CEE NEWS FA L L 2 0 2 1
CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
Annual Publication of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering
Seeking Sustainable Solutions for the Global Challenge of Safe Drinking Water
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ead is not the only danger when it comes to drinking water – harmful bacteria can also find their way into the water we consume despite treatment prior to distribution. There is a need for innovative, affordable, and portable solutions to sustainably provide safe drinking water across the globe. Assistant Professor Leanne Gilbertson will use a $500K NSF CAREER award to create a sustainable material design framework to mitigate pathogen exposure. “In addition to tap water from large-scale, municipal distribution, there are many other scenarios where we may want to disinfect our water before we drink it, such as from private wells or nature,” said Gilbertson. “There are also emerging sources of drinking water, such as water reuse where wastewater is treated to potable standards, presenting new disinfection challenges.” In this project, Gilbertson’s team will examine graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4), a non-metal material that possesses antimicrobial properties when activated with visible light and developed with low-cost, abundant resources. “We will modify the chemistry of graphitic carbon nitride to improve its photocatalytic performance,” Gilbertson said. “When light is absorbed by the
material, it generates reactive oxygen species that can kill microorganisms.” The research team will integrate the enhanced materials into a drinking water treatment that can be used as a viable, cost-effective solution to inactivate harmful bacteria in drinking water. They will collaborate with Aquisense, an industry leader in LED-enabled disinfection, to develop a point-of-use model. “By manipulating the structure and composition of graphitic carbon nitride at the atomic level, we have the ability to control its optical absorption and performance for photocatalytic disinfection. Using LED technology further enables us to flexibly configure the light wavelength best suited for maximum absorption of a designed material,” said Yan Wang, a postdoctoral associate at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and former PhD student in the Gilbertson Group who started this project. Through this research, the team will assess whether this material is indeed a sustainable alternative for treating drinking water. “We will apply life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental impacts associated with synthesizing graphitic carbon nitride,” said Nathalia Aquino de Carvalho, a current PhD student in the Gilbertson group and lead author of their paper that lays the foundation for this work.
engineering.pitt.edu/civil
“LCA will enable us to identify hot spots in the synthesis, tradeoffs of different synthesis routes, and opportunities to reduce the environmental footprint prior to scaling production. Applying LCA while we are designing the material enables competitive, environmentally responsible development of graphitic carbon nitride.” Gilbertson’s group ultimately hopes to create a point-of-use device that addresses the challenge of sustainably providing safe drinking water. They also plan to develop educational resources for the public through a podcast series and a “Science Through Storytelling” program to engage elementary students in STEM.
Letter from the Chair Colleagues, Our new academic year at the Swanson School begins with the sound of students, faculty, and staff returning to Benedum Hall. While we still face challenges with COVID-19, our Swanson School and University of Pittsburgh community is committed to ensuring a safe environment to foster in-person learning, research, and human interaction. As you will read in this year’s update from Pitt’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, our success continues apace, with outstanding impact from our faculty and students. Most especially, I am proud of Assistant Professor Leanne Gilbertson earning her NSF CAREER Award – one of three young faculty this year, and now totaling 18 recipients since 2016. Leanne’s work is integral to our department’s focus on sustainability and infrastructure; for Leanne, safe drinking water. We also welcome two individuals to leadership positions within the Swanson School – first, newly-promoted Professor and triple-alumna Melissa Bilec has been named Co-Director of Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation. She has been an integral part of MCSI since its founding and succeeds Distinguished Professor Eric Beckman. Second, another alumnus, Joseph Szczur, succeeds Mark Magalotti as Director of our Center for Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure. Joe is well-known to many in southwestern Pennsylvania through an impressive 37-year career in transportation and PennDOT District 12. Our faculty continue to generate significant and recognized research, from PFAS and silver nanoparticles to climate change and insect pollination. You’ll find that many of these projects involve our students, some of whom have engaged with their faculty mentors since their undergraduate years. Similarly, our students are themselves serving as mentors for the next generation of engineers, as you’ll read in a story about a virtual field trip for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I am cautiously optimistic for the year ahead, as our community continues to readjust to this new life back on campus. Although conferences for the most part are still virtual (see the accolade about the 2022 International Conference on Non-conventional Materials and Technologies), we are hoping that our MCSI Engineering Sustainability Conference will return in person or a hybrid format next spring. I hope you enjoy in this recap of the past year and visit our newly designed site at engineering.pitt.edu/civil for the latest news and information. My best wishes for the year ahead, and Hail to Pitt. Sincerely,
Radisav Vidic, PhD, P.E. William Keppler Whiteford Professor and Department Chair 2 | Fall 2021
Joseph J. Szczur Appointed Director of Center for Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure
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ince 2017, the Center for Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure (CSTI) has advanced sustainable transportation through collaborative and multidisciplinary research, educational efforts, and the dissemination of new and innovative technologies. After serving four years as director of CSTI, Mark Magalotti steps down, succeeded by Joseph J. Szczur. Szczur, a Pitt Johnstown alumnus, is well-established in the transportation industry and most recently served as district executive for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s (PennDOT) Engineering District 12 in Southwest Pennsylvania – a region with 787 employees, nearly 3,700 miles of state highways, and 2,350 bridges in four county areas. While serving in this role, he oversaw the administration and delivery of nearly $2.5 billion of capital improvement projects, including the replacement of more than 700 structurally deficient bridges. He also served as chair of the statewide District Executives Council. “More than 37 years of work in the transportation industry, particularly in various positions with the Department of Transportation, provided a unique perspective on issues that challenge the industry – issues that CSTI and IRISE can address by developing practical and implementable solutions,” said Szczur, who is also a visiting faculty member in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). During Magalotti’s tenure, CSTI established partnerships and secured funding from organizations such as PennDOT, the WalkWorks program, the Healthy Ride System Research Project and the National Science Foundation. As part of its educational mission, the center collaborated with CEE to host an annual Transportation Forum open to students, consultants, government agencies and other professionals involved in the planning, design, research, construction and operation of transportation systems. “Mark was instrumental in establishing the foundation for CSTI and helping us build a vital center to connect our researchers with industry and government in just four short years,” noted Radisav Vidic, Department Chair. “Joe brings with him not only the passion of a Pitt alumnus, but nearly four decades of experience from PennDOT. He has contributed to our academic program as instructor and mentor, and is also one of our department’s Distinguished Alumni. I am excited to see how CSTI will continue to grow under his guidance.”
