Winter 2023-24 Swanson School Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Newsletter

CEE NEWS WINTER 2023/2024

C I V I L & E N V I R O N M E N TA L ENGINEERING

Annual Publication of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering

Predicting How Climate Change Affects Infrastructure Without Damaging the Subject

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igital twins are models that serve as a real-time computational counterpart can be used to help simulate the effects of multiple types of conditions, such as weather, traffic, and even climate change. Still, life-cycle assessments (LCAs) of climate change’s effects on infrastructure are a work-in-progress, leaving a need for a comprehensive view on how this can impact a building’s daily function.

A team from the Department of Civil and Engineering received $735,872 from the National Science Foundation to develop a digital twin of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI), a university-wide sustainability center connected to Pitt’s engineering school in Benedum Hall, to help forecast and mitigate future climate change consequences on infrastructure.

“Understanding this complex relationship between environmental demand and performance of vertical infrastructure will help us develop response strategies and unlock advanced climate adaptation with the ultimate goal of minimizing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions,” said Assistant Professor Alessandro Fascetti, who will be principal investigator.

By developing a digital twin, Fascetti, along with Melissa Bilec, co-principal investigator, William Kepler Whiteford Professor and director of MCSI; and John Brigham, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, can develop, implement and validate a framework for realtime monitoring of and predictions for the MCSI building.

The research team will leverage extensive backgrounds in dynamic LCAs, material flow analysis, reality capture, adaptive building envelopes, mechanic-based design optimization, artificial intelligence, and mechanistic machine learning to develop a new holistic frame for the assessment and prediction of the performance of vertical infrastructure throughout their life cycle.

The MCSI building, a LEED gold-certified facility constructed in 2007, is equipped with an advanced energy consumption and indoor air quality sensing system developed in part through Bilec’s research in life-cycle assessment. In addition to building automation systems and metering common to other Pitt structures, detailed electrical consumption is sensed with multiple panel-based electrical meters and Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditions system flowmeters, while Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ) data is collected using the AirCuity OptiNet System, an indoor air quality sensing system that features a central sensor suite and unique structured cables housing air sampling tubes and control wires.

“Because of the diverse streams of data we can obtain in real-time from the MCSI, we’ll be able to focus on developing a novel digital twin framework for the quantification of GHG emissions associated with the operation of vertical infrastructure to minimize its environmental footprint by designing and deploying environmentally responsive building envelopes,” Fascetti said.

A Real-Time Look into Understanding and Slowing Climate Change Though we live in an increasingly industrialized, urban world, construction of both horizontal and vertical infrastructure is one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).

engineering.pitt.edu/civil

The project, “CLIMA: A Digital Twin Modeling Framework for Climate Adaptive Vertical Infrastructure,” is set to begin in January 2024.

Letter from the Chair Dear Colleagues and Friends, With a new year upon us, I’m happy to share with you a recap of 2023 and our continued growth in research and academic excellence.

One of the initiatives we are proud of is the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) consortium, led by Dr. Julie Vandenbossche and Joe Szczur, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary as an innovative public-private partnership. Thanks to collaborations with our local, county, and commonwealth transportation agencies as well as established engineering firms, our faculty are leveraging their research into new technologies for proposed and shovel ready infrastructure projects.

Also contributing to this expertise are our younger faculty, some of whom are leveraging artificial intelligence to explore potential materials, sensing tools, and design. For example, Dr. Amir Alavi won an NSF CAREER award to develop metamaterials that can be designed to learn from their environment. His research was recently featured in The New York Times. Dr. Alessandro Fascetti is developing an artificial twin of our Benedum Hall annex to forecast how the building and its environment will change over time and what processes and designs can be used to improve its efficiency and sustainability.

In a region with four major rivers, an ancient aquifer, and countless streams and tributaries, water continues to be a major research priority. Dr. Sarah Haig is investigating the microbiome in an everyday showerhead and its impact on human health. And thanks to a significant award from the EPA, she is collaborating with RAND Corporation and community organizations to study the impact of climate change on Black Americans in some of Pittsburgh’s lower-income neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, Dr. Carla Ng (another faculty member featured in the NYT) is extending her PFAS research bona fides nationally with the impact of forever chemicals on groundwater and public water systems. A chance combination of a summer thunderstorm, an exposed high-voltage line, and building fire resulted in the release of these contaminants in a local water system, so an expedited NIH award enabled her and her students to study the community impact in real time.

Indeed, our students benefit greatly from these initiatives tied to our academic programs, and you will read about some of them inside.

On behalf of the department, thanks for your continued support and interest, and please accept my wishes for a prosperous new year. Bookmark us at engineering.pitt.edu/civil for the latest news, and Hail to Pitt!

Sincerely,

Radisav Vidic, PhD, P.E. William Keppler Whiteford Professor and Department Chair

PhDs Conferred Fall 2022 Yunxing Lu – Novel Self-Sealing Materials and Poromechanical Analysis for Permanently Plugging Wells for Abandonment (P&A) in High Temperature Environments Advisor − Bunger Daniel Luna – Data and Model Integration, Evaluation, Application, and Provenance with CyberWater and Its Toolkits Advisor − Liang

Spring 2023 Megha Bedi – Quantifying Human Exposure to Chemical Pollutants from Domestic and Imported Food Consumption Through Coupled Analysis and Modeling Advisor – Ng Katelyn Kosar – Mechanistic-Based Procedure for the Early Opening of Concrete Pavements Advisor – Khazanovich Haoran Li – Machine Learning Applications for Mechanistic-Empirical Concrete Pavement Design and Analysis Advisor − Khazanovich

Summer 2023 Zhaokai Dong – Development of Integrative Models to Quantify the Benefits of Green Infrastructure (GI) to Urban Stormwater Management Advisor − Ng Chase Rogers – Structures of Building Design Standards: Leveraging Network Analysis to Understand Perceived Complexity Advisor − Harries

Fall 2023 Maggie Benge – From Well Log to Formation Model: A Novel Laboratory Calibrated Methodology with Demonstration Advisor − Bunger 2 | Winter 2023/2024

Concrete Complications from Climate Change

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ennsylvania drivers know the effects that weather can have on paved roads – potholes, cracks, and other pavement woes are a common occurrence. Climate change is accelerating the process, with devastating consequences for infrastructure.

