2020-2021 Annual Report | School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

GEORGIA TECH SCHOOL OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

2020-2021 ANNUAL REPORT

ANNUAL REPORT JULY 2020 – JUNE 2021 Leadership Donald R. Webster, Ph.D., P.E. Karen and John Huff School Chair Susan E. Burns, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE Associate Chair for Administration and Finance John E. Taylor, Ph.D., NAC Associate Chair for Graduate Programs and Research Innovation Kevin Haas, Ph.D. Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs Adjo A. Amekudzi-Kennedy, Ph.D., F.ASCE, NAC Associate Chair for Global Engineering Leadership and Entrepreneurship Anna Walker Director of Development anna.walker@ce.gatech.edu P / 404.702.2609 School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech 790 Atlantic Drive N.W. Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0355 communications@ce.gatech.edu P / 404.894.2201 ce.gatech.edu Words Melissa Fralick Communications Manager Photos and design Amelia Neumeister Communications Officer

What’s Inside 1 Welcome from the Chair 2 By The Numbers 5 School Highlights Stories about students, faculty and alumni 15 Celebrating Innovation Students shine at 1st annual Entrepreneurial Impact Competition 20 Creating The Next A glimpse at CEE’s ground-breaking research 29 Accolades 38 Alumni Leadership Alumni and friends supporting CEE

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Letter from the Chair It has been a truly remarkable year here in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

For a second academic year, we navigated the realities of living and learning in the midst of a global pandemic. But despite the challenging circumstances, I’m happy to report that we not only survived, but thrived.

For the first time in School history, our undergraduate civil engineering program was ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.

After a steady rise in our rankings over the years, it was gratifying to earn the top spot and see our students, faculty and staff receive this recognition on the national stage.

The School also received two prestigious grants that will help us to elevate our success even further by providing us with resources to create innovative changes to our curriculum and culture.

The National Science Foundation’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) Grant will help us to develop new courses and engagement opportunities to enhance students’ connection to the civil and environmental engineering professions while creating a sense of belonging in a safe and inclusive environment.

And thanks to the Kern Family Foundation, CEE will be able to join other programs in the College of Engineering to infuse story-driven learning into our curricula and help students build entrepreneurial mindsets.

In addition to these awards, so many of our students and faculty were recognized for their individual achievements with a variety of impressive accolades.

Our faculty members have earned recognition for their accomplishments by national industry and society groups as well as honors from Georgia Tech for the excellent instruction they provide. Our civil and environmental engineering students are equally impressive, with awards for their prowess in research, innovation and design.

There is so much more that I am excited to share with you in the following pages. I hope you will enjoy learning more about what we’ve been up to in the 2020-2021 academic year.

I am proud of all we’ve accomplished and look forward the many exciting things to come.

Thank you for reading and supporting the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Go Jackets!

Donald R. Webster, Ph.D., P.E. Karen and John Huff School Chair and Professor

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CEEatGT

By the Numbers #

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Undergraduate civil engineering

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4

Undergraduate environmental engineering

979 students 17% minority 53% women 34% international

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Graduate civil engineering

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Graduate environmental engineering

1 in10

CEEatGT alumni serve as a company founder, CEO, or president

12,000+ living alumni

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Civil Engineering Ranked No. 1 In the Nation

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ivil Engineering at Georgia Tech is now the topranked program of its kind in the nation.

U.S. News and World Report has released its 2021 list of the country’s best undergraduate engineering programs, featuring Georgia Tech civil engineering at No. 1 and environmental engineering at No. 4.

Civil engineering was ranked No. 1 for the first time, up from the No. 2 spot over the past four years.

Environmental engineering maintained the No. 4 ranking for the third year in a row.

“This recognition is well-deserved and reflective of the students, faculty and staff that we have long felt are the best in the nation,” said Karen and John Huff School Chair Don Webster. “While this is welcome news, it does not come as a surprise. We in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering have dedicated ourselves to continually improving our educational programs, which is reflected in our steady rise through the rankings over the past 10 years. We are thrilled to be recognized as the top civil engineering

No.

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program in the nation.”

For the past two decades, civil engineering has ranked among the nation’s top five programs, and environmental engineering has been listed in the top 10 since the program was established at Georgia Tech in 2006.

The 2021 rankings were favorable for Georgia Tech all around. Each of the College of Engineering’s undergraduate programs was ranked in the top five overall. In addition, Georgia Tech was listed as No. 8 among public universities nationwide, and the No. 4 most innovative university.

“The No. 1 ranking of the civil engineering program at Georgia Tech can be attributed not only to the outstanding faculty, staff and students in the school, but also to their innovative teaching and passion for solving global problems,” said Georgia Tech Provost Steve McLaughlin. “This ranking is indicative of their solutiondriven research and their work in helping students become leaders in their field.”

Civil Engineering No.

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Environmental Engineering 3

Welcome the New Dean of the College of Engineering Friends of the College: I am beyond excited to be serving in this position and truly honored to lead our great College, especially as a Georgia Tech alum and native Atlantan. As I step into this role, I’ve been reflecting on the past year and the unprecedented challenges facing our world and the College itself. As the global pandemic impacted classroom and research operations, our resilient faculty, staff and students quickly pivoted, providing virtual support, innovative learning models and on-going research efforts with enhanced safety protocols to ensure our College remained a best-in-class learning institution. All of that work continues today, and I am proud to now be leading a community that has already accomplished so much.

This past year also brought social justice issues to the forefront of our lives, with a societal call for equity and inclusion for all. As Dean, I am committed to reexamining what it means to be truly inclusive as a College, not just in our words, but in our actions. In the recently released Institute 2020-2030 Strategic Plan, among its many focus areas is that of access and inclusivity. I am in full alignment with the Institute’s efforts to expand access and empower people of all backgrounds to learn and contribute to technological and human progress.

As I have told the faculty and staff of the College, I am here to listen as I begin my tenure as Dean. I also welcome feedback from you as fellow alumni, who are also committed to our College’s success.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out and send me a note. My virtual door is open, and I welcome the opportunity to listen and learn.

All the best, Raheem Beyah Dean & Southern Company Chair College of Engineering

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Creating a Community Love of reading, engineering, unites students during pandemic

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s the pandemic dragged into 2021, Maria Warren found herself reading more and more.

With Covid-19 shelving her go-to leisure activities like playing soccer and meeting friends for coffee, the Ph.D. student turned to books in her spare time and decided to reread one of her favorites: BUILT by Roma Agrawal.

“This book made me fall in love with structural engineering again,” Warren said.

In 2020, Warren was selected as one of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Future Faculty Fellows. The four-year-old program supports students pursuing careers in academia through a $1,000 stipend to guide their development as educators and help them build their research and professional relationships.

But like soccer and coffee shops, Covid-19 took traveling to conferences off the table, and spending the money to attend virtual conferences just didn’t have the same appeal for Warren.

So she came up with the idea of bringing the CEE community together for a book club to read and talk about the book that had been so influential for her.

Using her Future Faculty Fellows stipend, Warren committed to purchasing a book for any student interested in participating. She also made the club open to everyone in CEE—students, faculty and staff—with the goal of creating a sense of community for the School during a time when so many were working and studying remotely.

With its accessible style and broad overview of structural engineering history, Warren thought BUILT would be the perfect way to kick off the book club.

“It is technical, but it’s written for a beginner,” said Warren, who co-teaches an introduction to structural

Students meet for the virtual book club meeting on April 23, 2021

“ This book made me fall in love with structural engineering again. ”

— Maria Warren,

Ph.D. Candidate

engineering for undergraduates. “This was a really good book because it’s for people who are not as experienced on the technical side, but also I love structural engineering and I’ve read it three or four times over.”

At the start of the Spring 2021 semester, Warren created a flyer and spread the word about the CEE Book Club. She joked about her initial worry that the club might just be her and a few friends that she guilted into joining. But it turns out that Warren was onto something: Lots of people signed up to participate, and roughly 30 people attended each virtual meeting.

While the book focused on structures, book club participants represented a cross-section of the School and included students from other disciplines like transportation and water systems engineering.

Tobias Kopp, a rising fourth year student, said he was intrigued by the book club’s focus on structural engineering—an area he didn’t know much about.

“The book club was an all-around amazing experience and I applaud Maria for getting the book club up and running during such a challenging time,” Kopp said. “I enjoyed hearing other students’ thoughts on the discipline, and one of the best things I took away were the amazing stories others shared of their experiences in structural engineering either 6

from an internship or research.”

Francesca Lolli, a second-year post-doctoral researcher, said it was nice having the opportunity to interact with different people during the group discussions.

“Every time I met new people with very different backgrounds, so the conversation was always very stimulating,” Lolli said. “My take away is that we should probably integrate more ‘soft’ reading at the university level. I think that focusing on why we built cities in a certain way and how history is connected to the built environment is something that we don’t think enough about during more traditional courses.”

For the group’s last meeting of the semester, Warren decided to try something bold. She emailed Agrawal, the author of the book, and asked if she would be willing to join the virtual meeting and answer a few questions.

To Warren’s delight, she said yes. Agrawal beamed in to the CEE Book Club’s April 23 meeting from her home in the United Kingdom, where she shared her career journey with the group and answered questions about sustainability, ethics and the future of civil engineering.

Agrawal is a structural engineer who has worked on several notable buildings in London’s skyline, including The Shard, the tallest building in western

enjoyed hearing other “ Istudents’ thoughts on the discipline, and one of the best things I took away were the amazing stories others shared of their experiences in structural engineering either from an internship or research.

”

— Tobias Kopp,

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Undergraduate Student

Europe. Agrawal said over the years, she gave lots of presentations about these high-profile projects, and found she had a knack for explaining complicated subject matter. She was approached by a publisher with an offer to write a book, which became BUILT: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures. The 2018 book combines history, technical explanations and personal anecdotes to explain the evolution of construction over time.

As an aspiring professor, leading the CEE book club gave Warren a new perspective on teaching.

“The book club has been super interesting because I’ve taught Introduction to Structures and Civil Engineering Materials, and those are really technical classes,” Warren said. “With the book club, I’m leading a discussion-based class. It’s been interesting to learn how to moderate discussions and ensure that everyone who wants to participate can. It’s been a challenge but it’s been a lot of fun.”

Following its successful debut, plans are underway for the book club to continue in the fall.

The basic structure will remain the same. The group will read one book and discuss it in several meetings over the course of the semester. But there will be one major change—participants will gather on campus instead of on their computer screens.

Warren hopes that the book club will continue to thrive and provide more opportunities for people in CEE to get to know each other and interact face to face.