The Business of Bees Refining the Economic Value of Insect Pollination
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ees are big business in the U.S.: the economic value of insect pollinators was $34 billion in the U.S. in 2012. But when reviewing the data, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University found that the value much higher than previously thought, and that areas which are economically most reliant on insect pollinators are the same areas where pollinator habitat and forage quality are poor.
“The value of insects as part of our economy is apparent when you look at the well-established connection between farming and beekeeping. Farmers will buy or rent bee colonies to help pollinate their crops when there aren’t enough wild bees in the area,” said Khanna. “We’ve found that some areas that are economically most reliant on insect pollinators are also where pollinator habitat and forage quality are poor.”
“Pollinators like bees play an extremely important role in agriculture,” explained senior author Vikas Khanna, Wellington C. Carl Faculty Fellow and associate professor. “The insects that pollinate farmers’ crops underpin our ecosystem biodiversity and function, human nutrition, and even economic welfare.”
The researchers found that 20 percent of U.S. counties produce 80 percent of total economic value attributed to wild and managed pollinators. Their findings will inform conservation efforts and ensure sustainable production of key crops.
But some of those busy little bees are headed for crisis – one-third of managed honeybee colonies die each winter in the U.S., and populations of many wild pollinator species are showing declines as well. Using publicly available price and production data and existing pollination field studies, the team determined economic dependence of U.S. crops on insect pollination services at the county level, as well as areas where the habitat for wild pollinators has been reduced. One key finding is that the economic value that is dependent on insect pollination totaled $34 billion in 2012 (the most recent data year), much higher than previously thought.
They also identified the key areas that produce economically and nutritionally valuable crops and are highly dependent on pollinators – areas at risk if wild pollinator populations continue to decline. By overlaying maps of predicted wild bee abundance, the researchers could identify areas with high economic dependence on pollinators but low predicted abundance of pollinators.
“This detailed map of pollination needs and pollinator deficits helps identify regions where resources could be provided to improve pollinator habitat, as well as other regions where local land use practices are supporting both agriculture and healthy pollinator populations. Those places could serve as models for sustainable agriculture and pollinator conservation practices.”
The research suggests a need for farmers to mitigate the shrinking bee populations by providing a more suitable habitat for the insects to thrive.
The paper, “Economic Dependence and Vulnerability of United States Agricultural Sector on Insect-Mediated Pollination Service,” (DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.0c04786) was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Other authors include Alex Jordan, graduate student at Pitt, and Harland Patch, assistant research professor at Penn State. Their research is funded through the National Science Foundation.
“Our study showcases the increasing importance of pollinators to supporting U.S. agricultural systems, particularly for the foods that are vital for healthy diets, like fruits, vegetables and nuts,” says Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State.
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Creating Cooler Cities
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f you’ve ever been in a city’s central core in the middle of summer, you know the heat can be brutal – and much hotter than in the surrounding region.
Temperatures in cities tend to be several degrees warmer than in its rural areas, a phenomenon called the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Many cities have been observed to be 2-4ºC warmer than the countryside in virtually every inhabited continent. This phenomenon occurs because urban infrastructure, especially pavements, absorbs heat. This heat pollution causes higher air conditioning and water costs, while also posing a public health hazard. One mitigation strategy called gray infrastructure involves the modification of impermeable surfaces (walls, roofs, and pavements) to counter their conventional heating effect. Typical urban surfaces have a solar reflectance (albedo) of 0.20, which means they reflect just 20 percent of sunlight and absorb as much as 80 percent. By contrast, reflective concrete and coatings can be designed to reflect 30-50 percent or more. Cities like Los Angeles have already used reflective coatings on major streets to combat heat pollution, although the solution can be expensive to implement city-wide.