Concrete is thought to be better able to withstand intense heat than asphalt, which softens in the heat. However, new research led by Lev Khazanovich, Anthony Gill Chair Professor of civil and environmental engineering, finds that’s not quite true. The paper, published in Results in Engineering, found that while concrete pavements are unaffected by an average increase in air temperature, they are extremely sensitive to sharp variations in air temperature during the day.

In other words, as days get hotter and nights get colder, concrete pavements will be badly affected.

“Concrete roads constitute less than 5 percent of all roads in the United States, but carry about 26 percent of all vehicle-miles traveled and punch well above their weight when it comes to moving the economy forward,” explained Khazanovich. “Concrete does not change its properties regardless of how hot it gets. There was an untested belief that this meant concrete pavements are resilient to extreme temperatures, but now we know that’s not the whole picture.”

The study looked at the effects of extreme heat events in both mild and hot climates and found that concrete pavements in mild climates would be affected even more. Furthermore, they found that thicker pavements are more sensitive to extreme temperatures than thinner ones – meaning that major highways and freeways are at the greatest risk.

Khazanovich worked with postdoc Sushobhan Sen and graduate student Haoran Li on this research. They explained their findings based on the mechanics of how concrete pavements develop thermal stresses, which differs significantly from asphalt pavements.

“As the climate continues to warm and temperature shifts become more extreme, we will need to develop innovative technologies to address the accelerating degradation of our roadways. For example, innovative concrete pavement cooling technologies, like cool and reflective pavements, could make them more resilient to extreme heat,” said Khazanovich. “It’s vital to our nation’s economy that our infrastructure evolves to handle the realities of a warming planet.”

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Using AI to Construct New Materials

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volution has led to some creative, counterintuitive, and downright weird properties in the natural world. Assistant Professor Amir Alavi found evolution-inspired algorithms produced synthetic materials with equally surprising traits.

for less than a week, the team may have found nearly 100,000 structures with new modalities. “We’ve accelerated the process of evolution. We can find new materials in a couple of days – materials that could have taken 10 million years to form and evolve in nature,” he said.

In a paper published in Advanced Intelligent Systems, Alavi outlined a platform for the evolution of metamaterials, synthetic materials purposefully engineered to have specific properties. The platform used generative artificial intelligence (AI), like the technology underpinning ChatGPT, to create these new materials using a process resembling evolution by natural selection.

Alavi’s long-term vision is to harness the power of generative AI tools for reshaping America’s civil infrastructure. In his opinion, metamaterials are a perfect fit for large-scale infrastructure projects because small improvements in weight or strength add up quickly over industrial-sized structures.

As the process repeated, the algorithm continued to create new materials from basic structures like those commonly found in materials science labs to intricate shapes reminiscent of ancient scripts found etched on a clay tablet. “Some of these structures are just so complex and inconceivable by the human mind,” Alavi said. “Yet, they provide excellent mechanical performance, better than all the other solutions we’ve come up with before.”

Beyond generating materials with the properties he wanted, the platform also evolved materials with properties that were unique, and potentially useful, in unexpected ways. After running the program 4 | Winter 2023/2024

In two first-of-their-kind projects, his team is building megastructures from metamaterials.

Thanks to a $294K award from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Alavi is developing sound-absorbing metamaterial to create a new kind of sound barrier – an open one. “You will be able to see through it,” Alavi said, “but we hypothesize noise will be reduced by 90%.”

Additionally, a $250,000 grant from the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) consortium at Pitt, Alavi has produced the first prototype of an ultralight, ultrastrong concrete with potential uses in pavement and bridges for the continued on next page > > >

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Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

He predicts it will cost around 20 percent less than traditional concrete.

But the platform isn’t limited to creating stronger concrete or better building materials. It could model a molecule or a neuron or even model the evolution of an entire living organism.

Unlike ChatGPT and other generative algorithms that are trained on massive amounts of data to make something new, Alavi’s platform doesn’t need thousands of examples; indeed, it doesn’t need any examples. With just a couple of “pieces of matter” – representations of one basic unit of a material – it can create thousands of hitherto unknown morphologies, or structures, with the properties he specified.

Each piece of matter acts as a parent with its own physical properties, like a particular shape or a certain hardness, which are represented in Alavi’s algorithm as genes.

Then, to create a new offspring, “the two merge and exchange genes,” Alavi said.

And like evolution in the wild, Alavi’s algorithm requires randomness to mix things up. In the same way mutated genes can lead to new traits, the evolving metamaterial algorithm randomly changes a property of a parent cell by, for instance, straightening a curve or changing the tensile strength, before incorporating it into the offspring.

But in the lab, it isn’t the environment that determines whether offspring persists, but parameters Alavi sets in advance. Say he wants a material that can resist being crushed by a heavy load: “If the child of the two parents meets the criteria that we have defined for the maximum strength, it will be kept in the population,” he said.

If it doesn’t meet that threshold? “It’s thrown out. Like survival of the fittest.

It’s a brutal process.”

Alavi Receives $535K NSF CAREER Award to Create “Metamaterials” that “Think” for Themselves As technology evolves, so must the materials that comprise it.

There is an unceasing quest to create new forms of intelligent, active matter that can create its own energy, sense, compute, and communicate, much like the human brain does. This emerging field will create very specialized materials that actually think for themselves without the need for delicate processors or batteries – materials that will be useful for everything from medical implants to space computing.

Amir Alavi has been working to engineer this new class of intelligent materials that can create the foundation for mechanical computing systems. The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Alavi the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, which supports earlycareer faculty who are potential academic role models in research and education and advance the mission of their department.

The five-year, $535,120 award will fund his project, “Mechanical Metamaterial Electronics: Theory, Design and Applications.”

“The self-powered mechanical metamaterials we’ve developed in previous projects gave us the flexibility to finely tune all aspects of the material. Now, we’re imbuing those materials with a level of intelligence, and they will be able to power themselves without a battery, sense the environment, perform calculations, and communicate those findings,” said Alavi. “This is a new class of materials that provides a roadmap for a new phase of technological advancement in various engineering and medical fields.”

