and quality of life for its citizens, the CCS and Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF) have entered into a strategic collaboration to address coastal water quality hazards in order to strengthen the resiliency and sustainability of this unique coastal area in Florida.
SCCF DELIVERS 50+ YEARS OF FORWARD-THINKING CONSERVATION STRATEGIES
Founded in 1967, SCCF’s mission is to protect and care for southwest Florida’s coastal ecosystems through focusing on water quality research, policy and advocacy, sea turtles and shorebirds, native landscaping, habitat and wildlife management, and environmental education. The foundation’s marine laboratory conducts long-and short-term research in the waters and watersheds of Charlotte Harbor, the Caloosahatchee, and the Gulf of Mexico. The lab is an active member in the National Association of Marine Laboratories, and the Organization of Biological Field Stations. It is also a data provider to the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System. The lab’s research uses an instrument array composed of eight near realtime sensors deployed throughout the Caloosahatchee Estuary and Pine Island Sound. Known as RECON, which stands for River Estuary Coastal Observing Network, its unique set of sensors captures data with enormous depth that allows scientists and water managers to better study water quality issues and identify solutions. “Nowhere else in the state is such high-resolution, high-quality, real-time data on coastal water quality available,” said Christine Angelini, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the UF Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment and director of the University of Florida’s Center for Coastal Solutions (UF-CCS). RECON’s data collection capabilities paired with UF data analytics capacity are a perfect fit for a collaboration between SCCF and CCS.
UF CCS BRINGS ADVANCED RESEARCH AND AI ANALYTICS TO THE ALLIANCE
CCS is an interdisciplinary center at the UF Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, where its mission is to predict and prevent negative environmental, health and economic impacts to coastal communities through collaboration with local agencies and organizations, using cutting-edge technology to mitigate water quality hazards and enhance coastal resiliency.
With leadership and subject experts from over 14 colleges across the University of Florida, CCS is the latest center of excellence aiming to bolster the preservation and restoration of coastal communities in Florida and beyond. With government, industry and community partners, the CCS is rapidly gaining foothold in helping these agencies and organizations in combating the effects of climate change and human hazards that are advancing at an alarming speed.
DATA ANALYTICS WILL HELP COASTAL COMMUNITIES WITHSTAND ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE HAZARDS
Leading a new multi-sector flagship initiative, the CCS has formed a Comprehensive Coastal Observing Network (CompCON) in close coordination with SCCF to monitor, model, and deliver data products immediately useful for informing decisions related to addressing coastal hazards. The network also works with other local stakeholders, including Lee County, the City of Cape Coral, the Coastal Heartland National Estuary Partnership (supported by the Environmental Protection Agency), the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and others. CompCON meets quarterly as a team and biweekly in seven focused working groups, involving over 40 members from multiple sectors comprised of businesses, conservation organizations and universities. These working groups are actively identifying critical research needs and sharing data, analytical techniques, modeling capabilities and policy platforms.
This summer, SCCF’s RECON will serve as the base for this UF-CCS pilot project that will put the Southwest Florida regional estuary in the forefront of international research into advanced monitoring of the health of coastal waters, lands, and air. “Our team of more than 25 faculty looked into estuaries across the state of Florida to serve as test beds to pilot our Comprehensive Coastal Observing Network (CompCON) and very soon honed into the Caloosahatchee River-Charlotte Harbor Estuary system because of the unique technical capabilities offered by RECON,” said Angelini. During this pilot phase, CompCON and RECON will be specifically focused on water quality challenges that are impacting the economy and coastal environment in Charlotte Harbor in southwest Florida. Over the next few years, CompCON will be refined and expanded in scale to produce cost-effective, technologically advanced approaches for: (1) real-time, AI-assisted, high resolution monitoring of coastal waters, lands, air and people; (2) forecasting near-term and multidecade changes to the coastal zone in this region, and (3) enabling decisionmakers to explore various management scenarios.
Proactive hazard forecasting, which will appear similar to today’s weather forecasts available on smartphones, will be powered by UF’s AI supercomputer, the fastest in higher education thanks to the university’s $70-million partnership with NVIDIA, along with comprehensive expertise in applied AI, computer science and environmental engineering.