Research led by Lev Khazanovich, Anthony Gill Chair Professor, used a Computational Fluid Dynamics model to find ways to decrease cost and increase usage of cooler surfaces. The paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, examined the possibility of applying cooler surfaces to just half the surfaces in a city. “This could be an effective solution if the surfaces selected were upstream of the dominant wind direction,” said lead author Sushobhan Sen, postdoctoral associate. “A ‘barrier’ of cool surfaces preemptively cools the warm air, which then cools the rest of the city at a fraction of the cost. On the other hand, if the surfaces are not strategically selected, their effectiveness can decline substantially.” This research gives urban planners and civil engineers an additional way to build resilient and sustainable infrastructure using limited resources. “It’s important for the health of the planet and its people that we find a way to mitigate the heat produced by urban infrastructure,” said Khazanovich. “Strategically placed reflective surfaces could maximize the mitigation of heat pollution while using minimal resources.” The paper, “Limited application of reflective surfaces can mitigate urban heat pollution,” was coauthored by Sen and Khazanovich, and was featured by Nature Communications in the Editors’ Highlight page on climate change impacts.
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Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation Names Melissa Bilec as New Co-Director
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or nearly two decades, the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) has helped to form and reimagine the impact of sustainability throughout the University of Pittsburgh. From student engagement and academic programs to philanthropic endeavors and cultural evolution, MCSI has sought to make its mission of “sustainable innovation” an institutional heartbeat. Buoyed by twenty years of success, MCSI announced its new foundational leadership. Melissa Bilec, William Kepler Whiteford Professor, has been appointed codirector. Eric Beckman, her predecessor and Distinguished Service Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, will step into a new role as Director Emeritus and Chief of Innovation and Translation. Gena Kovalcik continues to serve as co-director. MSCI, established through a gift from alumnus John C. “Jack” Mascaro BSCE ’66 MSCE ’80 in 2003, has maintained a singular mission – to catalyze sustainability research and education. “MCSI has its roots in the Swanson School, thanks to Jack Mascaro’s enduring legacy. From degree and certificate programs to student and faculty research and community engagement outreach, this center is transformative,” said Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor Ann E. Cudd. “Eric and Gena have contributed so much to imbue sustainability throughout the University, and I know that Melissa will continue that growth.”
mission with Eric, Gena and our MCSI team; Aurora Sharrard in Pitt’s Office of Sustainability; as well as our faculty and staff colleagues across the university.”
Bilec is a triple-alumna of Pitt, having earned her bachelor’s (magna cum laude), master’s, and PhD from the Swanson School. She is nationally and internationally recognized for her expertise in circular economy, life cycle assessment, energy assessment (especially within underserved communities), high-performance buildings and experiential learning. “Sustainability has been integral to my teaching and research career, and so I am honored to carry on the incredible legacies that Jack, Eric, and Gena established,” Bilec said. “Our pillars have been and continue to be excellence in academic programs, critical research, and community engagement, toward the goal of realizing greater undergraduate and graduate growth and excellence. I look forward to continuing this
Bilec has secured approximately $10 million in research funding as PI or Co-PI, including 15 NSF grants, and has worked closely with the City of Pittsburgh and Green Building Alliance as well as the Larimer Community. She also worked with Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens on extensive, published research of its Center for Sustainable Landscapes, considered one of the greenest buildings in the world. For the next five years, Bilec and MCSI leadership have coalesced around three specific goals: • Continue to expand and engage throughout Pitt to infuse sustainability into the University’s education, research, and service missions. • Develop and implement a world-class transdisciplinary graduate program that integrates climate change solutions using circular economy strategies, driven by strong industrial partners. • Fully integrate and expand all programs from the summer undergraduate research program to faculty research to establish MCSI as leaders in equity, diversity, and inclusion.