“I feel really grateful to everyone in the CEE community who has supported and joined and shared it with their friends,” Warren said. “The participants in the book club are so enthusiastic and the discussions are so fulfilling. They’ve made the experience so great and I’m really grateful for them.”

CEE Introduces Construction and Infrastructure Concentration

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ivil engineering students are now able to earn a concentration in Construction and Infrastructure Systems Engineering (CISE), an official designation that lets employers know they are ready for careers in the construction industry.

In Fall 2020, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering began offering its construction and infrastructure courses in a formal concentration that will be recognized upon graduating with a civil engineering degree.

“The CISE concentration is unique to civil engineering and to the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at large,” said Eric Marks, a professor of the practice in civil engineering. “The concentration was created in tandem with our construction industry partners. Having this designation will enable our program to closer align with the needs of the industry and better equip our students for successful careers.”

Students pursuing the CISE Concentration are able to specialize in two tracks: Construction Engineering and Management and Infrastructure Systems Engineering.

Infrastructure Systems Engineering focuses on the facilities required to support societies and

thriving economies: roadways, bridges, tunnels, water treatment facilities, electrical grids, telecommunications and more.

Construction Engineering and Management professionals implement innovative technologies, design and facilitate construction projects with sound engineering principles, and align a multitude of stakeholders while leading capital-intensive construction in the industrial, heavy civil, commercial and residential sectors.

Students in the CISE Concentration will take elective courses that allow them to specialize in construction management and infrastructure, while earning a degree in civil engineering. The concentration was designed by faculty and an advisory board of alumni and industry professionals.

Paul Carter is the Walsh Group’s senior vice president of the Southeast Division and a member of the School’s CISE Advisory Board. Carter says that the coursework and opportunities provided by this new concentration will set students apart in their knowledge of multiple aspects of construction projects.

“We see the CISE Concentration as a bridge between business management and civil engineering degrees, which thrive in our line of work,” Carter says.

“These courses will help the students build successful careers in the ever-evolving fast paced construction industry.”

Blake Peck, MS CE 78, is the CEO of construction management firm MBP and a member of the School’s CISE advisory board.

Peck says for employers like himself, the concentration adds extra appeal to Georgia Tech’s civil engineering graduates, who are already in high demand. Civil engineering students will graduate even more prepared for jobs in the construction field. The CISE Concentration will allow students to clearly communicate to employers their level of construction industry knowledge.

“If they haven’t taken a construction scheduling class, or a cost estimation class, we’re really starting at ground zero. But if they’ve had those electives, they come in with an understanding of the industry,” Peck said. “They’re six months to a year further along than their peers if they come in having taken those electives.”

Students will also have more exposure to interdisciplinary coursework that will differentiate them from their peers in more traditional programs—something firms in the construction industry are looking for, Carter said.

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RED Grant Brings New Possibilities T

he School of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop innovative changes to the School’s curriculum and culture.

Known as a RED grant—Revolutionizing Engineering Departments—the funding will be used to create resources to instill in students a greater sense of understanding and belonging to the civil and environmental engineering fields.

“We are thrilled to receive this support that will enable us to begin developing new courses to enhance our undergraduate experience,” said Karen and John Huff School Chair Donald Webster. “This is a phenomenal opportunity to think holistically about our curriculum, particularly framed around a sense of belonging through an instructional thread that will connect each year of our undergraduate degree programs.”

The RED grant will be used to enhance students’ connection to the civil and environmental engineering professions while creating a safe and inclusive environment for all CEE students, particularly women and underrepresented minorities.

The funding will also help to increase engagement for students throughout their undergraduate studies and improve student retention within the School.

CEE programs across the country struggle with retention. A main culprit is that students often

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aren’t significantly engaged with civil and environmental engineering material until after they’ve completed their core courses halfway through their college experience.

School leadership concluded that early and continuing engagement in the discipline would help keep more students in the program.

Associate Chair Kevin Haas and Assistant Professor Emily Grubert developed a course called “Exploring CEE” as a way to engage undergraduates during their first year in the program. The course, which was offered for the first time in Fall 2019, introduced first-year students to the work civil and environmental engineers do through interdisciplinary research topics, guest lecturers and team problem-solving exercises.

“It’s been a real pleasure to watch students realize the scope of what we do as a profession, while simultaneously realizing that we’re a supportive community with a ton of interests,” Grubert said. “I’m very excited to continue developing this class in the context of the RED grant, knowing that there will be a clear path forward for the students to continue those kinds of discoveries as they gain skills.”

With the RED grant, the School aims to build on the Explore CEE class by developing a series of courses that will ground students in the kind of work they will be doing as civil and environmental engineers.

Over the next five years, the School will develop and implement a spine of four mutually informing and highly interactive courses with an emphasis on problem-finding and problem-solving. The courses will address society’s grand challenges and help students develop computational, teaming, and reflection skills.

Each course will build on the last, with increasing rigor, ending with the Capstone senior design class.

“This RED grant will support us to enhance the quality of our civil and environmental engineering curricula,” said Adjo AmekudziKennedy, associate chair for global engineering leadership and entrepreneurship. “We will be able to do all this in an integrated and thorough manner – improving the internal climate and programs while enhancing the impact of our graduates beyond CEEatGT, with contributions to advance engineering education scholarship.”

KEEN Grant Expands Story-Driven Learning for CEE Students

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Students are asked to reflect on what they’re learning and how it connects to their own life experiences. They also spend time doing peer reviews and interviewing people to discover real-world problems to solve and understand user needs.

The new grant expands these ideas into the other programs, scaling up story-driven learning.

“It’s really exciting, because 40% of College of Engineering students will be impacted,” Le Doux said.

“Every civil, environmental, aerospace, and CREATE-X student will get it — but in different ways.”

In the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the project will build on a larger, multi-year effort to transform the School’s culture and curriculum by improving students’ sense of belonging and connection.

School leaders are designing a series of four vertically integrated courses focused on interactive problembased learning and problem solving around the grand societal challenges that civil and environmental engineers work to solve. The classes will feature elements of computational and team development, include reflective teaching and learning, and aim to create a greater sense of belonging among civil and environmental students.

“The overarching objective of this initiative is to incorporate entrepreneurially-minded learning pedagogies into our engineering programs, with a focus on value sensitive design and story-driven learning, to support the development of entrepreneurially minded engineers,” said Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy, associate chair and professor in the School. “That means engineers who have a mindset and culture of value creation: for society, for the advancement of the economy, and for themselves in ways that formally incorporate societal values and minimize negative consequences.”

— By Joshua Stewart

Image courtesy of Suzy Hazelwood

torytelling is how we share ideas and culture. It’s how we build relationships.

Telling stories also helps us learn and integrate that new information into our existing knowledge, which is partly why helping students tell their stories has become an important part of the curriculum in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Now the idea is reaching other disciplines in the College of Engineering at Tech with the support of a $3.1 million grant from the Kern Family Foundation.

Under the new project, led by Coulter BME Professor Joe Le Doux, the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the College’s CREATE-X entrepreneurial program will infuse story-driven learning into their curricula to help students build “entrepreneurial mindsets.” The idea is to help students see themselves as engineers ready and able to act, using all the skills they’re learning to solve problems and improve the human condition.

“Throughout engineering education, I would argue, we often don’t give students a chance to sit back, reflect, and make connections about what they’re learning and how they can use it,” said Le Doux. “Some students do it on their own. But some don’t. Those who do, really benefit from it. So, the whole concept of the storydriven learning piece is to help students make these connections about what they’re learning, who they are, where they’re going.”

The Coulter Department has been developing this story-driven learning idea for a few years through the Foundation’s Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN). It has developed into a thread that weaves throughout students’ courses: All along their journey, students have significant learning experiences that add to their bank of stories.

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Tackling Affordable Housing in Atlanta

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uring the fourth annual Tech Blitz, six teams of students and industry professionals focused on ways that civil engineers can innovate within the construction industry to bring down costs and help combat rising rent prices across the city of Atlanta.

The event, hosted by the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is an all-day hackathon with a focus on pushing the technological boundaries of the construction industry.

This year, the teams were challenged to utilize prefabrication and modularization construction principles to decrease construction costs by 70 percent without significantly impacting other project controls like safety and quality.

The event featured a panel of guest speakers that educated the teams about the scope of the issues surrounding affordable housing as well as some of the emerging solutions that can be utilized to lower construction costs.

Atlanta’s Chief Housing Officer Terri Lee and Bithia Ratnasamy, a project manager in the Office of the Mayor, spoke about affordability in the city of Atlanta.

Affordable housing can mean many things: homes for sale or for rent, homes that are subsidized by the government to keep prices low, or housing that is naturally at a lower price point through cost-effective construction or other market forces.

Affordability is also different for a single person than a family of five. Ratnasamy said a good metric for affordable housing is a home that costs no more than 30 percent of any household’s monthly income.

Darion Dunn, CE 00, is a member of the School’s External Advisory Board and a managing partner at Atlantica Properties.

Dunn said there are other important factors to consider when thinking about the issue of affordable housing, including population density. More than two million people are projected to move to the metro Atlanta area over the next 20 years. Meanwhile, as housing near job centers gets more expensive, people move farther away to find more affordable housing and spend a higher percentage of their income on transportation to and from work.

“You cannot talk about affordable housing without talking about population density and transportation, and these are two things the civil engineering community can help with,” Dunn said.

Prefabrication and lean construction principles are also important ways for the construction industry to tackle the affordable housing problem, Dunn said.

“The total construction costs go down, which makes debt go down, which makes the monthly payments go down for an apartment owner, which affects the rent,” Dunn said.

Following a full day of brainstorming, the teams

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presented their proposals to a panel of judges.

The winning project proposed revitalizing a historic structure while adding affordable housing through modular building.

The group selected Paschal’s Motor Hotel, a historic building in disrepair located on the west side of Atlanta that served as a meeting place during the civil rights movement. Through selective demolition on a portion of the existing motel, the group proposed implementing modularization to create 110 housing units.

Proposed cost-saving measures include the reestablishment of the motel’s restaurant to produce retail leasing fees to offset the renovation debt; advanced framing techniques to reduce material costs by 15 percent; and ductless mini-split heating and cooling systems to eliminate the cost of installing ductwork.

The group speculated that additional savings could come in the form of tax credits that the project could qualify for in addition to a potential partnership with Clark Atlanta University, which currently owns the building.

The team behind the proposal was comprised of four students and four industry professionals: Tech students Ali Lopez, Victoria Lynn, Sandra Diaz and Tobias Kopp, along with Preston Jutte from Kimley-Horn, Alex Darr from Pond, Diana Sacks of SK Collaborative and Vincent Harvey from Turner Construction.