“Ultimately, CompCON seeks to envision, build and continually advance the coastal monitoring and modeling systems of the future, technologies that will deliver information to decision makers, stakeholders and the public at the scales, in the formats, and with the level of certainty required to achieve proactive solutions to addressing water quality and other hazards at the coast,” Angelini said.
“Collaborating with UF-CSS is a great opportunity for us to increase the awareness and value of RECON and the water quality research our Marine Lab is doing,” said SCCF CEO Ryan Orgera. “And, our entire region’s coastal ecosystems will benefit from our pilot participation in CompCON by advancing ways in which science can inform critical policy, which in turn will boost our tourism-based economy and the quality of life of residents and visitors alike.”
STEEL BRIDGE AND CONCRETE CANOE MAKE HISTORY:
BRIDGING THE GAP TO PLACE FIRST IN NATIONALS: STEEL BRIDGE TEAM RISES TO THE TOP
Top to bottom, left to right: Brock Sullivan, Alfonso Madrazo, Daniel Solano, Laura Gonsoulin, Rachel Hart, Huzaifa Lukmanji, Dr. Taylor Rawlinson (Faculty Advisor), Brian Roche, Fletcher D’Arcy. Not Pictured: Justin Robbins and Alex Blaudow. he University of Florida’s Eckhoff Steel Bridge team rose to the unique challenges of 2020 and placed first in the American Institute of Steel Construction’s Student Steel Bridge National Competition. The national competition had over 100 teams around the country compete at regionals to win one of the 25 spots for nationals with results announced on June 3. This year’s competition had a different setup than previous years. Teams had the opportunity to compete from campus, which allowed students to participate in a safe environment that adheres to the university’s COVID protocols with trained judges visiting campus for the competition. This year’s win comes in stark contrast to last year’s disappointment. Last year, the team worked eight months on the design and fabrication of the truss bridge, but as they were packing up to leave for the competition, regional and national competitions were cancelled because of the pandemic. The team was undeterred. Daniel Solano, last year’s project manager, worked tirelessly throughout the summer and fall to advance the team’s design process and provide strong mentorship to the incoming team. “There were questions whether we would be able to make a bridge at all due to the pandemic. Compared to other years, we had less time to work and fewer people able to help due to lab restraints,” said Brian Roche, the team’s deputy project manager. “We had to work a lot harder to get everything done with COVID precautions and it would not have been possible without our other team members and advisors, especially our faculty advisor Dr.
Rawlinson.”
The Steel Bridge team had logistical challenges, such as rigorous occupational restrictions in the lab, limited operation hours, and physical distancing in order to keep team members and lab staff safe. Additionally, a competition rule clarification required a complete redesign of the bridge in order to contend at nationals. “This win is one of the greatest accomplishments in my life thus far. I was not only able to lead a team with the help of the other leadership and advisors by my side but was able to do it differently than has been done in the past. We worked on restructuring leadership roles to get more people involved and share responsibilities. When
I look back on this accomplishment, I can also say that it was all done during a pandemic, which adds even more value to this win because of all of the changes, sacrifices, and difficulties that were encountered on this journey to be No. 1 in the nation,” added Huzaifa Lukmanji, the team Project Manager. They placed first Overall and first in Construction Speed and Economy competitions, with top 20 finishes in the Lightness and Efficiency categories. In a year that emphasized construction speed, the assembly team of Huzaifa Lukmanji, Brian Roche and Fletcher D’Arcy put together the bridge in 1:49, 11 seconds faster than reigning back-toback champion Lafayette College. “They put in long hours between THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA’S ECKHOFF STEEL regionals and nationals, they worked BRIDGE TEAM AND CONCRETE CANOE DESIGN in the heat at the Coastal Engineering TEAM HAVE WON THEIR RESPECTIVE NATIONAL Laboratory, which is a large warehouse COMPETITIONS. THIS IS THE SECOND TIME without air conditioning. They were able IN UF’S HISTORY THAT THIS HAS HAPPENED, to reduce their time from four builders at THE FIRST TIME WAS IN 2015. NO OTHER CIVIL over 4 minutes to three builders at 1:49,” PROGRAM HAS ACCOMPLISHED THIS FEAT. said Taylor Rawlinson, Ph.D., the faculty advisor. This is the Steel Bridge team’s third national championship win, the previous ones were in 1997 and 2015, with a recent second place finish in 2019. “This team has shown tremendous resilience in a year that was very difficult to recruit without the opportunity to travel to competition and with operational constraints due to COVID. I look forward to next year and continuing to build a strong team culture that produces quality engineers that can design, fabricate and manage a project from start to finish,” Dr. Rawlinson said.