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OUTREACH First-hand STEM Experiences from Coast to Coast
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s undergraduates Heather Phillips and Amy Blanchard explained the basics of solid phase extraction and microbial fuel cells via Zoom from a lab at the University of Pittsburgh, Los Angeles high school senior Serenity Anderson left a quick but striking comment in the chat: “Really cool seeing girls in the lab :)” Anderson was part of the class of seniors from the Girls Academic Leadership Academy (GALA), a public STEM high school in Los Angeles, who arrived virtually at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering on April 22, 2021 to learn how data is used in engineering to support sustainability. Hosted by Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) assistant director David Sanchez, the students learned about testing water for pollution, experimented with their own water testing strips, and got a detailed tour of Sanchez’s Sustainable Design Labs. “When students visit our lab it’s so important to create opportunities for them to connect personally with the researchers as well as intellectually with the research. The pandemic has pushed us to think differently about who we can connect with and how we can be present to them, and this virtual field trip is a great example of that,” said Sanchez, who is also assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. “I’m fortunate to be surrounded by great students and creative educators, who are eager to introduce more young people to sustainability research and get them excited about it.” 6 | Fall 2021
The virtual field trip was organized by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Science Project, which seeks to engage all students in meaningful science instruction, especially those within the Los Angeles Unified School District. The Science Project’s director, Jon Kovach, has worked with Sanchez and MCSI for the past three years on enhancing Pitt’s summer “Teach the Teacher” program utilizing the Next Generation Science Standards. “An important element of our partnership with UCLA is its connection to a girls’ STEM program. Something I definitely missed in my high school education was representation of women in STEM careers, so it was a great opportunity to provide that to young women,” said Blanchard, who just completed her sophomore year in civil and environmental engineering at Pitt. “It emphasized to me just how essential it is for underrepresented groups, especially women and girls, to see themselves reflected in scientific research.” The day began with a photo of a large, freshly caught fish and a question: Would the students consider eating it? Upon revealing that the fish was caught in the Los Angeles River, almost all of the students responded that they would not. At home, the students used water test strips to learn about the concentration of pollutants in the water. “Working with the students showed to me just how important basic engineering skills are, like analyzing data and making conclusions from that data. We looked at test strips from the LA River in their area, and they were able to make judgments
about pollution and whether it would be safe to fish in the river,” said Blanchard. “I was really impressed with the students’ ability to jump from the building blocks of data analysis to drawing complex conclusions!” After interacting in break-out groups, the students virtually toured the lab and experienced the dayto-day realities of research. The researchers in the Sanchez lab, which focuses on sustainability and water resources, explained how their work is used to monitor water quality, pollution levels in fisheries, and more. “I thought the lab tour was super cool and helped me have a better idea of what roles a researcher has to fulfill,” said GALA senior Tora Hoar Vea. “I liked seeing the projects undergraduate students were working on, learning about the problems they encountered and how they solved them,” added GALA senior Naomi Macey. “While there were a few girls who expressed appreciation for seeing Amy and me in the lab, sharing that they were happy to see women in STEM, they didn’t seem to be deterred by the idea that the field is still so male-dominated,” remarked Phillips, who is earning her bachelor’s degree in nanotechnology through the Engineering Science program at Pitt. “The girls in my group wanted to pursue futures in veterinary science, neuroscience, architecture, and engineering, and it was exciting to see young women choosing to pursue their interests and passions for a variety of STEM disciplines.”
Self-aware Materials for Living Structures
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rom the biggest bridges to the smallest medical implants, sensors are everywhere, and for good reason: The ability to sense and monitor changes before they become problems can be both cost-saving and lifesaving. To better address these potential threats, the Intelligent Structural Monitoring and Response Testing (iSMaRT) Lab has designed a new class of materials that are both sensing mediums and nanogenerators and are poised to revolutionize the multifunctional material technology big and small. The research, published in Nano Energy, describes a new metamaterial system that acts as its own sensor, recording and relaying important information about the pressure and stresses on its structure. The so-called “self-aware metamaterial” generates its own power and can be used for a wide array of sensing and monitoring applications. The most innovative facet of the work is its scalability: the same design works at both nanoscale and megascale simply by tailoring the design geometry. “There is no doubt that the next generation materials need to be multifunctional, adaptive and tunable.” said Amir Alavi, assistant professor and director of the iSMaRT Lab.
“You can’t achieve these features with natural materials alone – you need hybrid or composite material systems in which each constituent layer offers its own functionality. The self-aware metamaterial systems that we’ve invented can offer these characteristics by fusing advanced metamaterial and energy harvesting technologies at multiscale, whether it’s a medical stent, shock absorber or an airplane wing.” While nearly all the existing self-sensing materials are composites that rely on different forms of carbon fibers as sensing modules, this new concept offers a completely different, yet efficient, approach to creating sensor and nanogenerator material systems. The material is designed such that under pressure, contact-electrification occurs between its conductive and dielectric layers, creating an electric charge that relays information about the condition of the material. In addition, it naturally inherits the outstanding mechanical properties of metamaterials, like negative compressibility and ultra-high resistance to deformation. The power generated by its built-in triboelectric nanogenerator mechanism eliminates the need for a separate power source: such material systems can harness hundreds of watts of power at large scales.
The researchers have created multiple prototype designs for a variety of civil, aerospace, and biomedical engineering applications. At a smaller scale, a heart stent using this design can be used to monitor blood flow and detect signs of restenosis, or the re-narrowing of an artery. The same design was also used at a much larger scale to create a mechanically tunable beam suitable for a bridge that could selfmonitor for defects on its structure. These materials have enormous potential beyond Earth, as well. A self-aware material uses neither carbon fibers nor coils; it is light in mass, low in density, low in cost, highly scalable, and it can be fabricated using a broad range of organic and inorganic materials. Those qualities make them ideal for use in future space exploration. The paper, “Multifunctional metatribomaterial nanogenerators for energy harvesting and active sensing”, was coauthored by Zhong Lin Wang, PhD, Hightower Chair and Regents’ Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, Jun Chen, PhD, Assistant Professor at Pitt, and Pengcheng Jiao, PhD, Research Professor at Zhejiang University.
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Are Silver Nanoparticles a Silver Bullet Against Microbes?