Fellows Bring Passion for Teaching, Research

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ix grad students and post-doctoral researchers from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering are one step closer to becoming the next generation of educators after being selected as Future Faculty Fellows.

Now in its fourth year, Future Faculty Fellows is a program that aims to build a pipeline of future professors by creating great teachers and helping them build their research and professional relationships.

The Fellows receive $1,000 from the School to support their development as educators and to explore potential teaching careers. To support their development as teachers, Fellows participate in a Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning program as well as teach a class with one-onone mentoring and support from a faculty member.

This year’s fellows have pursued an array of research interests within civil and environmental engineering.

Drew Capone defended his dissertation in Environmental Engineering in July 2020 and is now a postdoctoral fellow in Environmental Engineering with Adjunct Professor Joe Brown.

Wilson Espinoza is pursuing a Ph.D. in civil engineering with the geosystems research group. His goals are to to develop technologically sound solutions for sustainable and efficient extraction of subsurface geothermal energy while serving the community and contributing to STEM education.

Bilal Iftikhar is a Fulbright scholar working toward a Ph.D. in civil engineering. His research focuses on the optimization of reservoir operation to mitigate the effects of floods and droughts.

Abhilasha Saroj graduated in August 2020 with a Ph.D. in civil engineering focusing on transportation systems engineering. Her research interests lie in developing simulation tools to evaluate performance impacts of traffic control and operations strategies on mobility, environmental impact, and safety of smart/connected corridors that can be used for improved decision-making.

Prerna Singh is a civil engineering Ph.D. student focusing on resilient infrastructure systems. She says the Future Faculty Fellowship will allow her to develop teaching skills by providing valuable resources and a community of fellows with the same shared vision.

Teaching is already a big part of life for civil engineering Ph.D. student Maria Warren. As a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses, she enjoys working with students while balancing her interests in teaching and research.

The 2020-2021 Cohort of Future Faculty Fellows The Future Faculty Fellows receive $1,000 from the School to support their development as educators and to explore potential teaching careers. To support their development as teachers, Fellows participate in a Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning program as well as teach a class with one-on-one mentoring and support from a faculty member.

Drew Capone Postdoctoral Fellow

Wilson Espinoza Ph.D. Student

Bilal Iftikhar Ph.D. Student

Abhilasha Saroj Postdoctoral Fellow

Prerna Singh Ph.D. Student

Maria Warren Ph.D. Student

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EnvE Grad to Engineer Clean Water Solutions Abroad E

lisabeth McDonnell, an environmental engineering graduate from Roswell, Ga., packed up to leave the country for two years just days after graduating in December 2020. In January, McDonnell headed to Sierra Leone to work for a company called Water4. With locations in more than a dozen African countries, Water4 helps empower local communities to lead projects that bring them clean water.

This opportunity came from a partnership between Water4 and Georgia Tech’s Campus Christian Fellowship (CCF). In Sierra Leone, McDonnell will help engineer solutions to bring clean water to various communities. But she’ll also have a hand in creating an internship program specifically for Georgia Tech engineers who want to come do the same thing. She’ll be overseeing three to four students at a time in their work with Water4.

McDonnell was initially drawn to environmental engineering by her love for animals, but a mission trip in high school set her on the clean water track.

Halfway through her stay in Kenya, the compound she was living in experienced a water shortage. For the rest of their time there, she and her group had to walk three miles to get their water for the day.

“I realized that for some people, this is what they do every single morning for their whole lives,” McDonnell said. “That’s when water sanitation came to the forefront of my mind.”

She feels confident that her degree program’s emphasis on creativity and problem solving has equipped her with the skills necessary to tackle these problems.

“All of the classes I’ve been in have encouraged ingenuity and creativity in solving problems in a way that’s different than the status quo,” she said.

McDonnell also learned meaningful lessons outside of the classroom, most notably with the Ramblin’ Reck Club. Since joining in her second semester at Tech, McDonnell has held multiple leadership positions within the organization, including traditions chair and vice president. To her, the Reck Club served as a way to show her Georgia Tech spirit, as well as a reminder of just how passionate her fellow students can be.

“People in Reck Club remind you that you’re blessed to have the opportunity to be stressed over the potential to achieve exceptional things,” she said.

After graduation, McDonnell will have no shortage of fond memories to look back on from her time at Tech, including Midnight Bud, a finals de-stressing event on campus. At the end of her first semester, McDonnell, who had never heard of Midnight Bud, was caught off guard one night by the sound of students singing Georgia Tech songs outside her dorm.

She and her friend headed outside, barefoot and in pajamas, and ended up following the crowd all the way to the North Avenue Apartments — and having the time of their lives.

“When I needed it most, I was reminded of how special Georgia Tech is,” she said.

— By Grace Wyner 13

Nontraditional Student Makes the Grade T

imothy “TJ” Weiler, 43, was a nontraditional student with an unusual educational background. He graduated in December 2020 with a Georgia Tech degree in civil engineering with a focus on structural theory.

Weiler, whose hometown is Athens, Greece, grew up traveling the world with his parents, who were engaged in missionary projects. As a result, he did not get a chance to regularly attend school. When he was in his thirties, he decided he wanted to get a proper education and become a structural engineer.

“I began my academic journey by getting my GED, enrolling in community college, and teaching myself basic math,” he said. He worked his way up to advanced engineering classes and eventually transferred to Georgia Tech.

“I am beyond grateful that I was accepted into Georgia Tech, the no. 1 college for civil engineering in the country. It’s truly been a dream come true,” Weiler said.

His time at Tech overlapped with his nephew, Derek Weiler, who graduated last spring with a degree in computer science. His niece, Cherish Weiler, has a master’s degree from Tech.

He said that any time he would tell someone he was at Tech, they would ask if he was a professor. His reply?

“No, I’m just a very old student,” he laughed.

And although he is relieved to be completing his degree, he will miss the intense academic challenges he faced — and overcame — at Tech. He, like his fellow students, also had to deal with the isolation caused by the pandemic. “There certainly was a lot more stress involved, even though I did not want to admit it at the time,” he said. “I missed the interaction with my classmates, and group projects were not the same on BlueJeans. The regular group dynamic was really missed.”

But Weiler persevered. He said he was most looking forward to hearing his name announced during the ceremony.

Weiler, who has a background in construction, will pursue a career as a structural engineer.

— By Victor Rogers

Photo courtesy of TJ Weiler

“I began my academic journey by getting my GED, enrolling in community college, and teaching myself basic math” - Timothy “TJ” Weiler

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Students Shine at First Annual Entrepreneurial Impact Competition

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he School of Civil and Environmental Engineering has introduced a new student competition to celebrate innovation and encourage entrepreneurial endeavors.

The Entrepreneurial Impact Competition began as an open call for proposals during the Fall 2020 semester. Individuals and teams of students at both the undergraduate and graduate level applied their CEE knowledge and skills to develop entrepreneurial ideas that could improve the human condition. Following a thorough review, a panel of judges selected four finalists to participate in the competition.

The first annual Entrepreneurial Impact Competition was held on March 19, 2021 in a virtual format. Each of the impressive finalists gave five-minute verbal pitches of their projects before a live audience and a panel of expert judges, who followed up with sharp questions.

The four finalists were: Cultúrea, which developed technology for better nutrient management; BioBuilt, who presented a novel design for a ground anchor; River Recon, which created a device to detect microplastics in water; and VoltaPure, whose project uses electricity to disinfect drinking water.

The contest was judged by faculty members David Frost and Lisa Rosenstein along with alumni KP Reddy, CE 94, Kendell Renee Kelly, CE 01, and Leonidas Emmeneger, PhD CE 20—each of whom possesses unique experience in the entrepreneurship space.

The student finalists had a lot on the line, competing for a chance to win one of two $5,000 prizes.

Following a thorough deliberation, the judges selected VoltaPure and River Recon to win the prizes sponsored by two generous donors: Bill Higginbotham, CE 76, and the Zeitlin Family.

The Higginbotham Prize was awarded to River Recon, comprised of Matthew Falcone, Erin Kowalsky, Timothy Purvis and Kaylyn Sinisgalli. River Recon designed a sensor to swiftly, inexpensively and efficiently identify microplastics in water. The sensing device works by using fluorescence, and in some cases light distortion, of plastic polymers at certain wavelengths to distinguish microplastics from soils and other interferences in water.

The device works by passing water samples into a light-tight testing chamber, where it is stored in a glass tube. Light sources of different wavelengths turn on and off sequentially, and a camera takes an image of the sample’s response to each wavelength of light.

The images are compiled and passed into a machine learning algorithm, which predicts which regions contain microplastics.

VoltaPure, made up of Nissim Gore-Datar, Mourin Jarin and Jianfeng Zhou, took home the Zeitlin Prize for their technology, which offers an alternative to chemical water disinfection.

Judge KP Reddy, CE 94, asks questions of the VoltaPure team.

Previous page, clockwise from top left: Tim Purvis from River Recon; Abigail Cohen from Cultúrea; Professor John E. Taylor, emcee of the event; and and judge Kendell Kelly, CE 01.

VoltaPure’s co-axial electrode copper ionization cell disinfects water while producing a very low and safe effluent copper concentration. The underlying mechanism behind the center electrode is locally enhanced electric field treatment, which exploits the lighting rod effect by distributing a low voltage to the modified electrode surface, significantly enhancing electric field exposure to pathogens.

VoltaPure’s energy-efficient, chlorine-free technology can be integrated into point-of-use water disinfection for remote areas, developing communities and disaster regions without central water disinfection facilities. It can also be retrofitted into existing distribution systems to provide antimicrobial properties while eliminating the need for chlorination, offering clean drinking water without harmful disinfection by-products.

“We are constantly amazed by the creative problem-solving and innovative ideas displayed by our students,” said Karen and John Huff School Chair Don Webster. “We hope this competition will help to boost the entrepreneurial mindset in our School and help launch the innovative ideas of our students and community.”

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Final Four

Learn more about the four finalists selected to compete in the 2021 Entrepreneurial Impact Competition.

VoltaPure Left to Right: Jianfeng Zhou, Mourin Jarin, and Nissim Gore-Datar More than 800 million people worldwide lack consistent access to clean drinking water. This is due to the high cost of treatment plants, difficulties transporting chemicals, and the aftermath of carcinogenic disinfection by-products.