This project builds on Alavi’s years of mechanical metamaterial and energy harvesting research.

Previous research has introduced self-powered, self-sensing concrete; smart implants that can monitor healing; and more. This work will take that a step further, introducing the field of mechanical metamaterial electronics – meta-mechanotronics – that will serve as a platform for creating intelligent matter that can also process and communicate information in a closed-loop system in addition to sensing and self-powering functionalities.

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Come Health or High Water

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istorically oppressed communities are faced with compounded health, economic and social injustices – with climate change making them worse.

Pitt engineers joined an interdisciplinary team and received $1.35 million from the United States Environmental Protection Agency to study the impact of climate change on behavioral and respiratory effects of fungal and bacterial pathogens on Black Americans living in the Homewood and Hill District neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. Sarah Haig, assistant professor and co-investigator on the project, and her lab will collect dust samples from 110 Pittsburgh households to determine what’s possibly lurking in their basements.

“Interactions between changing precipitation patterns and indoor air quality in urban-built environments are still poorly understood and have little research behind them,” said Haig.

“By studying the presence and abundance of pathogenic respiratory fungi and bacteria found in basement dust we can begin to understand how climate change impacts home dampness and in turn the air we breathe whilst indoors.”

Rainfall, especially in the northeast United States, is increasing in frequency and intensity. These shifts in precipitation patterns are linked to 6 | Winter 2023/2024

flash flooding and wetter basements. A wet basement creates weakened infrastructure, putting households at risk of exposure to environmental contaminants through leaks, breaks and sewer backups.

“Our hope, together as a team, is to document conditions that simply have not been systematically documented, and to understand the impact of changing weather events (specifically extreme rainfall) on households in the Hill District and Homewood – two neighborhoods that have been historically oppressed,” said Tamara Dubowitiz, principal investigator of the project and senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. “This is where the environmental justice component comes into play – we recognize the importance of gathering data in order to advocate for change and improvement of conditions in the neighborhoods that all too often are forgotten.”

These environmental contaminants put residents at risk for asthma, rhinitis, and respiratory conditions, often leading to stress and depression.

Alyssa Lyon, director of the Black Environment Collective at the UrbanKind Institute and coinvestigator, said the environment directly impacts health – especially in marginalized communities.

“Some of the people I’ve worked with in these areas have recounted their relationship with the environment,” Lyon said. “From having to quit their job because their child has severe asthma and as a result their child is not able to attend school. Due to lack of education, despair, and even confusion – all those collateral consequences – that child could eventually even turn to addiction.

I think there’s a direct link between mental health and a healthy space.”

Lyon explained that because of the vulnerability of the communities in large-scale research projects, it’s important to include Black-led environmentalist groups to ensure accountability and transparency from the researchers for the residents.

“It’s important for these institutions to know that we have our eye on you,” she said. “We’re going to make sure this money is going to be used for what you said it was going to be used for: to help these residents.”

Haig and other researchers on the project are also concerned about radon: an invisible, radioactive and odorless gas that can be present in soil and groundwater. Radon enters a home through its foundation – especially a weakened one. Exposure to radon can cause difficulty breathing and swallowing, a bad cough, a hoarse speaking voice and tightness in the chest. continued on next page > > >

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Because of the number of homes, Haig and her team will need a little over two years to complete their research. The results will be used to study the link between basement pathogens, basement moisture, daily rainfall extremes, housing and neighborhood conditions, and cumulative health impacts for residents across the adult lifespan.

The team is planning on working with local government agencies to develop and disseminate community-based solutions to solve the cumulative health impacts that are caused by these compounding issues.

Walter Lewis, president and CEO of the Homewood Children’s Village and another principal investigator, said it’s critical that the project prioritizes community-based solutions that build on the research. He added that the project’s focus on community and using research to drive actual change was what led him to become a part of the project team.

“All researchers are in agreement that this is not just another study that just gets published and sits on a shelf,” Lewis said. “It needs to be a study that turns into action, and there are people in the community also talking about it – using that power to ensure change happens.”

The project, “Health and High Water: Health Impacts of Increased Rainfall of Families Living in Racially Isolated Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh PA,” also includes: • The University of Pittsburgh: Daniel Bain and Emily Elliott • RAND Corporation: Linnea Warren May and Pierrce Holmes • Homewood’s Children’s Village: Raymond Robinson, Rebecca McDonough • Black Environmental Collective/UrbanKind Institute: Jamil Bey

Behind the Shower Curtain

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opping in the shower, we anticipate the warm water to be cleansing and renewing after a long, hard day – but there may be something dangerous lurking in the showerhead.

Showers can expose us to many types of bacteria cells. Most are harmless, but some – drinking water-associated pathogens of the immunocompromised (DWPIs) – can pose a serious risk to our health, especially for individuals with weakened immune systems.

Assistant Professor Sarah Haig received $420,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to lead a three-year study to test different showerhead features to compare concentrations of DWPIs present in shower water and the aerosols it produces.

“There are many types of showerheads on the market, leaving consumers to make choices on the type of spray pattern, material, flow rate, and additives like bacteria-killing chemicals they want,” Haig explained. “But, it’s unknown how these decisions impact the risk of DWPIs exposure.”

DWPIs are a high cost not just to our health, but to the United States economy, costing $2.93 billion annually.

They’re also incredibly hard to kill. Despite the wide range of physical and chemical processes used to treat drinking water, DWPIs can survive and continue to grow and thrive in plumbing systems.

Although there are many DWPIs of concern, Legionella pneumophila, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) cause the most respiratory infections. However, as NTM causes 57 percent of all US waterborne disease deaths, it will be the primary focus for Haig and her team.

Exposure to DWPIs can come from a variety of sources, but inhalation of water-associated aerosols are most commonly related to infection. However, DWPI aerosolization and their relationship to showerhead features are poorly understood.

To bridge this knowledge gap, Haig and her team will test showerheads with different features and compare the concentration of DWPIs present in shower water and shower water-produced aerosols.

Haig leads Pitt’s Investigating Home Water and Aerosols’ Links to Opportunistic Pathogen Exposure (INHALE) Lab. The 250-square foot lab, which has 3 full-size shower cubicles each supplied by its own water heaters, will be utilized in this project.