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ntimicrobials are used to kill or slow the growth of bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms. They can be in the form of antibiotics, used to treat bodily infections, or as an additive or coating on commercial products used to keep germs at bay. These life-saving tools are essential to preventing and treating infections in humans, animals, and plants, but they also pose a global threat to public health when microorganisms develop resistance to them, a concept known as antimicrobial resistance. One of the main drivers of antimicrobial resistance is the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial agents, which includes silver nanoparticles, an advanced material with well-documented antimicrobial properties. These nanoparticles have been woven into textiles, coated onto toothbrushes, and even mixed into cosmetics as a preservative. Assistant Professor Leanne Gilbertson and her research group used laboratory strains of E.coli to better understand resistance to silver nanoparticles and mitigate the potential misuse of this material. The team published their results in Nature Nanotechnology. “We are the first to look at bacterial motility effects on the ability to develop resistance to silver nanoparticles,” Gilbertson said. “The observed difference is really interesting and 8 | Fall 2021
merits further investigation to understand it and how to link the genetic response - the efflux pump regulation - to the bacteria’s ability to move in the system.” “Bacterial resistance to silver nanoparticles is understudied, so our group looked at the mechanisms behind this event,” said Lisa Stabryla, lead author on the paper and a recent PhD graduate. “This is a promising innovation to add to our arsenal of antimicrobials, but we need to consciously study it and perhaps regulate its use to avoid decreased efficacy.” Stabryla exposed E.coli to 20 consecutive days of silver nanoparticles and monitored bacterial growth over time. Nanoparticles are roughly 50 times smaller than a bacterium. “In the beginning, bacteria could only survive at low concentrations of silver nanoparticles, but as the experiment continued, we found that they could survive at higher doses,” Stabryla noted. “Interestingly, we found that bacteria developed resistance to the silver nanoparticles but not their released silver ions alone.” The group sequenced the genome of the E.coli that had been exposed to silver nanoparticles and found a mutation in a gene that corresponds to an efflux pump that pushes heavy metal ions out of the cell.
“It is possible that some form of silver is getting into the cell and the cell mutates to quickly pump it out,” she added. “More work is needed to determine if researchers can overcome this resistance through particle design.” The group then studied two different types of E.coli : a hyper-motile strain that swims through its environment more quickly than normally motile bacteria and a non-motile strain that does not have physical means for moving around. They found that only the hyper-motile strain developed resistance. “This finding could suggest that silver nanoparticles may be a good option to target certain types of bacteria, particularly nonmotile strains,” Stabryla said. In the end, bacteria will still find a way to evolve and evade antimicrobials. The hope is that an understanding of the mechanisms that lead to this evolution and a mindful use of new antimicrobials will lessen the impact of antimicrobial resistance.
Mapping PFAS Contamination in Packaged Foods
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er- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of man-made chemicals lauded for their nonstick and oil-repellent characteristics. While useful in the food industry, there is evidence that exposure to these persistent chemicals may adversely impact human health. Supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Assistant Professor Carla Ng will lead the first systematic study of the kinds and amount of PFAS present in imported and domestic food packaging. She and collaborators from Indiana University and the USDA – Agricultural Research Service (ARS) will create a database that they hope will help guide better policy around the use of PFAS in the food industry. “Humans are exposed to PFAS in a variety of ways, but depending on where you live, food is likely your major source,” said Ng. “There are many different types of PFAS, and we don’t have enough information on where they are used, in what quantities, and whether they’re toxic, so we will use this award to study those details.” According to the FDA, there are nearly 5,000 different types of PFAS. To add to the complexity, other countries have adopted different approaches to regulating PFAS and its many varieties. For example, PFOA and PFOS have been phased out in the U.S., but are still widely produced in China. While not shipped specifically to the U.S., there may be residual chemicals that are transferred during production. “Because of these uncertainties, we want to understand how the different origins of packaging impact which PFAS wind up in the consumer product,” said Ng. The research team will inspect national supermarket chains and local international food stores to get an idea of the type and geographic origin of food packaging. They will then collect a representative sample of products and analyze the packaging for the presence of PFAS. “We will use extraction and migration assays to evaluate the packaging,” explained Ng. “Extraction would represent an extreme case where we use harsh chemicals to gather a sample. Alternatively, the migration assays use simulants which represent different