VoltaPure’s novel co-axial electrode copper ionization cell enables superior water disinfection while producing a very low and safe effluent copper concentration. The underlying mechanism behind the center electrode is locally enhanced electric field treatment, which exploits the lighting rod effect by distributing a low voltage to the modified electrode surface, significantly enhancing electric field exposure to pathogens. VoltaPure’s energy-efficient, chlorinefree technology can be integrated into point-of-use water disinfection for remote areas, developing communities and disaster regions without central water disinfection facilities. As the technology scales, it can be retrofitted into existing distribution systems to provide antimicrobial properties while eliminating the need for chlorination, offering clean drinking water without harmful disinfection by-products.

BioBuilt John Huntoon John Huntoon collaborated with Georgia Tech faculty to develop a ground anchor inspired by the architecture and load transfer efficiency of plant roots. Ground anchors, used in many retaining walls and building foundations, are underground structures that resist forces attempting to pull the anchor from the ground by transferring those forces to the surrounding soil. Such applied forces are called pullout loads. The roots of certain plant species anchor the organism in the soil much more efficiently than any ground anchors currently used in civil infrastructure, making them a source of inspiration for ground anchor improvements. Huntoon and his team at Georgia Tech developed a prototype called the Root-Inspired Ground Anchor, or RIGA. This anchor consists of three primary components: a stressing element, identical to the steel cables or bars used in conventional ground anchors; an expansive root mechanism, which is initially cylindrical but expands during installation to mimic the geometry of fibrous plant roots; and cement grout, which gives the systems stiffness and protects its components from corrosion. The expansive root mechanism resists pullout loads more efficiently than the cylindrical external interface of a conventional ground anchor.

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Cultύrea Left to Right: Abigail Cohen, Thomas Igou, Eli Berger, and Elliot Reid Water and nutrient management are top challenges in the United States, where food is grown using fertilizer derived from finite, energy-intensive nutrients and surface freshwater, shifting natural cycles out of balance.

Nationally, more than 35 percent of municipal energy budgets are spent producing, distributing and treating water, where little recycling occurs. As this paradigm expands into emerging markets, strain on ecosystems will deepen, and agricultural resource demand will outpace reserve supplies. Rather than maintaining the status-quo, Cultúrea implements technologies to enable a more circular approach to water and nutrient management that will preserve precious resources, leapfrog linear consumption, and jump straight into a “circular water and nutrient economy.”

Cultúrea will build and operate anaerobic-anoxic-oxic membrane bioreactor systems for onsite wastewater treatment and resource recovery. The proposed system consists of three parts: domestic wastewater and rainwater capture; treatment modules; and a resource reclamation system. While conventional treatment systems spend energy to oxidize nutrients only to release them to the environment, Cultúrea’s system produces bioenergy used for heating, cooking and power, reusable water free from pathogen risks, and high-quality phosphorus-enriched agricultural soil amendment to return nutrition to depleted soils. Further, Cultúrea’s system is highly efficient and modular, resulting in feasible implementation in commercial buildings, apartment complexes, schools and other facilities.

River Recon Left to Right: Matthew Falcone, Kaylyn Sinisgalli, Erin Kowalsky, and Timothy Purvis Plastic waste breaks up into microscopic pieces that are harmful to both the environment and human health.

The River Recon team set out to create a detection device because there are currently no effective methods for quantifying microplastics in water—making it difficult to understand the full extent of this emerging environmental contaminant. Extensive physical sampling, preparation, and analysis can take days to generate useful data, while expensive laboratory equipment and specialized services limit the capacity to analyze environmental microplastics. To overcome these barriers, River Recon designed a sensor to swiftly, inexpensively, and efficiently identify microplastics in continuous streams of water. The sensing device works by using fluorescence, and in some cases light distortion, of plastic polymers at certain wavelengths to distinguish microplastics from soils and other interferences in water.

The device works by passing water samples into a light-tight testing chamber, where it is stored in a glass tube. Light sources of different wavelengths turn on and off sequentially, and a camera takes an image of the sample’s response to each wavelength of light. The images are compiled and passed into a machine learning algorithm, which predicts which regions contain microplastics.

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Planting Seeds for Success The Entrepreneurial Impact Competition was made possible thanks to two generous donors. Their endowed gifts provided the $5,000 prizes for this year’s winning teams and will allow CEE students to pursue their entrepreneurial goals for years to come.

Learn more about the people behind the Higginbotham Entrepreneurial Prize and the Zeitlin Innovation Prize:

Bill Higginbotham

Bill Higginbotham, CE 76, is a lifelong entrepreneur. He first combined his love of engineering and entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech, where he started a thermal solar system design and construction corporation a year before he graduated.

He went on to start 13 businesses in geotechnical consulting, energy and environmental management, construction, and venture capital, including ET Environmental Corporation, where he serves as president and CEO. Higginbotham said the two mandatory business classes he took in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering provided an important foundation for his success as a businessman. As

The Zeitlin Family

Georgia Tech has always been special to the Zeitlin family. So it seemed fitting to Gregg Zeitlin to honor his mother and late father’s legacy at the school that had such a profound impact on their lives.

Alan G. Zeitlin’s time and education at Georgia Tech was a transformational period in his life.

Not only did it prepare him for his future career, but it presented the fortuitous opportunity to meet his future wife, Phyllis C. Zeitlin.

They married and settled down in Atlanta to raise their four children shortly after Alan graduated from Georgia Tech in 1962.

Alan Zeitlin went on to a successful career as an entrepreneur in construction and real estate, working closely with Phyllis Zeitlin to run their businesses. Gregg Zeitlin grew up in the family business, spending time with his parents in the 19

an alumnus, he’s giving back to the school by making sure that current students not only get a top-notch engineering education, but graduate prepared to run successful businesses of their own.

Through his service on the External Advisory Board and beyond, Higginbotham has taken an active role in helping the School boost its resources for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Starting in January 2020, Higginbotham became a co-instructor for a new course called Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Civil Engineering Systems. With the Higginbotham Entrepreneurial Prize, Higginbotham hopes to encourage students to take their CEE skills outside of the classroom and see what it takes to bring their ideas to life.

“I wanted to do something direct and tangible,” Higginbotham said. “We need an economic incentive at the undergraduate level to drive this home.”

office and visiting constructions sites.

“It was a huge part of our family and a part of our lives,” Zeitlin said.

Gregg Zeitlin went on to pursue a degree in business, but he was always inspired by his father’s self-reliance and ability to solve problems—skills he attributes to his Georgia Tech education.

With the creation of the Zeitlin Innovation Prize, Gregg Zeitlin feels he is able to honor his parents’ legacy while providing students with opportunities to take risks and try things that could ultimately help improve the human condition.

“It’s experiential learning and so additive to what students are learning at school. You’re working with people, you’re experiencing losses, you’re experiencing wins,” Gregg Zeitlin said.

“Even if they don’t go on to be entrepreneurs, those experiences are applicable to almost anything. It’s such a strong foundation for so many things.”

CREATING THE NEXT Over the past year, CEE faculty have received millions in grant funding for research that expands our knowledge and helps to blaze a trail for what comes next in energy infrastructure, transportation, air quality and more. Read on to learn about some of the incredible research that’s taking place here in CEEatGT.

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NASA Funds Air Quality Research in Metro Atlanta A

Midtown Atlanta skyline from Georgia Tech campus. Photo by Raftermen Photography

Jennifer Kaiser with the Midtown Atlanta Skyline behind her.

Photo by Amelia Neumeister

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ssistant Professor Jennifer Kaiser received an award from NASA’s New Investigator Program in support of her research on air quality.

The project, entitled “Tracking Formaldehyde Production in an Urban Outflow,” involves building a ground-based formaldehyde and nitrogen dioxide monitoring network in the Atlanta metro area.

The project received around $400,000 in funding from NASA and will be conducted over three years.

Kaiser will use observations from the monitoring network to understand how satellite-based air quality observations— which measure the total amount of pollution integrated from the ground to the top of the atmosphere—are related to pollutant concentrations at nose-level. The ultimate goal is to combine measurements from the ground and satellites to better understand the spatial and temporal variation in air pollution across urban-rural gradients.

“Because Atlanta has high levels of both anthropogenic and biogenic emissions, it is a particularly useful environment for testing our understanding of atmospheric composition,” Kaiser said. “Satellite-based observations have improved dramatically in the past few years, and the planned launch of new high-resolution satellites in 2022 will give us a wealth of new information. Now we’ll have the matching field measurements in Atlanta to build an even more complete picture.”

NASA’s New Investigator Program in Earth Science is designed to support outstanding scientific research and career development of scientists and engineers at the early stage of their professional careers. The program welcomes innovative research initiatives and seeks to cultivate diverse scientific leadership in Earth system science. The Earth Science Division places particular emphasis on the investigators’ ability to promote and increase the use of space-based remote sensing through the proposed research.

Researchers Improve Transportation Accessibility and Efficiency

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n February 2021, The Atlanta Regional Commission received the first phase of a $9.3 million contract from the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop a “Complete Trip-ITS4US” project designed to improve transportation for older adults and people with disabilities.

Professor Randall Guensler and Senior Research Engineer Angshuman Guin are the principal investigators leading the research from Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Other project partners include the Atlanta-region Transit Link Authority, Georgia Department of Transportation, GO Systems and Solutions, Gwinnett County, IBI Group, Kimley-Horn, and Statewide Independent Living Council of Georgia.

The Complete Trip project leverages the latest in transportation technology, such as connected vehicles, ‘smart’ traffic lights, and trip navigation tools to provide an improved travel experience that increases independence and autonomy for older adults and people with disabilities.

The project will provide detailed information and step-by-step navigation tailored for users’ specific needs, along with a range of other features designed to improve trip efficiency and safety. The pilot project, which will be developed over the next two years, will focus on residents in Gwinnett County with plans to eventually roll out nationwide.

Program features include: • A connected mobility platform equipped with realtime network information that suggests route changes throughout the user’s trip and updates conditions with crowd-sourced tools • Integration with connected vehicle infrastructure to hold pedestrian signals longer and alert drivers to their presence • A mobile app, available in multiple languages, that helps travelers safely cross intersections, request transit connections, and identify safe boarding locations • Wayfinding and navigation that incorporates all walking paths, providing more reliable connections • A prioritization system that gives buses running behind schedule higher priority when a vulnerable road user is on the bus or waiting at a stop • Routes that account for sidewalk conditions so that route recommendations are tailored to each user’s specific needs.

The project takes advantage of Georgia Tech’s extensive previous research on Sidewalks and a comprehensive traffic network analysis platform developed by the Georgia Tech team referred to as the Space-Time-Memory (STM).

The STM integrates information such as real time traffic status as well as short and long term archival data on traffic, network link impedances, etc. with pedestrian, bicyclist and transit simulation tools. The STM will serve as the core information broker in the system developed in the Complete Trip project.