BUZZING AT THE TOP: CONCRETE CANOE WINS BACK-TO-BACK NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS
Top to bottom, left to right: Abigail Smith, Alexa McWilliams, Zaid Aldwikat, Suzanna Barna, Erik Huang, Collin Cole, Mauricio Medina, Madeleine Murphree, Lauren Chambers, Grace Kim, and Donny Spillane.
The University of Florida’s Concrete Canoe design team has done it again: they have won the American Society of Civil Engineer’s (ASCE) National Concrete Canoe Competition for the second consecutive year. This year, the team faced a different challenge, which was to compete at the ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition virtually.
The competition was held from June 25 to 27 at University of Wisconsin–Platteville. UF’s team chose to center their design theme around a topic that focused on a vital matter by naming themselves Polligator.
“Polligator came from our team’s desire to choose a topic that brought attention to an important world issue. Also, UF has one of the few honeybee research labs in the country and it felt appropriate to pay tribute to the work that our university accomplishes,” said Suzanna Barna, a project manager and senior in civil engineering. “And our team fell in love with the honeybee, honeycomb and floral visual design theme it would create for this year’s canoe design.”
The team won in 2019 and last year’s competition was cancelled just hours before the team was supposed to travel to the competition. The sting of last year’s cancellation makes this win even greater, according to Mauricio Medina, a project manager and recent civil engineering alum.
“This year has been one large attempt at picking ourselves back up. I think we succeeded,” Medina added. “After our 2019 national championship, I vowed to win another one. After two years of hard work here we are. Back-to-back means that it’s not a fluke we set out to be the best and proved that we are the best.”
In this year’s competition, Polligator nested in the top three in all the competition categories. No other team competing was placed in the top three more than once. They placed second in the technical proposal and technical presentation categories, and third in the enhanced focus areas competition.
“We have an outstanding group of students whose dedication and perseverance are simply unsurpassed. They have once again not only performed in exemplary fashion at the highest level of competition but have also managed to pass that tradition along to each subsequent generation of students in the program in a way that is truly remarkable,” said Robert J. Thieke, Ph.D., department head for civil and coastal engineering and concrete canoe team faculty advisor. “Our project managers, or co-captains, Suzanna Barna and Mauricio Medina rose to meet every challenge of this difficult year and provided inspirational leadership throughout the year-long process.”
The team has successfully foraged for top national placements for over half a decade. The team has won first place in 2015, 2019 and 2021, and placed second in 2017 and 2018.
This comes on the heels of the UF Eckhoff Steel Bridge’s win, which makes it the second time in UF’s history that both teams have won their respective national competitions. The last time this happened was in 2015.
“Now that UF Civil Engineering has once again claimed the Steel Bridge and Concrete Canoe national titles in the same year, we can now lay claim to be the only civil program to have done this twice,” Dr. Thieke said. you deserve a seat at the table, and you are allowed to take up space,” Gaffud said. “I want their experiences and navigation of STEM spaces, which are extremely heteronormative and male-dominated, to be easier than my own. That is why I wanted oSTEM to exist—to be a space for queer students to find that support.”
Gaffud said that their involvement is a piece of a larger progressive movement for the LGBTQIA+ community. Revitalizing oSTEM inspired them by meeting and connecting with people who made them more passionate about their impending career. After graduation and taking a gap year, they plan to pursue a master’s in architecture and eventually, a doctoral degree to fulfill their dream of being a professor.