types of food – such as fatty, acidic, or salty. It will show, under normal conditions, how much PFAS transferred from packaging to food.” ARS researcher Yelena Sapozhnikova will identify PFAS chemicals migrating from food packaging materials with non-targeted, high-resolution mass spectrometry. Sapozhnikova’s interest in this research is from her previous work on identifying of chemicals from food contact materials. The PFAS structures will go to Amina Salamova, associate scientist at IU’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, whose team will quantify how much of each structure is in the sample. “We’re excited to conduct research that has such big implications for consumer safety,” Salamova said. “This will help us understand more about a group of chemicals that are widely used but not well understood.” The analyzed extracts and simulants will go to Pitt to be tested for toxicity. Ng’s lab specializes in molecular modeling that can initially screen the samples before evaluating them in zebrafish for further validation. The results will reveal whether the chemicals present in the packaging are toxic and if the concentration is high enough to contaminate food. The researchers hope that this work will inform regulators, provide a risk assessment tool, and reveal hot spots for PFAS exposure in our food system. Fall 2021 | 9
AWARDS HONORS The Constructors Association of Western PA (CAWP) is the sixth and newest member to join the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) Consortium. Housed in the Department IRISE’s focus is developing solutions for more durable, longer lasting transportation infrastructure that will avoid the high cost and disruption caused by highway rehabilitation. CAWP joins other regional public and private partners who represent both the public agencies that own and operate the infrastructure and the private firms that design and build it, including Allegheny County Department of Public Works, PennDOT, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Golden Triangle Construction, and Michael Baker International. Professor Melissa Bilec joined the editorial board of Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, a new open-access journal of the Institute of Physics and sister journal to Environmental Research Letters, as a founding member. Andrew Bunger, associate professor, was elected Vice President of the American Rock Mechanics Association Board of Directors. ARMA is a professional and international engineering and scientific society which promotes interaction among specialists, practitioners, scholars, and educators in rock mechanics and geomechanics. Leonard Casson, associate professor, was invited to serve on a blue-ribbon panel convened by the Water Environment Federation to evaluate information on biological hazards and safety precautions. The panel is comprised of
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a diverse array of experts involved in water operations, science, health and safety and will provide appropriate input to U.S. government agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the World Health Organization. Lei Fang, assistant professor, received funding from the University of Pittsburgh Momentum Fund for “Toward Effect of Collective Animal on Dynamical Transport Barriers.” This one-year, $16K project supports a preliminary study of how collective small swimmers affect large scale ocean flows. Leanne Gilbertson, associate professor, joined the advisory board of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Environmental Science: Nano. Professor Kent Harries, FASCE, FACI, FIIFC, and University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez Professor Christopher M. Papadopoulos are co-chairing the 2022 International Conference on Non-conventional Materials and Technologies (NOCMAT) virtually in June 2022. NOCMAT is the international forum for researchers and practitioners who seek to apply non-conventional materials and technologies in the service of providing safe, sustainable, and affordable construction in a manner that respects local customs and promotes ecological harmony. The conference covers applications of nonconventional construction materials and technologies, with the overall objectives of reducing environmental/climate change impact,
providing safe affordable construction, and promoting social and commercial acceptability. Abstract submissions are due December 1, 2021; for more information and to register visit https://nocmat.lasaweb.org/. Lev Khazanovich, Anthony Gill Chair Professor, co-organized and co-chaired the International Symposium on Concrete Pavements: Challenging the Status Quo of Concrete Pavement Design, with colleague Jeffery R. Roesler, the Ernest Barenberg Professor and IL-American Concrete & Pavement Association Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The hybrid conference held March 25, 2021 in Houston, attracted more than 500 participants from the US, Canada, South America, Europe, and Australia, and was featured in Concrete International. Researchers led by Professor Xu Liang will collaborate with top scientists around the world to study earth’s ecosystem in a project funded by Schmidt Futures and under the umbrella of VESRI, the Virtual Earth System Research Institute. The Pitt team will develop a land surface model VIC++, a significant extension of the VIC model, based on new theory and newly available rich observations. The VIC model is widely used nationally and internationally and is also one of the models used in the NASA Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS). The five-year project, Land Ecosystem Models based On New Theory, obseRvations and ExperimEnts (LEMONTREE), will develop a nextgeneration model of the terrestrial biosphere and its interactions with the carbon cycle, water cycle and climate.
Assistant Professor David Sanchez was promoted to Associate Director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, where he will further focus on growth in global engagement and graduate enrollment, as well as community engagement in Pittsburgh and internationally. He was also elected Secretary for the ASEE National Environmental Engineering Division.
of scientists in the world. The report covered scientists globally from a wide range of fields, and the ranking is based on citations from Scopus, assessing scientists for career-long citation impact up until the end of 2019 and for citation impact during the single calendar year 2019. Researchers from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering include:
Patrick Shirey, assistant professor of geology and environmental science, was named MCSI Leonard Peters Faculty Fellow and will support course development, cross-disciplinary research, and community programming.