Winter 2023/2024 | 7

Fighting for Clean Drinking Water

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t was a normal July day in McKeeport’s Lower 10th Ward, a neighborhood across the Youghiogheny River from the city center. During an afternoon of heavy summer storms on Friday, July 16, 2021, residents heard what sounded like an explosion and then lost electricity in their homes. They didn’t know it was the beginning of a years-long battle against contaminated water.

The McKeesport Fire Department arrived at McKeesport Auto Body at 5:24 p.m., reported the Tube City Almanac. A downed tree pulled electric wires onto the shop, located at the 600 block of Rebecca Street, perpendicular from the 10th Ward. Initially just a routine “wires-down” call, a fire broke out shortly after firefighters arrived. One of the downed wires carrying 4,000 volts had electrically charged the building and created a potentially fatal situation for those at the scene attempting to open a window or spray a hose. Once the power was shut off, firefighters focused on stopping the quickly escalating fire from spreading to surrounding buildings and homes. Crews from Armstong and Westmoreland counties, as well as Pittsburgh International Airport, struggled to control the blaze for several hours.

The following Saturday, July 17 the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC) issued a water advisory for residents and businesses within the Lower 10th Ward and shut off the area’s water supply system. Residents were left completely without water for almost 37 hours in their homes.

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Photo courtesy of First Due Photography

As a result of certain chemicals used to combat the fire the day before, the area’s water supply was contaminated with PFAS – perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS can cause a number of health concerns, including various types of cancer, decreased birth weights, thyroid problems, and immune system issues. PFAS doesn’t break down in the environment and can build up in the body over long periods of time - hence their nickname, “forever chemicals.”

When the water was turned back on, it still couldn’t be used for cooking, drinking, or bathing. Residents showered at their family’s homes or at the local high school. The MAWC provided water buffalos and bottled water as they flushed the water supply system. Women for a Healthy Environment distributed ZeroWater filters, which are effective in removing two types of PFAS chemicals called PFOA and PFOS. This struggle continued for residents and businesses for about a month.

Pitt Joins the Fight Against Forever Chemicals Carla Ng, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, was contacted by Women for a Healthy Environment a couple of months after the fire to begin testing the drinking water in the Lower 10th Ward.

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Ng has devoted much of her career to studying common sources of PFAS contamination – like food packaging – and collaborating to create roadmaps that reduce non-essential uses of PFAS, stop human and environmental exposure from getting worse, and more equitably distribute the associated costs.

Her team began testing in fall 2021. The results found two homes had very high levels of PFOS contamination, known to be bioaccumulative and toxic.

Because of the severity of those results, Pitt researchers quickly received a $234,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, from the “Mechanism for the Time Sensitive Research Opportunities in Environmental Health Sciences” program, to field a larger study, called the “Studying AFFF Fate and Exposure to Pursue Outcomes that Restore trust: SAFE PORT,” over the next two years.

“Given that the levels of PFOS were still so high six months after the fire, we were concerned there was some contamination that was sticking around,” Ng said. “This is why we wanted to follow up and do more testing to see if this was just a one-off instance or if more homes were affected.”

The Community Meeting On a chilly February night in 2023, around 20 community members gathered in the basement of the West Side United Methodist Church in the Lower 10th Ward to hear Ng’s most recent findings – more than two-and-a-half years after the initial fire.

Most of them had the same question: Is it safe to drink our water?

The meeting was scheduled shortly after Pennsylvania set new standards on PFAS chemicals. There is no national standard for PFAS maximum contaminant level (MCL), so these are left to the states. Residents were curious to hear how they fared in Ng’s recent study.

Sixteen homes – 13 inside and 3 outside the affected area – were sampled in fall 2022 for Ng’s most recent study. Ng and her team examined tap water from three locations in each house: the kitchen, the bathroom, and laundry taps. MAWC has also engaged in its own testing and representatives were present at February’s meeting.

Initially, Ng’s team’s findings showed PFOS to be below Pennsylvania’s MCL, while PFOA – another PFAS compound – levels were at or above the state’s standard. The MAWC found contaminants to be well below the state’s threshold.

Carla Ng

Ng and MAWC employed two different methods for testing for PFAS. The Authority used the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-approved method for testing drinking water which utilizes a certified lab for testing.

The method used by Ng, called 1633, is still in development by the EPA, but was chosen by Ng’s team because of its ability to detect a wide range of PFAS compounds.

“With 1633, we’re able to get a broader understanding of contamination levels in the Lower 10th Ward,” Ng explained.

The biggest difference between the two methods is the volume of water being used – with Ng’s team using double the amount than the MAWC. What now for the Lower 10th Ward?

Ng was determined to find out why the results were different to provide answers for the Lower 10th Ward.

“It’s something I’m really interested in because the two methods presumably should give the same value, and if they don’t, that raises questions about the method Pitt is using or what the MAWC is using,” Ng said.

Ng’s team found the answer: a volume error in a piece of code. After a correction, the new results fell well-in-line with the MAWC’s.

“This is good news for the Lower 10th Ward,” Ng said. “Both of our results show that contamination levels are well within the MCL for the state of Pennsylvania.”

Based on both findings by Pitt and the Authority, the MAWC’s method of flushing water through area hydrants has been successful in lowering levels of PFAS contamination. According to the MAWC, for one home, total levels of PFAS decreased from 64 parts per thousand (ppt) after the fire in 2021 to undetectable the following August.

Ng and her team plan on continuing research in the area, hoping to include more homes for water testing, and with their attention now also turning to the area’s soil.

“The soil is where the PFAS went when the hydrants were flushed, so the next thing we want to see is if some of that PFAS was transferred into the ground,” Ng explained.

In light of the recent announcement from the EPA and their proposed MCLs for PFOA and PFOS, Ng and her group will also revisit the data from previous testing to see how it compares with the EPA’s suggested threshold for the chemicals.

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P Putting the

ercy Curtis, a senior studying environmental engineering at Pitt, wanted other students to feel like they belonged at the Swanson School – because he once felt he didn’t.

IDEA to Action

That’s why he joined Pitt’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Committee, a group of students, faculty, and staff committed to fostering a culture that enables all to grow to their full potential.