Intersection where ‘smart’ traffic lights have been installed on Georgia Tech’s campus. Photo by Justin Chan Photography

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Project Treats Wastewater to Grow Produce on Campus

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very day, an estimated 34 billion gallons of wastewater is processed in treatment facilities across the country, according to the EPA. Now, some of that wastewater will be treated right on campus next to the Center Street Apartments and eventually used to grow fresh produce.

In 2018, Yongsheng Chen, professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his research team received a $5 million grant from the USDA to create a pilot project for wastewater treatment.

The most recent progression of Chen’s pilot project is the implementation of two shipping containers on campus. One will act as a wastewater treatment facility, and the second will host a mini-farm that the team will use to grow lettuce with the newly treated water. For now, the lettuce will be discarded, but the team aims to eventually grow produce that is up to FDA standards for consumption.

Abigail Cohen, an environmental engineering Ph.D. student on Chen’s team, explained that the new treatment facility and mini-farm are bringing the team closer to their ultimate goal.

“We want to move away from conventional fertilizer inputs for agriculture and wastewater treatment, as well as reduce the amount of energy and environmental impact that goes into farming and create a more circular sanitation food process,” said Cohen.

Currently, conventional wastewater treatments use the method of aerobic digestion, meaning that large amounts of air are pumped into big water tanks to push out the solids and organic matter in the water. This aerobic method not only requires high amounts of energy, but it also creates large amounts of sludge that often end up in landfills.

In comparison, Chen’s team plans on using an anaerobic membrane biological treatment to break down the organic matter in wastewater.

The amount of biomass that is generated from an anaerobic digestion process is 90 percent less than aerobic, meaning it will result in a smaller footprint in waste generation.

— By Janat Batra

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Photos by Candler Hobbs

Research Lays Foundation for Partial Cloaking of Holes in Elastic Plates from Stress Waves

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n their latest research into the feasibility of cloaking, Professor Arash Yavari and Ashkan Golgoon, PhD CE 20, found that while it’s not possible to fully protect plates from stress waves, a partial protection—or cloaking— is possible.

“Our conclusion is that you cannot have exact cloaking, but you can have hope for partial cloaking,” Yavari said. “This is a mathematical foundation for the future design of approximate cloaks or shields.”

The paper, “Transformation Cloaking in Elastic Plates,” published in the Journal of Nonlinear Science in January, is the culmination of four years of research backed by the U.S. Army Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory.

Yavari and his former student Golgoon began this foundational research to find out if the idea of cloaking – giving structures a protection that would render them “untouchable” to stress waves like blasts or earthquakes—is even possible.

The Army Research Lab took an interest in the work because of its potential applications for defense. If the researchers found cloaking to be possible, it could be incredibly useful to protect personnel, vehicles, and sensitive facilities under threat of attack.

Yavari and Golgoon started their four-year,

federally-funded project in 2018 to lay the mathematical foundations for cloaking technology and explore if it’s theoretically possible while still respecting the laws of physics.

In a 2019 study published in the journal Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis, the authors concluded that it’s not possible to perfectly steer stress waves in the ground, like those emanating from a blast, around objects like buildings.

Despite casting doubt on dozens of theoretical papers on “elastodynamic cloaking”, Yavari and Golgoon concluded that engineers shouldn’t completely give up on it — just on the idea of an ideal cloak. Limited cloaking could still add a degree of protection to structures, particularly against some stress waves common in earthquakes.

In their most recent paper, Yavari and Golgoon shifted their focus to two-dimensional structures by analyzing the possibility of ideal cloaking in elastic plates.

Their conclusion was again a “no-go theorem”: Exact cloaking isn’t possible, but partial cloaking is and could still be very beneficial.

“It is still very positive because you know what you can expect and what you cannot expect,” Yavari said. “You can’t hide something from an arbitrary wave. But if you know what your service loads are, you could design an approximate cloak.”

An artist’s rendering of a possible elastodynamic cloak, or mechanical wave invisibility cloak. From Popular Science 2009

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Shuttering Fossil Fuel Power Plants May Cost Less Than Expected

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user eflon

Photo courtesy of Emily Grubert

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ecarbonizing U.S. electricity production will require both construction of renewable energy sources and retirement of power plants now operated by fossil fuels. A generator-level model described in the Dec. 4, 2020 issue of the journal Science suggests that most fossil fuel power plants could complete normal lifespans and still close by 2035 because so many facilities are nearing the end of their operational lives.

Meeting a 2035 deadline for decarbonizing U.S. electricity production, as proposed by the presidential administration, would eliminate just 15% of the capacity-years left in plants powered by fossil fuels, says the article by Emily Grubert, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Plant retirements are already underway, with 126 gigawatts of fossil generator capacity taken out of production between 2009 and 2018.

“Creating an electricity system that does not contribute to climate change is actually two processes — building carbonfree infrastructure like solar plants, and closing carbon-based infrastructure like coal plants,” Grubert said. “My work shows that because a lot of U.S. fossil fuel plants are already pretty old, the target of decarbonization by 2035 would not require us to shut most of these plants down earlier than their typical lifespans.”

Of U.S. fossil fuel-fired generation capacity, 73% (630 out of 840 gigawatts) will reach the end of its typical lifespan by 2035; that percentage would reach 96% by 2050, she says in the Policy Forum article published in Science. About 13% of U.S. fossil fuel-fired generation capacity (110 gigawatts) operating in 2018 had already exceeded its typical lifespan.

Because typical lifespans are averages, some generators operate for longer than expected. Allowing facilities to run until they retire is thus likely insufficient for a 2035 decarbonization deadline, the article notes. Closure deadlines that strand assets relative to reasonable lifespan expectations, however, could create financial liability for debts and other costs. The research found that a 2035 deadline for completely retiring fossil fuel-based electricity generators would only strand about 15% (1,700 gigawatt-years) of capacity life, along with about 20% (380,000 job-years) of direct power plant and fuel extraction jobs that existed in 2018.

“Closing large industrial facilities like power plants can be really disruptive for the people who work there and live in the surrounding communities,” Grubert said. “We don’t want to repeat the damage we saw with the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s, where people lost jobs, pensions, and stability without warning. We already know where the plants are, and who might be affected. Using the 2035 decarbonization deadline to guide explicit, community grounded planning for what to do next can help, even without a lot of financial support.”

— By John Toon

Tech Team Wins $1 Million Grant to Lead University Transportation Center

Photo courtesy of flickr user mtattrain

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team of Georgia Tech researchers has been awarded a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to address declining transit ridership.

The grant establishes a Georgia Tech-led team as one of four new Tier 1 University Transportation Centers (UTCs), which are funded to address critical transportation challenges facing the United States.

Just four teams were selected from nearly 70 applications to receive the UTC grants.

Georgia Tech is leading a research consortium as part of the University Transportation Center they’ve named T-SCORE: Transit Serving Communities Optimally, Responsively, and Efficiently.

The team is directed by Kari Watkins, the Frederick Law Olmsted Associate Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and includes fellow civil engineering professors Michael Hunter and Srinivas Peeta, along with industrial and systems engineering Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck. The Georgia Tech researchers are joined by partners from the University of Tennessee, the University of Kentucky and Brigham Young University.

Through a project sponsored by the Transportation Research Board, the team has already spent two years studying the underlying factors that have led to a recent decline in transit use.

In 2018, bus ridership in the United States was down 12 percent from its 2012 peak and rail ridership had declined 4 percent from its 2014 peak. This surprising drop came amid both transit service expansion and economic growth, leaving researchers to search for explanations.

The T-SCORE Center plans to continue this research as well as focus on solutions. The goal is to guide public transportation into a sustainable and resilient future while equipping local planners with the tools needed to enact their strategic visions into communities.

Those strategic visions could include a focus on serving riders who depend on transit the most, consolidating services to highridership corridors with high levels of congestion, integrating ondemand transit that looks more like services such as Uber, or using pricing and incentives to make it easier for transit to compete with other modes of transportation.

The researchers are planning a two-track research approach.

The Community Analysis Track will further assess ridership trends, identify and measure the markets most effectively served by transit, and assess transit’s ability to respond to a changing environment.

The Multi-Modal Optimization and Simulation Track builds upon previous research to allocate which services should be traditional transit routes with a set schedule and which services should be flexible on-demand. This will consider competition from ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, which are a key contributor to declining transit ridership.

Photo courtesy of Atlanta Brand Box

Photo courtesy of Emily Haney, Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Researchers Partner with GDOT to Develop Advanced Transportation Technology

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Photo courtesy of WABE Atlanta

n early 2021, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) received a $3.2 million Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment grant from the Federal Highway Administration.

Senior Research Engineer Angshuman Guin and Professor Michael Hunter from Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering are partnering with the agency on the project, entitled “Emergency Vehicle Preemption Using Connected Vehicle Technology.”

The project is one of 10 nationwide selected for the grants based on its use of advanced intelligent transportation systems technologies that will improve mobility and safety and support vehicle connectivity.

The grant will be used to deploy vehicle-toinfrastructure applications to provide coordinated, corridor-based signal timing preemption for emergency vehicles. A first in connected vehicle deployments, a roadside unit-to-roadside unit application will establish communications between intersections to implement a traffic queue flush plan. A flush plan identifies the downstream intersections that may need to be cleared of congestion and provides dedicated green phases to allow emergency vehicles to move efficiently and safely to their destination.

This proposed project will provide the required roadside infrastructure and in-vehicle devices to support this connected vehicle deployment. With these systems, field equipment will support vehicle to

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infrastructure data exchange with emergency vehicles including Highway Emergency Response Operator (HERO) and the Metro Atlanta Ambulance Service.

Signal preemption will reduce emergency vehicle travel times, saving precious seconds in responding to incidents and returning to hospitals, ultimately saving lives.

GDOT has partnered with Georgia Tech to develop methodologies for the processing and analysis of connected vehicle and other data in real-time to support advanced preemption control strategies.

The Georgia Tech team is at the forefront of research in Digital Twin development, a real-time data driven traffic simulation that provides a virtual representation of corridor operations to aid in decision making.

Georgia Tech will create a digital twin of the connected corridor enabling real-time performance monitoring and will develop, test, implement, and evaluate forward-looking performance metrics enabling optimal emergency vehicle preemption strategies.

Georgia Tech will assist GDOT with evaluating the deployed solution’s effectiveness to meet stakeholder requirements and operational objectives. Georgia Tech will be conducting both pre and post analysis of the proposed system to evaluate its effectiveness focusing on reduced incident response timelines and safety. The modeling application will utilize an innovative evaluation approach through real time connected vehicle data.

Photo by Candler Hobbs

Marine Animals Inspire New Approaches to Structural Topology A

mollusk and shrimp are two unlikely marine animals that are playing a very important role in engineering.