• Amir Alavi • Andrew P. Bunger • Kent A. Harries • Piervincenzo Rizzo • Luis Vallejo • Radisav Vidic • Fred Moses
Aleksander Stevanovic, associate professor, received a Fulbright Specialist Award for “Optimization of traffic signals to reduce pollutant emissions” to collaborate with the Faculty (College) of Engineering, University of Kragujevac, Serbia, June 24 – August 1, 2021. He was also elected Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers in December 2020 and invited to serve on the editorial board of the MDPI journal CivilEng. Radisav Vidic, department chair, was appointed ORISE Faculty Fellow to join a 2-year, $1.13 million “Kinetic Modeling and Experimental Validation of Mineralization in High Salinity Brine Solutions with and without Scale Inhibitors” project awarded by the National Alliance for Water Innovation to SLAC, OLI, NETL and Veolia. According to a report by Stanford University, 60 researchers from the Swanson School of Engineering are ranked in the top 2 percent
Students The University of Pittsburgh ASCE Student Chapter was awarded the 2021 ASCE Distinguished Chapter Award for Region 2 by the ASCE Committee on Student Members. This award is made annually to the most outstanding Student Organization in the region. Taraneh (Tara) Ardalan, graduate student advised by Dr. Stevanovic, received WTS Pittsburgh Chapter Leadership Legacy Scholarship and is competing for WTS International Leadership Legacy Scholarship at the WTS International Conference. Patrick Dunn (advised by Dr. Gilbertson) was honored as the 2021 WWOAP David A. Long, PhD Memorial Scholarship
Isabel Lee, ASCE Student Chapter President, received Student of the Year Award from the ASCE Pittsburgh Section. Yunxing Lu (advised by Dr. Bunger) received a 2021 Marcelo Lippman Award from the Geothermal Rising Council, the most prestigious award for graduate research in geothermal energy. Ethan Arnold-Paine (advised by Dr. Sanchez) captured first place at the ninth annual De Nora Pitch Competition. De Nora, a company that develops and supplies electrode technologies and water disinfection and filtration systems, selected 17 students to pitch their research projects to a panel of expert judges in the field. The competition took the place of the symposium’s in-person poster sessions. Arnold-Paine’s pitch for a new closed-cycle PFAS remediation system won first place across all categories. Lisa Stabryla BS ’15 PhD ’21 (advised by Dr. Gilbertson) received a two-year National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship and will be joining NIST this fall. Quanyun (Gloria) Zhang (advised by Dr. Alavi) won the Pitt Advancing Research through Computing (ARC) 2021 Competition based on her IRISE project, “Automated Detection and Quantification of Cracks and Spalls in Concrete Bridge Decks Using Deep Learning”. She also received Best Paper Award, James D. Cooper Student Paper Competition, International Bridge Conference; and Best Paper Award, Association for Bridge Construction and Design (ABCD).
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AWARDS HONORS continued Alumni Wei Fu PhD ’18 received the 2020 Neville Cook PhD dissertation award from the American Rock Mechanics Association, the most prestigious award the society presents to young scientists. Wei is currently a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Jennifer McCracken BS ’06, MS ’08 received the 2021 WTS Woman of the Year Award. Harold Rickenbacker PhD ’19 was named among the 2021 GreenBiz 30 Under 30. He currently serves as Manager, Clean Air and Innovation at the Environmental Defense Fund. This year’s cohort reports to offices in 12 nations across six continents, including Brazil, Canada, China, India, Lithuania, New Zealand and Rwanda, and from 15 cities in the U.S.
Research Funding Melissa Bilec “Workshop on Design for a Circular Economy” National Science Foundation, $98,000 “Increasing Implementation of Proven Inclusivity Practices in Undergraduate Engineering Education” National Science Foundation, $300,000 “Collaborative Research: Climate Impacts on the Urban Built Environment” National Science Foundation, $225,000 “Optimal Design and Life-Long Adaptation of Civil Infrastructure in a Changing and Uncertain Environment for a Sustainable Future” National Science Foundation, $2,000,000 Lei Fang “Toward Effect of Collective Animal on Dynamical Transport Barriers” Pitt Momentum Fund, $16,000 “Improving Coordination and Cooperation in Heterogeneous Crowds of Soldiers and Robots” Department of Defense, $1,175,000 12 | Fall 2021
Alessandro Fascetti “A BIM-VR Interface for Disaster Management and Mitigation Planning” Epic Games Ltd., $50,000 Leanne Gilbertson “Looking for the silver lining: Assessing the impact of silver in showerheads on opportunistic pathogen abundance and resistance” National Science Foundation, $330,000 “Sustainability from the Bottom Up: A Holistic Solution to Balancing the N-Cycle” National Science Foundation, $1,700,000 “Combining Materials Science and System-Level Analysis to Sustainably Supply Safe Drinking Water” National Science CAREER Award, $500,000 Vikas Khanna “Integrated Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR)- electro-assisted fermentation platform for total resource recovery from diverse wastewaters” Department of Energy, $349,975 “FACT CIN: Beescape NexGen: Creating Decision Support Tools To Manage Bee Health And Ecosystems Through Transdisciplinary Action” Department of Agriculture, $175,000 Xu Liang “Land Ecosystem Models based On New Theory, obseRvations and ExperimEnts (LEMONTREE)” Schmidt Futures/VERSI, $500,000 Carla Ng “Mapping Potential Human Exposure to Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) from Domestic and Imported Food Packaging” National Institute of Food and Agriculture/USDA, $480,000 “Targeted in silico-in vivo evaluation of PFAS and their alternatives in photolithography: hazard, essentiality, and grouping approaches for more benign formulations” Semiconductor Research Corporation, $249,000
“Model-aided Design and Integration of Functionalized Hybrid Nanomaterials for Enhanced Bioremediation of Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs)” National Institutes of Health, $357,000 Piervincenzo Rizzo “SCH: INT: Managing Glaucoma in the Digital Age: A New Tonometer to Connect Patients to their Caregivers” National Science Foundation, $1,100,000 “In-motion Track Stability Assessment using a High-resolution Camera” American Association of Railroads, $127,564 “Image Processing and Machine Learning Algorithms to Measure Axial Stress in Rails” Federal Railroad Administration, $177,297 “Managing Glaucoma in the Digital Age: A New Tonometer to Connect Patients to their Caregivers” National Science Foundation, $1,099,984 David Sanchez “Engineering Nanobubbles for the Oxidation and Removal of Emerging Contaminants” Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, $36,000 Aleksandar Stevanovic “Developing an Energy-Conscious Traffic Signal Control System for Optimized Fuel Consumption in Connect Vehicle Environments” Department of Energy, $519,000 Radisav Vidic “Field testing of Air Gap Membrane Distillation Technology” Department of Energy, $206,302 “Scale up and Demonstration of Membrane Distillation” Department of Energy, $73,512 (supplemental)
Sustainable Agriculture from the Bottom Up Pitt Researchers Receive $1.7MM to Rebalance the Nitrogen Cycle
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n its face, agriculture seems simple: crops need water, sunlight, and soil to grow.