“We’re working together to understand what diversity and inclusion looks like in civil and environmental engineering,” Moore said. “And it’s not just my voice. It’s all of our voices.”

“I have a complicated relationship with being called a trailblazer,” Curtis said. “The term is romanticized, but I knew how much of an impact one person could make on my life, so I wanted to do something like that for someone else.”

The IDEA Committee was officially formed in 2021 under the direction of Radisav Vidic, the Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor and department chair of civil and environmental engineering. Melissa Bilec, the department’s George M. and Eva M. Bevier Professor and co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation at Pitt, is IDEA’s inaugural co-chair, but she credits its members as the true pioneers of the committee’s growth.

“As civil and environmental engineers, we’re in service to our community,” Bilec said. “Co-creating the IDEA Committee was a way for us to bring together voices to discuss and hopefully positively impact the CEE community.”

The full committee meets once a month while the three subcommittees have additional meetings as needed to address problems unique not only to the Swanson School, but the community of engineering education at large. The Learning Subcommittee is dedicated to expanding knowledge and resources rooted in diversity, equity and inclusion, both in general and relation to being a civil and environmental engineering student. The Champion Subcommittee manages the Undergraduate Champions – students who determine solutions through the IDEA Committee for student-related issues – and is working toward developing graduate student champions.

The Social Committee organizes events for the CEE community to come and decompress.

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Though still a very grassroots project, the committee has been really finding its stride this past year. Yvette Moore, director of Pitt EXCEL at the Swanson School, has been in the front row seat of its growth as someone that’s been part of it since the beginning.

The IDEA Committee works in tandem with a grant Bilec received in 2020 from the National Science Foundation to create inclusive classrooms, which are designed to improve the learning and academic performance for underrepresented students. As part of the grant, Jessica Vaden, a PhD candidate in the department, built a website, called The IUSE-PIPE Project, to help professors in implementing these processes. The project hosts a number of resources that are supported by peer-reviewed research that guide professors before, during, and after the semester. Something as important as the syllabus can be overlooked when considering inclusivity, Vaden said.

“In doing this research, we realized that a lot of these resources needed a home,” Vaden said.

“Going forward, we also believe that these are not the final answer to creating inclusive classrooms, so part of the IDEA Committee is ensuring that we still use this website as a guide, but keep it relevant as professors across the country use it.”

Engineering Through a Holistic Lens

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a waterboy and equipment manager for my high school football team – and for the Pittsburgh Steelers, so the title sticks with me in more ways than one.”

In his case, the statement is quite literal. Spencer-Williams, a fourth-year PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering , studies the microbial communities living in Pittsburgh’s drinking water as a member of Assistant Professor Sarah Haig’s Research Group at the Swanson School of Engineering.

In high school, he joined Pitt’s INVESTING NOW program, a STEM prep program that exposed him to different engineering majors and, most importantly, to the students in Pitt EXCEL, the Swanson School’s undergraduate diversity program.

But it’s also an important value for Spencer-Williams in a metaphorical sense, especially as he considers his evolving career in engineering.

“That’s what really sealed the deal for me. It was seeing other Black and Brown students doing what I wanted to do,” Spencer-Williams recalled. “I remember walking into now-Director Ms. Yvette Moore’s office in 9th grade, introducing myself, and saying, ‘Ms. Moore, I want to be an engineer.’ She laughed at me. She said, ‘I work with college students, how are you sure you want to be an engineer already? You’re in ninth grade.’ And I was like, ‘I’m sure, 100 percent.’ That started a life-long mentorship that continues on to this day.”

verything an engineer does, according to Isaiah Spencer-Williams, is for public consumption.

“We as engineers are one of the ultimate public servants, so we need to always be thinking, ‘How does this impact the people I’m designing for?’” he said. “Holistically, how does this impact physical health, mental health, the community?”

Thinking about engineering – and people – holistically has driven SpencerWilliams to not only engage in research that meaningfully impacts the world but also lift up others on the way.

Spencer-Williams has loved water since he was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh. At least, he loved it from a distance, or under a microscope.

“It’s funny. I like to say I’ve been a ‘water boy’ since I was little, but I always qualified that by saying I can’t swim – at all,” said Spencer-Williams. “Ever since grade school, I was in the science fairs and everything, and most of my projects had something to do with water in one way or another. I actually was

In addition to working with Spencer-Williams through Investing NOW and connecting him with Pitt EXCEL, Moore worked with him on college applications. When it came time to choose a school, it wasn’t a hard decision.

“I told her I was definitely going to Pitt. I’d been here for four years already, I was in it to win it,” he joked. “Now I always say there would be no soon-tobe Dr. Isaiah Spencer-Williams without Ms. Yvette Moore and all the people at Pitt EXCEL and INVESTING NOW.” Winter 2023/2024 | 11

Engineering Solutions for Mexico’s Water Crisis

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hD candidate María José Jiménez, who was born and raised in coastal Mexico, wanted to find solutions to her home country’s water and sanitation crisis. Home to 129 million people, Mexico struggles to provide clean water to more than half of its population – particularly in rural areas.

She noticed at a young age that there was a stark difference in accessibility to clean water. Vizcarra’s family, who were middle class, were able to afford bottled water; however, some of her friends weren’t as fortunate and had to rely on a public well system.

“The problem is that these contaminants are still entering groundwater,” Jiménez explained. “A large population of Mexicans are facing health issues because of this water and most of them can’t access safely managed sanitation practices in their homes. The problem is cyclical.”

Developing a safer water system for her home country would eventually lead her to the Swanson School of Engineering.

Jiménez is the first in her family to receive an accredited undergraduate degree, but she realized early in her career that to better understand and improve Mexico’s environmental engineering practices, she needed to come to the United States first. She pleaded her case with the Mexican government, which in return awarded her a prestigious three-year scholarship to continue her doctorate studies in the United States.

Her mother is particularly proud as she dreamed of becoming a dentist but wasn’t able to attend college as a young woman. Both of Jiménez’s parents wanted to ensure she was able to take steps towards her career that they weren’t able to and encouraged her from a young age to pursue STEM. Carlos Verdugo, a PhD student in Pitt’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Jiménez’s boyfriend, received the same scholarship to 12 | Winter 2023/2024

continue his studies. Facing the challenges and successes of graduate school together has been a real boost for them.