The bodies of both animals illustrate how natural features, like the structures of their bones and shells, can be borrowed to enhance the performance of engineered structures and materials, like bridges and airplanes. This phenomenon, known as biomimetics, is helping advance structural topology research, where the microscale features found in natural systems are being mimicked.

In a paper published by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), a new approach to structural topology optimization is outlined that unifies both design and manufacturing to create novel microstructures, with potential applications ranging from enhanced facial implants for cranial reconstruction to improved ways to get materials into space for planetary exploration.

“With traditional structural topology optimization, we use algorithms to determine the ideal layout of a structure – one that maximizes structural efficiency and requires fewer material resources,” said Emily Sanders, a Ph.D. student in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech, and

co-author of the paper. “Our new research takes that a step further by introducing structural hierarchy, microarchitectures, and spatially-varying mechanical properties to enable different types of functionality like those observed in the cuttlefish and mantis shrimp.”

The properties of both animals inspired the new framework for designing hierarchical, spatially-varying microstructures and required the researchers to build on existing technologies used to create 3D-printed structures.

“In our recent work, we’ve developed technology that includes new algorithms and computations that are the enablers of a hierarchical microstructure,” said Professor Glaucio Paulino, co-author of the paper. “We can then input that information into 3D printers and create structures with tremendous amounts of details.

After studying the porous, layered cuttlefish bone that has extremely adaptive properties, we’ve been able to apply that to new structures and materials like the ones shown in our paper.”

Paulino and his team hope this new research will be applied to his earlier work in cranial reconstruction on cancer patients to help those who have had massive facial injuries and bone loss.

— By Georgia Parmelee 28

Faculty Endowments

LEARN ABOUT OUR NEW POSITIONS

Emily Grubert

Frederick Law Olmsted Early-Career Professor

Grubert joined the faculty an assistant professor in January 2019. Her research expertise is in system-level analysis to support decision-making for more sustainable communities and resilient infrastructure. She earned a bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. from Stanford University and holds two master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a post-doc researcher and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley from 2017-2018.

Patricia Mokhtarian

Clifford and William Greene, Jr. Professor

Mokhtarian came to Georgia Tech as a professor of civil engineering in 2013. Her key research interests include the impact of telecommunications technology on travel behavior, the impacts of land use on travel behavior and commuting attitudes and behavior. Prior to Georgia Tech, she was a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Davis, where she also served as associate director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and as a founding chair of the interdisciplinary MS/Ph.D. program in transportation technology and policy.

Phanish Suryanarayana Clifford and William Greene, Jr. Early-Career Professor

Suryanarayana joined the faculty in 2011, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2017. Suryanarayana’s research focuses on multiscale modeling of materials, specifically the development of mathematical and computational tools that allow for the accurate and efficient characterization of materials at different length and temporal scales. He earned his B.S. in naval architecture and ocean engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2005. He went on to earn a master’s degree and Ph.D. in aeronautics from California Institute of Technology.

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Taylor Elected to National Academy of Construction

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rofessor John E. Taylor has been recognized as one of the nation’s most distinguished engineering and construction professionals after being elected to the National Academy of Construction.

Election to the academy is reserved for exceptional leaders representing all sectors of the built environment who have made a significant impact on the engineering and construction industry. Taylor is one of 36 new members selected for the 2020 class through a rigorous peer nomination and election process.

“I am truly humbled and honored to have been elected into the National Academy of Construction,” Taylor said. “I am also eager to contribute to the NAC’s mission of serving the nation. The opportunity to collaborate with this distinguished network of leaders and make an impact on issues of national importance is certainly a career-defining moment for me.”

Taylor was recognized by the Academy for his leadership in research at the intersection of infrastructure systems and human networks, which is focused on improving urban sustainability and resilience, and is guiding the evolution of smart cities.

Taylor is the Frederick Law Olmsted Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, where he serves as the associate chair for graduate programs and research innovation.

He is also the director of the Network Dynamics Lab at Georgia Tech, which examines dynamics associated with globalization, workforce, virtualization, energy conservation, pandemics and natural disasters. He recently introduced the concept of smart city digital twins at the intersection of these themes with the goal of engineering smarter, more sustainable and resilient cities.

His research has received over $8 million in funding and he has authored over 250 technical publications. Prior to entering academia, Taylor worked in the construction industry as a project manager, and was the founder of two constructionrelated technology startups.

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Paulino Elected to National Academy of Engineering

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rofessor Glaucio Paulino has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional distinctions awarded to an engineer.

Paulino, the Raymond Allen Jones Chair in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was selected for the honor “for contributions to topology optimization and its applications to medicine and engineering.”

“Getting elected to NAE was such a great blessing and amazing surprise,” Paulino said. “The idea of becoming an NAE member was always a dream, however, today the dream turned into reality. I am humbled by this recognition and honored to join such a group of distinct colleagues from academia and industry.”

Paulino, along with Mechanical Engineering Professor Andrés García and alumni Christopher Jones, PhD AE 86, and Roger Krone, AE 78, represent Georgia Tech among 103 new members and 23 international members.

“I’d like to extend my deepest congratulations to our College faculty members Andrés García and Glaucio Paulino on their induction into the National Academy of Engineering,” said Raheem Beyah,

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dean and Southern Company chair of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. “Their forward-thinking research in molecular engineering and topology optimization, respectively, is making an indelible mark on the future of engineering specific to medicine. This is a proud moment for the College, and I look forward to the advances they will make in their fields and the impact that will have on our nation.”

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

Paulino is world-renowned for his contributions to topology optimization and applied mechanics.

He created the first stable formulations of topology optimization using polygonal and mimetic-based virtual elements, including deep-learning enhanced multi-resolution and multiscale approaches connected to additive manufacturing processes that have been widely used.

He was one of the early investigators to apply topology optimization to the medical field by designing patient-specific large craniofacial segmental bone replacements to help cancer patients and those with massive facial injuries and bone loss.

Paulino’s methods for topology optimization have been employed by industry, academia and national labs.

For instance, his design-update methods have been incorporated into the PLATO software developed by SANDIA National Laboratories by adding capabilities to multi-material topology optimization, and stress constraints. These capabilities have been used by SANDIA to design mission-critical parts in classified and defense projects.

Paulino has also worked with SIEMENS to create a deep-learning enhanced topology optimization approach through an online training concept employing machine learning to extract the underlying mapping between design variables and their sensitivities, leading to a universal machine learning approach for topology optimization. Several joint patents and papers have resulted from this effort.

FACULTY ACCOLADES

Amukudzi-Kennedy Wins the Steven A. Denning Faculty Award Professor Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy was selected as the co-winner of the 2021 Steven A. Denning Faculty Award “for innovation and impact in engineering education, enabling hundreds of students to benefit from servicelearning, leadership, and experience in an international environment through the Global Engineering Leadership Minor.”

The Denning award is given to a faculty member who has demonstrated sustained outstanding achievement and commitment to the advance of the Institute’s global engagement.

Amekudzi-Kennedy is CEE’s associate chair for global engineering leadership and entrepreneurship. She led the development of the Global Engineering Leadership Minor, designed to cultivate technical problem solving, inter‐ and intra‐personal, systems, and cross‐cultural skills simultaneously while students develop global competencies to address some of society’s largest challenges.

Burns Receives the Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award Professor Susan Burns was selected for The Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award, honoring those who display teaching excellence, including extraordinary efforts in teaching, inspiration transmitted to students, direct impact and involvement with students, intellectual integrity and scholarship, and impact on post graduate success of students.

Burns is the associate chair for finance and administration and a professor of geosystems engineering. Burns teaches courses focused on the behavior of soils, materials and contaminant transport— topics that are critically important for civil and environmental engineering practice.

“I have seen Dr. Burns’s genuine dedication and passion for teaching, time after time, result in students getting excited about the subject matter,” said Karen and John Huff School Chair Don Webster.

Konstantinidis Recognized as Outstanding Faculty Research Author

Professor Kostas Konstantinidis was named Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Faculty Research Author. The award is given to the faculty member “who most contributed to highly impactful publications describing the results of research conducted at Georgia Tech” published between 2016-2020.

Konstantinidis holds the Richard C. Tucker Professorship in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as courtesy appointments in Georgia Tech’s schools of biological sciences and biomedical engineering.

The overarching goals of Konstantinidis’s research are to advance understanding of the genetic and metabolic diversity of the smallest organisms on the planet, the bacteria and the archaea. He studies the value of this biodiversity for adaptation to anthropogenic perturbations and causing or preventing disease in humans and animals as well as exploring this biodiversity for biotechnological applications.

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FACULTY ACCOLADES

Yiacoumi Recognized as Top Teacher

Environmental Engineering Professor Sotira Yiacoumi was selected for the Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: Class of 1934 Award.

The Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: Class of 1934 Award, previously known as the Class of 1940 Course Survey Teaching Effectiveness Award, was created to recognize excellence in teaching at Georgia Tech.

The criteria for selection for the award include a high student response rate on the Course-Instructor Opinion Survey (CIOS) and scores based on three items: instructor’s respect and concern for students, instructor’s level of enthusiasm about teaching the course, and instructor’s ability to stimulate interest in the subject matter.

Just 40 awards are given out each year across Georgia Tech to faculty members with exceptional response rates and survey scores.

Xie Selected as Emerging Investigator

Assistant Professor Xing Xie has received the Emerging Investigator Award from the Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization.

The award recognizes scientists and engineers that have demonstrated significant impact on research, teaching, service and leadership in the field of sustainable nanotechnology.

“This is the first recognition I have received from a worldwide professional society. It is a great honor to me,” Xie said. “I appreciate all the help and support I have received from this community. I have met many people in SNO conferences. Many of them became my friends, colleagues, and mentors, and also one became my Ph.D. student this year. I have gained a lot from SNO. Winning the Emerging Investigator Award will be a great encouragement for me to continue dedicating my career to the field of sustainable nanotechnology.”

Mokhtarian Honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

Professor Patricia Mokhtarian has been named the 2021 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research for her significant contributions to the field.

Mokhtarian is the first woman to receive this prestigious honor, which has only been awarded to nine others since its creation in 2003.

“I am overjoyed and overwhelmed — this is literally the honor of a lifetime,” Mokhtarian said. “I deeply cherish the Lifetime Achievement Award for what it represents, but it is icing on the cake of a career that has been, and continues to be, everything I could have wished for.”

The International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (IATBR) is a premier professional society that brings together scholars from various disciplines involved in the study of factors that influence the activity and travel choices of people and organizations.