The soil that crops are planted in, however, is complex. For plants to thrive, fertile soil requires a variety of elements that can become depleted over time, including nitrogen. Nitrogen moves through the environment, changing forms as it goes from the atmosphere to the soil, to the plants rooted in the soil, to the animals that eat the plants, and finally back into the atmosphere. Agriculture can disrupt this loop – known as the nitrogen cycle – leading farmers to supplement more nitrogen into the soil, a practice with its own set of environmental risks. Research led by Associate Professor Leanne Gilbertson is addressing this global challenge by developing technology that will more efficiently deliver nitrogen directly to crop roots, thereby preventing excess nitrogen from leaching into the environment. “Rebalancing the nitrogen cycle is a global challenge,” said Gilbertson. “We were motivated to find a holistic, sustainable solution to feed society while protecting its prosperity.” The overuse of nitrogen has immense environmental and human health costs, including the overgrowth of plant life in lakes and coastal waters that harm animal life; algal blooms and the dangers they pose; greenhouse gas emissions
from the production of nitrogen-based fertilizer; on-farm greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen processes; and contaminated drinking water. To deliver nitrogen more directly, the researchers will study the use of liposomes – small spherical sacs containing nitrogen which serve as a delivery system that can increase the percentage of nitrogen absorbed by the plant. Farmers will need to use less nitrogen, diminishing the environmental risks. Steven Little, Distinguished Professor and William Kepler Whiteford Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at Pitt, joins the project as co-principal investigator. Emily Elliott, Pitt professor of geology and environmental science and co-founder and director of the Pittsburgh Collaboratory for Water Research, Education, and Outreach, will also contribute. “It is exciting to work toward the development of advanced drug delivery systems where the ‘drug’ is a nutrient for crops,” said Little, whose expertise in such systems focuses on targeted treatment of medication at the site of injury or illness, rather than a diffused, large dose. “These kinds of delivery systems have been developed for years for pharmaceuticals, but less attention has been paid to this area. The potential for impact is pronounced since we’re talking about a similar problem. Why blanket an entire field of crops with
nitrogen and risk runoff, when you can selectively deliver the nitrogen directly to the root?” “Excess nitrogen is one of the greatest threats to global ecosystem integrity and water quality,” said Elliott. “During my career as a biogeochemist, I’ve never been more excited to embark on a research project. If we are successful in building fertilizers that are retained in soils, this project will be a profound step forward in protecting ecosystems, water quality, and human health.” Together, the interdisciplinary team brings expertise in chemical processes, transport phenomena, transport of natural resources in Earth systems, sustainable material design, and systems analyses. “I am excited to work in an interdisciplinary team of researchers,” noted Gilbertson. “We are all experts in our respective areas and adept at thinking beyond our niches, across silos, and about big challenges. We will learn from each other over the next four years as we develop sustainable solutions to a global challenge.” The project, “Sustainability from the Bottom Up: A Holistic Solution to Balancing the N-Cycle,” is a part of the NSF’s ECO-CBET program: Environmental Convergence Opportunities in Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems and received $1.7 million in funding. Fall 2021 | 13
Swanson School of Engineering Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 742 Benedum Hall 3700 O’Hara Street Pittsburgh PA 15261
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Bilec Joins $2MM NSF-funded Project to Design Climate-adaptive Infrastructure
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nfrastructure built today requires the ability to withstand the severe weather events that have been increasing, both in number and in severity, every year due to climate change. But civil and environmental engineers need to strike a delicate balance between designing resilient infrastructure that can withstand hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes, and choosing materials and methods that do not contribute to climate change. Bilec will join a team of researchers at Penn State University in a project that will describe this balance, bringing her expertise in the environmental impacts of the built environment to the four-year, $2 million project funded by the National Science Foundation’s Leading Engineering for America’s Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure program. “When we build something, we’re designing using old climate data and weather scenarios that don’t reflect the realities we will face in the years to come,” explained Bilec. “As we see more extreme weather events, those old models no longer suffice.” The goal of the project, led by Penn State’s Gordon Warn, is to develop a new approach for designing, adapting and maintaining the built environment using climate projection models and artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate the likely long-term cost and environmental impacts of infrastructure design choices.
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