“We both understand what it’s like,” Verdugo said. “We’ve got each other’s back and keep each other going.”

Like Verdugo, who hopes to continue working in a laboratory setting, Jiménez’s sacrifice and work are paying off. Her project, “Manganese Peroxidase supported by metal-embedded silica sol-gel,” was recently published In Bioresource Technology and received the AEESP 2023 Best Poster Award.

Manganese peroxidase is commonly used in industrial water treatment, but it has limitations because of its reliance on ions – which aren’t always available in certain environments. Her research uses manganese peroxidase coupled with a silica gel in environmental remediation practices and industrial catalysis processes.

“Maria’s work is outstanding,” said Meng Wang, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. “This could have a significant impact on the use of manganese peroxidase for sustainable water contaminant removal, lignin degradation in the paper industry, and biofuel production, among other applications.”

Her time at Pitt is just the start for Jiménez. She’s hoping to apply her research and expand her knowledge in the United States before returning to Mexico – taking advantage of all the opportunities and skills the United States offers to her.

“I want to build my education in the United States and bring it back to Mexico,” Vizcarra said. “Mexican culture is rooted in family, and I can’t wait to be surrounded by them again.”

Celebrating 5 Years of Innovation through IRISE

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ince 2018, the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) Consortium has developed innovative solutions to address durability and resiliency challenges associated with aging highway infrastructure.

IRISE projects address the needs of member organizations at an inclusive brainstorming session each fall. IRISE Director Joe Szczur says that “Member participation throughout the whole research cycle, including identifying priorities, project development, execution, and implementation of results is what makes IRISE unique and ensures that our members acquire knowledge to solve problems and improve services.”

Current members include the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Allegheny County, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, the Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania, Michael Baker International, CDR Maguire Corporation, Golden Triangle Construction, and the Federal Highway Administration as an ex officio member.

Since its inception, IRISE has realized more than $4 million in member contributions which have funded 33 research projects addressing various aspects of transportation infrastructure. While some of the projects are more high risk/high reward, other projects have a more immediate impact. For example, Early Opening Analysis was developed to determine the optimal time when paving projects can be opened to traffic without significant damage. A project featuring this new technology recently received a national award from the American Concrete Pavement Association.

Another IRISE project focused on improving infrastructure resiliency to the increase in landslides occurring both regionally and nationally.

This included the development of a Landslide Best Practices Handbook with region-specific best practice guidelines for mitigating impacts from active landslides or reducing the risks of landslide movement. Also developed was a framework integrating traditional non-destructive evaluation and emerging automated unmanned aerial vehiclebased techniques to provide improved performance assessment of bridges.

Other innovative products to address transportation infrastructure durability include: • Augmented and virtual reality to increase worker safety through the creation of a Virtual Reality platform for Health and Safety Training, based on industry standards.

• Artificial Intelligence to enhance performance prediction and aid in the design of lightweight and high-performance metamaterial.

• Large language model machine learning algorithms to make domain-specific information related to pavement design and construction more accessible to practitioners.

• A paving simulator coupled with computer vision to improve and optimize concrete pavement construction.

• Novel tools to simplify the labor-intensive and complex workflows associated with data extraction of laser-based infrastructure reconstruction models.

IRISE is also participating in the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s Sustainable, Climate Resilient Corridor

project through the design and construction of the Mon-Fayette Expressway extension by developing test bed locations with innovative infrastructure features. An additional $2.6 million in funding from the Turnpike will help develop innovative climate resilient infrastructure solutions: • A Digital Twin of a selected portion of the expressway, which is a high-fidelity virtual reconstruction of the built asset and behaves, lives and ages with it throughout its lifespan.

• A multifunctional acoustic concrete metamaterial wall with noise cancellation and NOx reduction functionalities.

• Energy harvesting technologies for applications such as wireless charging of electric vehicles, ice/snow melting, heating or cooling, lighting, and signals.

Development of an “Electrified Roadways Strategic Plan” with a focus on expanding in-road electric vehicle charging infrastructure is another project currently funded. According to Ed Skorpinski, the Turnpike Project Manager, “We are excited about taking advantage of the vast breadth and depth of knowledge of IRISE faculty to explore this forwardthinking research. This is a great opportunity to solve difficult problems that the Turnpike is facing right now, as well as prepare for future challenges.”Julie Vandenbossche, IRISE Director of Research, says, “The goal of IRISE has always been to promote transportation infrastructure innovation with a commitment to identifying relevant issues within the industry and developing impactful solutions. We cannot wait to see the far-reaching impacts IRISE will have in the next five years.”

For more information visit engineering.pitt.edu/irise Winter 2023/2024 | 13

AWARDS HONORS Faculty Melissa Bilec • Most downloaded paper of 2022 award from Resources, Conservation and Recovery “The Green Print: Agenda for the Advancement of Environmental Sustainability in Healthcare.”

Resources, Conservation and Recovery, Volume 161, October 2020, 104882. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. resconrec.2020.104882 • Appointed Special Assistant to the Provost for Sustainability, University of Pittsburgh (October 2022 to September 2023) Alessandro Fascetti • Elected Member of the Machine Learning in Mechanics Committee of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Kent Harries • 2023 PCI Robert J. Lyman Award for the paper Bolduc et al. (2023) Experimental Background Behind New AASHTO Requirements for Debonded Strands”, PCI Journal.

March/April 2023, 51-67. https:// doi.org/10.15554/pcij68.2-01 Lev Khazanovich • Keynote presentation at the 13th International Conference on Road and Airfield Pavement Technology (ICPT 2023), Beijing, China, July 6-8, 2023. “Mechanistic-Empirical

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Design of Jointed Concrete Pavements in the US: From Westergaard to AASHTOWare Pavement ME 3.0 “ • Appointment as a Lady Davis Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion, Israel, during the 2023/2024 • Elected to the Board of Governors of the Academy of Pavement Science and Engineering (APSE) Carla Ng • Elected to Board of Directors of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (term to begin November 2023 • Received Fulton C. Noss Faculty Fellowship Piervincenzo Rizzo • Awarded the Research Recognition for Innovation which honors highly distinguished individual breakthroughs in research in the field of NDE/NDT within the past five years from the ASNT (American Society for Nondestructive Testing). One award per year is granted.