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STUDENT ACCOLADES

Yang Selected for Sigma Xi’s Best Undergraduate Research Award

CEE student Laura Yang has been selected for the 2021 Sigma Xi Best Undergraduate Research Award, one of Georgia Tech’s highest honors for an undergraduate researcher.

Yang is one of only two undergraduates at the Institute to receive the award. She was recognized for her independent research conducted with Professor Kostas Konstantinidis and Nga Lee (Sally) Ng, an associate professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering with a courtesy appointment in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Since 1947, the Georgia Tech Chapter of Sigma Xi, an honor society of scientists and engineers, has honored Georgia Tech faculty and students for their research at an awards banquet each spring.

Zhou Receives American Chemical Society Graduate Student Award

The American Chemical Society has honored a School of Civil and Environmental Engineering doctoral student for his research productivity and academic performance.

Jianfeng Zhou is one of 20 students nationwide to receive the Environmental Chemistry Graduate Student Award from the Society.

“It’s very exciting to be recognized by the ACS, the community that publishes the highest-quality research,” said Zhou. “I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Xing Xie, my Ph.D. advisor. It’s him that supports me to apply to these awards.”

Zhou’s research focuses on water disinfection that utilizes electricity to purify the water. This system could be implemented along water distribution networks rather than solely at central facilities, like water treatment plants.

Psaltakis Selected as One of ASCE’s New Faces of Civil Engineering

The American Society of Civil Engineers has announced its 2021 class of the New Faces of Civil Engineering–College Edition, honoring 10 of the best and the brightest students from campuses around the world. Included in this list of future industry leaders is Georgia Tech civil engineering student Peter Psaltakis.

Psaltkis follows both his grandfather and father into the civil engineering profession.

Taking full advantage of the opportunities afforded him at Georgia Tech, Psaltakis has been very involved in a variety of activities, including steel bridge, intramural soccer, and the Chi Epsilon civil engineering honors society.

He also has been active in the ASCE student chapter, serving as president this year, with previous roles including student conference chair, secretary, and ASCE student ambassador.

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STUDENT ACCOLADES

Georgia Tech Team Wins Grand Challenge Award in ASCE Contest

A team from Georgia Tech has won the Grand Challenge Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Innovation Contest with a concept that could change the way engineers detect microplastics in water.

The award is the latest accomplishment for the recent Tech graduates, who began working on their innovative device called River Recon as a senior design project and are now in the process of filing a patent for their prototype.

The multidisciplinary River Recon team won a $5,000 prize and bested more than 50 other teams who competed for the honor. Developed as part of the ASCE Grand Challenge, the Innovation Contest this year invited finalists to showcase their innovations before an international audience through a virtual competition. The award was announced during the ASCE 2020 Virtual Convention on Oct. 30.

Tech Students Win 1st Place in Steel Bridge Competition

The Georgia Tech Chapter of the American Institute of Steel Construction won first place overall in the Steel Bridge Carolinas Regional Competition on April 16. The team went on to compete in the national competition in June.

During the competition, teams develop a scale-model steel bridge that spans approximately 20 feet and carries 2,500 pounds. The teams must determine how to fabricate their bridge and then plan for efficient assembly and construction during the timed contest.

“Thanks to the leadership from the team captains, the continued guidance from the advisors, and the dedication from all the team members, we were able to secure the regional victory and move forward to nationals,” said third year civil engineering student Zoe Zhang, one of the group’s team captains.

Tech Team Selected to Compete in National Concrete Canoe Competition

Georgia Tech’s Concrete Canoe Team won a wildcard spot to compete in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Concrete Canoe Competition, held virtually this year. Georgia Tech was one of 24 teams to qualify for the Society-wide finals.

This is the first time that a team from Georgia Tech has advanced to the final round of the competition, which challenges students to use their engineering prowess to design water-worthy canoes made out of concrete.

Traditionally, participating teams build and race their canoes during the competition. Due to Covid-19, this year’s competition was virtual, with scoring based on each team’s technical report and presentation.

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ALUMNI ACCOLADES

White Named 2021 Engineer of the Year in Industry by GSPE

Les White, CE 88, was recognized as the 2021 Engineer of the Year in Industry by the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers.

White is a paving and infrastructure solutions engineer for Cemex USA. He has spent two decades designing and leading projects for commercial and industrial clients for cement-based paving projects. Specializing in unconventional paving and cement projects, White has recently worked on pervious concrete paving projects and Roller Compacted Concrete placement projects in metro Atlanta. In addition to his consultation work, White educates clients, engineers, developers, and contractors on alternative paving technologies that can save money and lessen their projects’ environmental impact.

Gurd Named 2021 Engineer of the Year in Private Practice by GSPE

Katerine Gurd, CE 98, was named the 2021 Engineer of the Year in Private Practice by the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers. An expert in watershed and stormwater master planning and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting, Gurd has helped communities obtain $13 million in grants to improve stormwater quality and prevent flooding. She is a valuable resource to clients for water resources planning and management, erosion control, environmental site assessments, audits, and spill prevention. With more than 20 years of experience, Gurd also serves as an advocate for the profession.

She is an ASCE Georgia Section Past President and Past Region Governor and serves as the ASCE Practitioner Advisor to Georgia Tech.

Tzegaegbe Selected for Inaugural 40 Under 40

Jacob Tzegaegbe, CE 11, MS CE 13, was selected to be part of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association’s inaugural 40 Under 40 list. The honorees were selected from more than 250 individuals nominated by colleagues, peers, and Georgia Tech faculty.

A former senior transportation policy advisor for the city of Atlanta, Tzegaegbe was recognized for his work addressing Atlanta’s infrastructure needs and streamlining the city’s transportation divisions.

Tzegaegbe was tapped by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in 2018 to help coordinate the prioritization of infrastructure projects to be paid out of a city bond referendum and TSPLOST sales tax increase.

Tellepsen Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

Howard Tellepsen, CE 66, received the Houston Business Journal’s 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the chairman of Tellepsen, a fourth-generation family business that has provided commercial, institutional and industrial construction services in Houston since 1909.

Tellepsen has built many significant landmarks in the Houston area, including the historic Shamrock Hotel, the Texas Children’s Hospital and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The company is consistently ranked in the top three of Houston Business Journal’s annual list of Largest Houston-area General Contractors.

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Corporate Affiliates Program The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering would like to extend a special thank you to the members of our Corporate Affiliates Program.

The goal of the Corporate Affiliates Program is simple but powerful: to provide a link between our CEE students and industry partners through opportunities for mentorship, employment and education. The program has proven to be mutually beneficial: Companies get direct access and quality interactions with the nation’s brightest young civil and environmental engineers. Students, likewise, get facetime with recruiters and a window into the working world. Our CAP partners also provide the School with funding that allows us to keep our civil and environmental engineering programs among the nation’s best.

For more information about joining the Corporate Affiliates Program, please contact Emily Foster at emily.foster@ce.gatech.edu.

2020-2021 Partners

LEARN MORE: CE.GATECH.EDU/CAP 37

Kenneth Hyatt Distinguished Leadership Speaker Series OUR 2021-2022 SPEAKERS

Blake Peck, MS CE 78

Founder McDonough Bolyard Peck, Inc.

Fall 2021

Rudy Bonaparte

Chairman and Senior Principal Geosyntec Consultants, Inc. Professor of the Practice

Spring 2022

The Hyatt Distinguished Leadership Speaker Series brings distinguished leaders to campus each fall and spring to share wisdom and insight with the School’s students and the wider Georgia Tech community.

It is made possible by the generous support of Kenneth Hyatt, CE 62, MS IM 66.

CE.GATECH.EDU/HYATT

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Kenneth Hyatt Distinguished Sire Shares Learnings from Career Journey S

tacy Sire, CE 96, loves her job as director of structures engineering at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Over 23 years, she has risen through the ranks at Boeing Commercial Airplanes and achieved a lot as both an engineer and an executive. But she’s quick to credit her mentors, role models, peers and professors for helping her succeed along the way.

During the Fall 2020 Kenneth Hyatt Distinguished Leadership Speaker Series on Sept. 17, Sire shared advice and anecdotes from her career journey with a virtual Georgia Tech audience.

Sire said that cultivating a strong professional network begins with friends and teachers.

“I wouldn’t have my job at Boeing without one of my professors,” Sire said. “Just know that those relationships and that network that you’re building right now will be super important throughout your career.”

Sire said in high school, she didn’t know much about engineering at all until a friend’s father, who worked as a civil engineer, answered her questions and supported her interest in the profession.

“It was through conversations with him about his work that I realized engineering was something I was very passionate about,” Sire said. “I always thank him and give him credit for inspiring me to go into engineering.”

After earning her degree in civil engineering at Georgia Tech, Sire set her sights on a career in structures engineering and accepted a position at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Sire began her tenure at Boeing as a design engineer on 777 fuselage structure. She spent

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time as a stress analyst in interiors supporting all Boeing Commercial Airplane models.

As a senior manager, Sire led the 787 systems stress team through 787-8 certification/ delivery and then created and led the 787 Airplane Integration Office.

Sire said one of the pinnacles of her career was riding in the flight deck aboard the 787-8 flight test.

“At one point this airplane was just an idea,” Sire said. “It was just amazing that I was in this physical machine that had come from an idea and some crude engineering that evolved into something so amazing.”

Over the years, Sire has continued her education.

She earned a master’s in mechanical engineering and a master’s in business administration from the University of Washington. She also earned a certificate from UW for Aerospace Industry Manufacturing Seminar and one from Harvard Business School for completion of the Advanced Management Program.

Sire told the audience that she strongly encourages lifelong learning. It’s important, she said, to be exposed to new people and new ideas to continue to grow and succeed in your career.

“I encourage you to stay humble. When you’re humble, you’re more curious. You want to be confident but not arrogant. When people get arrogant, they get less curious and they don’t learn and grow,” Sire said.

Leadership Speaker Series DesRoches Shares the 10 C’s of Academic Leadership I

n more than 30 years in academia, Reginald DesRoches has learned a lot about leadership.

DesRoches is the provost of Rice University, but he’s no stranger to CEEatGT. He spent nearly two decades as a member of the faculty and served as the Karen and John Huff School Chair until 2017. As the Spring 2021 speaker for the Kenneth Hyatt Distinguished Leadership Speakers Series, DesRoches shared his life story and career journey into academic leadership with a virtual Georgia Tech audience on Feb. 23. Based on his experiences, DesRoches distilled his advice for leaders into 10 “C’s” of Academic Leadership: 1. Being Connected and Making Connections: Building relationships and trust are essential to being a leader.

2. Communication: While Covid-19 has limited our ability to interact, DesRoches believes it’s important to find ways to safely connect with each other in person.