“I learned that there are no openly queer Nobel laureates in STEM, and I considered that a challenge. Because of my own experiences in academia and the minimal amount of openly queer professors, my ultimate professional aspiration is to become a professor,” they added.
Gaffud is the first student in more than a decade to pursue dual degrees in architecture and civil engineering at UF. They pursued engineering because of their tactile skills and interest in science and mathematics. They credit their experience with student organizations helping them become the person they are today. “Through oSTEM and other organizations I have been involved in, I found friends that have been crucial to my success in college because they laughed with me when I needed joy and cried with me when I needed empathy in this very difficult academic environment. One of the most important things you can do to survive as a student is finding your community and support network,” Gaffud said.
IDENTIFYING AND FILLING THE GAPS: CIVIL STUDENT BRINGS STUDENT CHAPTER BACK TO LIFE
by Reba Liddy
Aldrin James B. Gaffud, a sixthyear senior, seeking dual degrees in civil engineering and architecture, received the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering’s Service to the Global Community Award for their global awareness and dedication in humanitarianism. Gaffud reestablished the Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM) student organization with a friend, Brandon Grandison, because they saw a dire need for diversity in STEM and a lack of support given to LGBTQIA+ students in these spaces.
The UF student chapter was originally created in 2013 and dissolved in 2016. After it was reactivated in 2018, Gaffud led the organization as president for two years. Since its reinstatement, the group held professional networking events with tech companies, paid for students to attend the annual oSTEM National Conference and created sub-organizations in the chapter that are specific to different colleges and departments. During the spring semester, oSTEM hosted queer graduate students and faculty where they presented their research areas.
“College is overwhelming, especially coming from a marginalized community, and things like sexuality and gender identity should not be inhibitors to learning. At the end of the day, I hope the impact for LGBTQIA+ people in STEM is:
” “MY HOPED IMPACT FOR LGBTQIA+ PEOPLE IN STEM IS A SIMPLE REMINDER: YOU DESERVE A SEAT AT THE TABLE, AND YOU ARE ALLOWED TO TAKE UP SPACE.
oSTEM provides all LGBTQIA+ scholars academic and professional resources as well as queer-specific resources that can cater to specific niches and intersections in the LGBTQA+ community. For more information, visit https://www.instagram.com/ostemflorida.
CIVIL STUDENT RECEIVES AWARD
Suzanna Barna, a civil engineering student, was one of two recipients selected by The American Society of Civil Engineers to receive the 2021 Y.C. Yang Civil Engineering Scholarship.
“Suzanna has from her freshman year combined outstanding academic performance with an absolutely unsurpassed record of service in ASCE,” said Robert J. Thieke, Ph.D., civil engineering department head and undergraduate coordinator. “This is an extremely well-deserved honor, and we are proud to have her as a member of our department and a leader in our ASCE student chapter.”
DOCTORAL STUDENT IS A RECIPIENT FOR AAWE THESIS AWARD
by Reba Liddy
Ryan Catarelli, Ph.D., the Wind
Engineering Technical Manager in the Powell Lab and research assistant scientist, received the American Association for Wind Engineering’s (AAWE) Richard Marshall Award for his doctoral thesis on “Enhancing the Modalities of Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel
Modeling and Experimental Flow
Simulation over Complex Topography.”
His thesis focused on the development of new instruments, such as the Terraformer and Flow Field Modulator, for experimental flow simulation in the boundary layer wind tunnel.
“This award is a great honor as it recognizes what the AAWE considers the best doctoral thesis for experimental methods in wind engineering for the past four years in the ‘Americas Region’ of the International Association for Wind Engineering,” Dr. Catarelli said.
ALGORITHM CREATED TO IDENTIFY TRAVELER COORDINATION GROUPS & IMPROVE EFFICIENCY IN ROUTE DECISIONS
By Ines Aviles-Spadoni
Several apps such as Waze and Google Map provide ways for travelers to share routing decisions with each other. These apps aggregate the data to provide information on the best routes to take and the time it takes to arrive at their destinations.