• Selected Conference Co-Chair for the 2024 -2026 SPIE Smart Structures + NDE Conference: Health Monitoring of Structural and Biological Systems XVIII (Conference SSN 08).

• Invited to become member of the International Scientific Board of the 10th International Operational Modal Analysis Conference (IOMAC), 22-24 May 2024, Naples, Italy.

• Associate Editor: Journal of Vibration and Control David Sanchez • ASEE National - Environmental Engineering Service Award Julie Vandenbossche • 2023 SSoE Board of Visitors Award for outstanding productivity Meng Wang • 2023 Scialog Fellow for the Negative Emissions Science (NES) program. Scialog: NES is a program for early career faculty interested in collaborating on high-risk discovery research that focuses on removing and sequestering greenhouse gases, and it invites approximately 50 early career faculty to participate as fellows. This program is jointly sponsored

by Alfred. P. Sloan Foundation and Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), with additional support from the Climate Pathfinders Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, and Thistledown Foundation.

Adjunct faculty member Joseph Duckett, PhD MPH ’70 with Jeffrey Pierce BSCE ’73 authored “Hold It! The Case for Hard-Thinking, Honesty and Humility when Assessing Environmental Health Risks,” published by Stairway Press.

Students ASCE Student Chapter has been selected by the Committee on Student Members to receive a Letter of Honorable Mention for its outstanding activities as recorded in the 2022 Student Chapter annual report.

Alireza Enshaiean (advised by Dr. Rizzo) received 2023 Fellowship Research Award of the ASNT. Cain Pfoutz (undergraduate CE student) received 2022 Award from ASCE Student Award Foundation.

Isaiah Spencer-Williams (advised by Dr. Haig) awarded a Provost’s Dissertation Year Fellowship for Historically Underrepresented Doctoral Students for the 2023-2024 academic year.

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Research Awards Amir Alavi • PA Turnpike funding ($294K) (Role: PI), “Multifunctional Acoustic Concrete Metamaterial Wall with Noise Cancellation and NOx Reduction Functionalities,” 2023. continued from previous page

Lisa Stabryla (advised by Dr. Gilbertson) appointed Assistant Professor in the Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago starting in Jan 2024.

Arundhati Tewari (advised by Dr. Ng) received 2nd Prize at the Best Poster Competition at the 19th Annual Workshop on Emerging HRMS & LC-MS/MS Applications in Environmental Analysis and Food Safety at SUNY Buffalo on Sep 25, 2023.

Evan Trump (former undergraduate member in the Haig group) was awarded outstanding Environmental Engineering Senior in Fall 2022 and will be starting a masters in Biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health in Fall 2023.

Jiménez Vizcarra, M. J. (advised

by Dr. Wang) received 2023 AEESP Research and Education Conference Travel and Student Poster Awards.

• PA Turnpike funding ($139K) (Role: PI), “Sustainable and Multifunctional Geogrids made from Recycled Materials for Energy Harvesting and Active Sensing,” 2023.

• PA Turnpike funding ($56K) (Role: PI), “PA Turnpike Electrified Roadways Strategic Plan”, 2023.

• PennDOT funding ($250K) (Role: PI), “Developing Light-weight and High-performance Metamaterial Concrete”, 2023.

• NSF CAREER Award ($535K), “Mechanical Metamaterial Electronics: Theory, Design and Applications”, 2023.

Melissa Bilec • NSF Convergence Accelerator Track I: A Tale of Two Cities Optimizing Circularity from Molecules to the Built Environment, Overall PI, Jenna Jambeck, University of Georgia (total funding $749,997); Pitt Co- PIs: Melissa Bilec and Eric Beckman ($352,125); 2023.

Lei Fang • Pitt Momentum Funds Priming Grants award; Amount $25,000; Title “Toward the two-way coupling of swimmer and surface gravity waves” The research objective of this proposal is to further our understanding of the two-way coupling between swimmers and surface gravity waves. I will combine the experimental measurements and numerical modeling in the proposed study.

• NSF: “INvestigating Home water and Aerosols’ Links to opportunistic pathogen Exposure (INHALE): do consumer decisions impact pathogen exposure and virulence?” (Total award: $420,000) Alessandro Fascetti • NSF ($735,872) (Role: Lead PI). CLIMA: A Digital Twin Modeling Framework for Climate Adaptive Vertical Infrastructure. Award: CMMI-2332246. Duration: 36 months. Co-PIs: Melissa Bilec and John Brigham • Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission ($2,078,09) (Role: PI). Digital Twin Technology for a Climate Resilient Corridor. Duration: 36 months.

Sarah Haig • EPA Star grant: “Health and High Water: Health Impacts of Increased Rainfall on Families Living in Racially Isolated Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh PA” (Total award: $1,349,968; Haig portion = $464,576).

• Department of Housing and Urban Studies (HUD) grant: “Incorporating Home Environment Exposures into Assessment Tools for People Receiving In-Home Supportive Care” (Total award: $1,000,000; Haig portion: $224,316).

• NSF: “INvestigating Home water and Aerosols’ Links to opportunistic pathogen Exposure (INHALE): do consumer decisions impact pathogen exposure and virulence?” (Total award: $420,000) Alex Stevanovic • Awarded SmartPGH – Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment, Whitman, Requardt and Associates, LLP (Direct sponsor); PennDOT (Prime sponsor), ($61,397). (PI) • Awarded East-End Evaluation of Traffic Signal Timings, Trans Associates (Direct sponsor), City of Pittsburgh – Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (Prime sponsor), ($95,203). (PI) • Traffic Signal Change and Clearance Interval Pooled Fund Study – Conduct Methodology Research (Phase 2), Leidos, Inc. (Direct Sponsor); Federal Highway Administration (Prime sponsor), ($77,899); June 2023 – May 2024. (PI) • Socially responsible road charging for online retailers to support disadvantaged urban communities, Morgan State University Transportation Center (SMARTER) (Direct sponsor); U.S. DOT (Prime sponsor), ($203,692); June 2023 – May 2024. (PI) Radisav Vidic • Bench and Pilot-Scale Demonstration of Air Gap Membrane Distillation; U.S. DOE – Research Support Services (Leidos) ($223,738), 10/22 – 12/23

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Winter 2023/2024 | 15

AWARDS HONORS

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Rock Star Andrew Bunger, associate professor and RK Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy, has always made time in his schedule for the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA) – even when he was almost 10,000 miles away working in Australia.