3. Collaboration: Especially in academia, people are divided into groups—schools within colleges, affinity groups within schools, and so on. “As a leader it’s important to bring people together and foster collaborations across disparate disciplines,” DesRoches said.

4. Community Builder: Work hard to build a community of people who enjoy working together and being part of a team. In addition to talent, it is critical to look for people who can contribute to a positive environment.

5. Agent of Change: As a leader, you will be hired to make changes in an organization. “You also have to constantly question how you’re doing things

yourself,” DesRoches said.

“The worst thing you can do as an organization is remain stagnant.”

6. Courage: In 2010, he was asked to travel to Haiti as part of the U.S. earthquake response team. “There were health hazards, security hazards, we didn’t know where we would stay,” DesRoches said. “But I took a risk…it was one of the greatest things I’ve done in my career.”

7. Stick to your Core values: As a leader, you will have to make many difficult decisions. Act with purpose and meaning to ensure your decisions align with your values and your mission.

8. A Champion for others: Faculty members are focused on competing for grants, awards and recognition. But as a leader, it’s important to put your own interests aside to be a champion for the people on your team.

9. Consultative leadership: Engage a broad group of people in the decision-making process. You will learn from people who push back, and may discover there are consequences of your decisions you hadn’t considered.

10. Use Carrots more than sticks: You can accomplish your goals using “carrots,” —that is, positive reinforcement—a majority of the time. “It’s more effective, and people will appreciate it more,” he said.

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New Members Join External Advisory Board

Christy Darden, CE 92 Director Engineering, Fleet, and Sustainable Operations, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region

Darion Dunn, CE 00 Managing Partner Atlantica Properties

Brian Lu, CE 99 Vice President-Director of Development The Loudermilk Companies

F

ive alumni have started their service to the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering as members of the External Advisory Board.

The 2020 cohort was officially welcomed during the board’s annual meeting, held virtually this year from Oct. 15-16.

The External Advisory Board is a group of 30 alumni and industry leaders who counsel the School’s leadership on curriculum, alumni outreach, industry changes and more. Board members serve three-year terms, with most serving two terms consecutively.

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Karen Jenkins, M ARCH 92, MS CE 93 Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Shear Structural

Larry McDowell, CE 76 Senior Principal Uzun+Case, LLC

The new members for this year’s cohort represent a diverse sample of alumni from different generations, geographic locations, genders, races and career paths.

Karen and John Huff School Chair Don Webster said that School leadership celebrates the success these new board members have achieved in a variety of fields—from structural engineering to real estate investment and forest management.

“We want our students to see the vast array of opportunities they can pursue with a civil or environmental engineering degree,” Webster said.

External Advisory Board Jim V. Anderson Chief Executive Officer, SocialFlow CE 88, MS CE 89 Fred Carlson Project Development Manager Alliance Exchange FL CE 01, MBA 04

Karen Jenkins Co-Founder and Managing Partner Shear Structural M Arch 92, MS CE 93 John M. Kelley Partner and Senior Vice President of Commercial Development North American Properties CE 92

Alejandro Char Former Mayor, Barranquilla, Colombia MS CE 93 Brian Lu Vice President-Director of Christy Darden Development Director Engineering, Fleet, and The Loudermilk Companies Sustainable Operations, Forest CE 99 Service, Pacific Northwest Region CE 92 Larry McDowell Senior Principal Raul Delgado Uzun+Case, LLC Founder and CEO CE 76 CESEL Engineers MS CE 68 Orlando R. Méndez, P.E. Chief Executive Officer Darion Dunn Dorado Beach Resort Managing Partner CE 91, MS CE 92 Atlantica Properties CE 00 Edward Metzger III National Accounts Manager Murray Griffin, P.E. Ingersol-Rand Company Advisory Board Vice Chair CE 80 Chairman Atlantic Coast Consulting, Inc. Emmy Montanye, P.E. CE 79 Advisory Board Chair Senior Vice President Frank Evan Haren Jr., P.E. Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. President and CEO CE 82 Haren Construction Co. Inc. CE 77 Rebecca Nease Retired Branch Chief Michael F. Houlihan, P.E., F.ASCE U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Principal Engineer and Vice President CE 79 Geosyntec Consultants CE 85, MS CE 87 Christopher D. Pappas Special Adviser to the CEO Richard H. Hummel II, CFA Trinseo Founder, Commodore Investments CE 78 LLC Co-Founder, Federal Holdings, Inc. Donald W. Paul CE 89 Retired, Georgia Pacific CE 80 Cayman James, P.E. Project Manager Meg Pirkle, P.E. Jacobs Engineering Group Chief Engineer CE 99, MS EnvE 01 Georgia Department of Transportation MS CE 97

CEEatGT External Advisory Board Members provide an important outside perspective on our programs that is essential to maintaining their relevance to industry.They play a significant role in vetting programs designed for students, alumni and corporate constituencies to ensure we maintain the highest quality standards in our curriculum, practice and outreach.

Jacqueline Quinn NASA-KSC Liaison NASA Kennedy Space Center CE 89 Franklin Rucker, P.E. Chief of Capital Programs, Expansion and Innovation, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority CE 79 Ike. J. Scott III President and CEO Scott Bridge Company CE 74 Wassim Selman, Ph.D., P.E. President, Infrastructure - North America, Arcadis CE 81, MS CE 82, Ph.D. CE 86 Barbara Sloan Retired Principal, Cambridge Systematics, Inc. MS CE 77 Deborah Staudinger Partner, Hogan Lovells CE 78 Knox W. Tull Jr. President, Jackson and Tull MS CE 72 H. Arthur Williams President Williams Steel Erection Company, Inc. CE 83

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Support the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

I am delighted to join the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering as the new director of development.

After eight years as a member of the development team here at Georgia Tech, I continue to be astounded by the creativity and talent of both our faculty and students. The visions and dreams of these incredible people are becoming realities daily, and I can see a better future from their work.

The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s community of students, alumni, faculty, and staff are driven to conquer challenges, advance knowledge, and create change. Your belief and commitment to our success support those ambitions that are turning dreams into reality.

I am profoundly impacted by the generosity of our alumni, corporate and foundational representatives. Every dollar given helps our students reach their potential, yielding extraordinary opportunities to all those whose lives are touched in the process.

Please contact me if you would like to discuss ways to support the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. I look forward to the opportunity to work with you and share our stories of hard work, new paths, and innovation.

Sincerely, Anna Walker Director of Development 404-702-2069 anna.walker@ce.gatech.edu

Give to The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Your support provides vital resources that allow us to lead new initiatives, weather cyclical changes in government support, and make long-term investments in programs and technologies.

Your gift can be directed to CEE students, faculty, and facilities in a variety ways, depending on your interest. Please contact us to discuss what you would like to achieve by partnering with us.

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Thank You 2020-2021 Donors

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all who made gifts to the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering over the past academic year. Your support enables us to provide student scholarships, support faculty research and other initiatives that help keep the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering among the best in the nation.

Individuals Jim Anderson and Sharon Just Malory and Cory Atkinson Alice Bachman Jennie and Garry Balboni Robert and Suzanne Boas Mary and Phil Brown Christopher and Gillian Brazell Philip and Cindy Breedlove Joe Brejda Bonnie Barksdale Karen Brooks Retina and Bill Calhoun Jr. Joe Charbonnet and Elizabeth Jones John Dean Raul Delgado and Tere Ehni Tradd Dennis Pat and Cheryl Drennon Dean Drinkard Darion and Raquel Dunn Sharon and Dwight Evans Linda Farrell Christopher and Mary Alexa Finke Donna and Paul Flower Sandra and Edmund Glover Paul Greene Murray and Jan Griffin Jamie and James Hamilton DeLane and Evan Haren Jr. Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Jane and John Hill Jane and Michael Houlihan Karen and John Huff John Huffman Holly and Michael Jeffreys Karen and Daniel Jenkins Jana and Mike Kaney Marci and Mark Kawalek Eve Kuniansky Ray and Judy Lawing Olive Lookabaugh Gary Lubin Janice Lubin Charles Machemehl Jr. Bonnie and Gary Matthews Karen and Paul Mayne John McCarthy Larry McDowell Terri and Bob McKenzie Jr. Jenny and Mike Messner George Mitchell III

Margaret Mitchell Emmy and David Montanye Gene and Ruby Moody Becky Nease and Anthony Gody Jr. Charles and Dottie Nelson Chris and Susan Pappas Don Paul and Sharon “Rixey” Jones Blake and Mary Peck Robert Prager and Munsell McPhillips Maria and Carlos Santamarina Rhonda and Ike Scott III Wassim and Joelle Selman Stacie Sire and Daniel McGinty Mary Ann Stith Jo Ann and Jim Stokes Damian and Melinda Taylor Carolyn and Howard Tellepsen Mindy and Rick Toole Cheral and Ben Turnipseed Bob Unger Kathryn and Leo Vecellio Jr. Mariana and Emilio Venegas Elaine Wang Michael Webber Susan and Art Williams Billie and Frank E. Williams, Jr. Paula and Frank E. Williams, III Janice Wittschiebe Jingsong Wu John and Lyn Wylder Gregg Zeitlin

Clean Air Task Force ConeTec, Inc. CRSI Foundation Edwin J. Beccue Memorial Foundation Trust Ellinwood and Machado Exxon Mobil Corporation Foresite Group Fugro G. Ben Turnipseed Engineers Georgia Power Foundation Geosyntec Consultants Gilbane Building Company Golder Freeport McMoran Holder JE Dunn Construction Julian Saul Family Trust Kimley-Horn Klohn Crippen Berger Ltd. Knight Piesold McCarthy Holdings LLC MBP Norfolk Southern ORM Management LLC Pond Prime Engineering Inc. PG&E Corporation Resources For The Future Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scott Bridge Co. Inc. Shear Structural Organizations Southern Association of State Alfred Benesch & Company Highway & Transportation Officials Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Southern Company Charitable Dogs Foundation American Institute of Steel

Speedwell Foundation Construction Inc. SRK Consulting ARCADIS Stantec, Inc. Archer Western Contractors LLC Stifel ARCS Foundation, Inc. Swinerton Builders Barr Engineering Co. T. Wayne Owens & Associates, PC Bechtel Group, Inc. Tensar Corporation Benevity Community Impact Fund of The Enchiridion Foundation AEF Union Pacific Brasfield and Gorrie University of Stuttgart Carroll Daniel Construction Uzun + Case Engineers Chemtron Supply Corporation Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. Chevron Vancouver Foundation Cintra Winter Construction Clark Construction Group LLC Williams Enterprises of Georgia 44

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