Apps do this via coordinated routing schemes (CRMs). But exactly who are the travelers that others should be coordinating with? CRMs have yet to determine this question. This was the goal of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project led by Dr. Lili Du, an Associate Professor in the UF Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering. The project is titled “Forming Coordination Group for Coordinated Traffic Congestion Management”.
Wang Peng, a doctoral candidate in civil engineering was tasked with addressing this question and in developing a methodology. He worked on this project along with Dr. Du, his doctoral dissertation adviser. The main goals of the project were to identify the coordination potential between travelers and to group them. The new coordination groups were implemented independently into clusters, which were effective at providing routing solutions for travelers without over compromising system performance.
Part of Peng’s work included developing an algorithm, which was eventually successful at identifying clusters of travelers and their chosen routes. “An adaptive centroid-based clustering algorithm was designed to form coordination groups/clusters and was able to locate a ‘good’ number of clusters,” he said. “Also, properly forming coordination groups greatly improved the computation efficiency for the implementation of CRM with only minor compromises in system performance such as total system travel time.”
A forthcoming paper on this topic by Wang and his adviser will be published in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. The paper is titled “Forming Coordination Group for Coordinated Traffic Congestion Management”.
The results of the NSF study have provided an approach for use in ridesharing, parking, and evacuation apps routinely accessed by many users competing for routes over a road network.
CELEBRATING BLACK EXCELLENCE
This campaign was created to amplify Black voices and celebrate Black excellence in our Gator Engineering community and beyond.
BRANDON HUNTER
I started off in a bachelor’s program at the University of Florida in 2010, in civil engineering. I did so because that kind of the only engineering that I knew. I had barely known what engineering was before
I applied to UF because I thought that engineers drove trains. I didn’t know anybody that were engineers—parents, uncles, none of that.
I had a math teacher and at the beginning of 12th grade she told she told me that I that I should do civil engineering and I said, “OK.” I got into UF with the intention to “help.” Each one of my parents are from low resource areas, weather in rural South Georgia or in the Philippines—I’m half Black, half Filipino. Different sides of my family came up pretty rough. I said, “OK maybe I can do civil engineering. It’s pretty much big legos, right?” And I can learn science, math and engineering to develop sustainable housing for those who do not have it.
I realized throughout my journey of being at the University of Florida that what people need more than sustainable housing was safe and affordable clean water and sanitation.
I decided to continue my studies at Duke for a Ph.D. in environmental engineering Dr. David Mazyck was key to me pursuing a Ph.D. He pretty much told me I was going, but he didn’t just tell me—he helped me every step of the way.
Brandon Hunter earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in civil engineering at the University of Florida. He is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Duke University.
DEVIN HARRIS
There’s been these people that have been steering me without me really knowing it in any way—guiding me in some way. I think I can collectively think about how many different people have impacted my trajectory.
I was part of a program called, “STEPUP.” Dr. [Johnathan F.K] Earl was the director of the STEPUP program at the time and he was a silent leader. He was just there and you got to see excellence, so I thought he was a big inspiration for my success. I thank a lot of my STEPUP cohort and then along the way, there has been faculty that I would describe it as they helped the path. As I was graduating, Dr. [Kirk] Hatfield who, was a chair, planted the seed of grad school—what is that all about? I still tell the story; I had the chance to meet with him a couple years ago to tell him.
In my senior exit interview we used to have to sit down with one of the faculty members in the department, I was assigned to Dr. Hatfield. I had class with him, but that was the gist of the interaction. It was really fascinating, he asked a bunch of questions like, “What are you doing after you graduate?” I said “I had a job,” and he was looking at my records and said, “You know your grades are really good.” I was like, “Thank you, I appreciate it.” He goes, “Have you considered grad school?” My response was, “What’s grad school?” He proceeded to tell me a little bit more about it. Undergrads don’t know always know these nuances. He gave me an overview of what it was and there was a big impact.
Devin Harris received a bachelor’s in civil engineering. Dr. Harris is currently a Professor in the Engineering Systems and Environment Department at the University of Virginia. ”