ARMA announced at their annual symposium that Bunger will be its new president, a position which represents the organization and ultimately decides on how to best serve ARMA members and drive the organization forward.

“I’m honored to take on the position,” Bunger said. “ARMA’s history of leadership is impressive, and I’m humbled to stand beside them.”

As president, Bunger is looking forward to serving ARMA in all of its capacities as ARMA has been a constant force throughout his career.

The annual symposium was his first conference as a graduate student over 20 years ago, and he has made an effort to attend ever since.

“Throughout ARMA’s history, the annual symposium is the heart of the organization. Advancing its quality and success is essential. As our world changes in terms of the priority people put on traveling to in-person conferences, my number one goal as president is to make our symposium worthy of a top-spot in the priority list for everyone who works in the area of rock mechanics.”

He’s also hoping to open more opportunities for students interested in rock mechanics and geomechanics to join the organization.

“Over the past few years, our number of student groups on campuses around the world has more than doubled. Now our opportunity is to translate that enthusiasm into participation, growth, and career advancement for our student members. We want to inspire as well as ensure the success of the next generation,” Bunger said. “To me, that’s really exciting.”

EMI Fellow John Brigham Associate Professor John Brigham has spent years establishing an esteemed reputation in the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI). Brigham’s hard work is being recognized with his election as a fellow of the organization.

“It really is one of the biggest honors – if not the biggest honor – I have received in my professional career,” Brigham said. “The nomination alone was incredibly meaningful as it came from a group of the most world-renowned and respected researchers in my field of computational mechanics.”

Brigham added that it’s an exceptional feeling to have his colleagues declare that he’s achieved a distinguished record of research and service in the engineering mechanics community.

As a fellow, Brigham is regarded as a leader of the EMI and is expected to contribute to its mission, associated journal (Journal of Engineering Mechanics), and both national and international conferences.

Brigham, whose research is primarily in computational methods for inverse problems in mechanics, first engaged with the EMI by attending conferences and presenting and organizing mini-symposiums on a vast range of engineering mechanics-related research. He then became a chair for many of the organization’s committees, contributed and supported the review process for the EMI’s journal, and chaired an international conference for the institute in 2021.

The EMI is part of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the leading publisher for civil engineering research and continuing education. The organization represents more than 150,000 civil engineers in 177 countries.

Winter 2023/2024 | 16

Alumni Honors: Patty Bubar Recognized among this year’s Distinguished Alumni was Patrice M. “Patty” Bubar BSCE ‘78 who received the honor for Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Bubar graduated from Pitt in 1978 and began her career with the U.S. government at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) immediately after graduation. Over the next 37 years, she worked at EPA, Department of Energy (DOE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Responsibilities at these various agencies included senior leadership roles to ensure clean water by addressing stormwater runoff, ensuring safe and environmentally responsible cleanup and closure of nuclear waste sites managed by DOE and a strong regulatory framework for operation of nuclear reactors.

“Patty’s education at Pitt established the foundation of nearly four decades in government service at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department Of Energy. She became one of the leading experts in environmental and energy policy, from water management and environmental remediation to nuclear safety,” explained Radisav Vidic, Department Chair.

After retiring from the federal government, Bubar served as Deputy Director and Acting Director of the environmental program for Montgomery County, Maryland where she lives. She was responsible for many operational programs serving the residents of the county such as advanced recycling and integrated solid waste management, stormwater management infrastructure, and educational workshops focusing on green infrastructure. She was an active participant in the county’s effort to implement a pilot program to provide clean energy to the residents through a community choice aggregation program.

In 2022, she was appointed by the Governor of Maryland as a Commissioner on the Public Service Commission. In this role, she works with four other commissioners to set the rates charged to customers by the energy utilities in Maryland as well as ensure that the environmental and energy goals set by the Maryland legislature related to zero greenhouse gas emissions are met.

IRISE The IRISE Research Consortium held its annual Brainstorming Session on October 25, 2023 to develop innovative transportation infrastructure research topics. Over 50 people were in attendance from PennDOT, Allegheny County, PA Turnpike, CAWP, FHWA, Michael Baker, CDR Maguire, Golden Triangle Construction, and SPC. The session generated 70+ unique ideas, which will guide Year 7 of research for the consortium. The wide spectrum of research topics identified at the event will promote innovation within transportation infrastructure and reflects the IRISE’s commitment to identifying relevant issues and developing impactful solutions.

Winter 2023/2024 | 17

Swanson School of Engineering Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 742 Benedum Hall 3700 O’Hara Street Pittsburgh PA 15261

engineering.pitt.edu/civil

Pitt Joins Seven Other Universities in New University Transportation Center

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he Swanson School of Engineering joins Morgan State University and six other institutions in the new SMARTER Center, a USDOT University Transportation Center (UTC).

The Center will take a holistic approach to broad transportation challenges in the region, finding equitable solutions that encourage equitable civil infrastructure.

“This UTC provides a great opportunity for us to look at infrastructure in a more holistic way,” said Lev Khazanovich, Anthony Gill Chair Professor.

“We will have the opportunity to communicate across disciplines and look at transportation problems from a new angle.”

The UTC brings together expertise in all aspects of transportation, with Pitt’s team especially bringing its expertise in civil infrastructure. Khazanovich expects that future projects will involve Pitt’s Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) Consortium, which aims to innovate solutions to address the durability and

resiliency challenges associated with aging highway infrastructure.

“We are looking forward to collaborating with our SMARTER Center partners in expanding our current impact in the areas of improving the mobility of people and goods and increasing safety and sustainability,” added Julie Vandenbossche, William Kepler Whiteford Chair Professor and Associate Chair of Research at Pitt.

“Underserved communities will be a focal point of this effort.”

UNIVERS I T Y OF PI T T SBURGH | SWANSON S C H O O L O F EN G I N EER I N G | E N G I N E E R I N G . P I T T. E D U / C I V I L