Author: College of Engineering

Sue Hill is the Digital Content Manager for the College of Engineering.

Western U.P. STEM Fair and Festival 2024

The 2024 Western Upper Peninsula STEM Fair & Festival was held on Saturday, March 16, at the Memorial Union Ballroom from 1-4 p.m. New to the event this year: participants who develop an engineering design project had the chance to advance to Invention Convention Michigan, a competition held later this year at The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan. 

Students from Houghton, Baraga, Keweenaw, Ontonagon and Gogebic Counties in grades 4-8 were invited to participate in the STEM Fair. Registration was open to individuals and teams of two to three students. Students prepared and presented on a science investigation or an engineering design project.

The public was invited to attend the STEM Festival, held simultaneously, in the commons area of the Memorial Union Building from 1-4 p.m. The festival was coordinated by the Michigan Tech Center for Science and Educational Outreach.

This year’s fair had 40 projects by 45 students from fourth through eighth grades. Students could come from throughout the five western U.P. counties.

The 2024 Western U.P. STEM Fair & Festival is a collaborative effort of the Western U.P. MiSTEM Network, MTU Center for Science and Educational Outreach, Invention Convention Michigan, and the Copper Country Intermediate School District. 

Many thanks to our current and past sponsors and volunteers. For more information, please contact Tom Oliver at 906-487-2412 or teoliver@mtu.edu, or visit the Western U.P. STEM Fair & Festival webpage.

Western U.P. STEM Fair – 2024 Results

Read more at the Daily Mining Gazette, by Garrett Neese.

Outstanding Student Traffic Safety Achievement Award for Yingtong Tan

Yingtong Tan
Yingtong Tan

WLUC TV6 covered Ph.D. student Yingtong Tan (civil engineering) being awarded an Outstanding Student Traffic Safety Achievement Award by the Governor’s Traffic Safety Advisory Commission (GTSAC) for her research on the safety challenges posed by highway rail-grade crossings. Tan was presented with the award on March 13, 2024, in East Lansing.

Tan was the first in the United States to deploy the Rail Crossing Violation Warning (RCVW) system at rail-grade crossings. This prototype is designed to warn drivers of imminent violations of a crossing based on real-time positioning and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.

The GTSAC was formed in 2002 to serve as the state’s forum for identifying key traffic safety challenges and developing and implementing plans to address those issues.

Read more at WLUC TV6.

Daisuke Minakata Receives ES&T Reviewer Award

Daisuke Minakata
Daisuke Minakata

Associate Professor Daisuke Minakata (CEGE/GLRC) has been selected as one of the winners of the 2022 ES&T Reviewer Award!

This award acknowledges Minakata’s outstanding contributions in peer review for the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T), showcasing his expertise, timeliness and dedication throughout the year.

Congratulations, Professor Minakata, on this well-deserved recognition!

Ishi Keenum Wins DOC Gold Medal

Ishi Keenum
Ishi Keenum

Assistant Professor Ishi Keenum’s work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was recently awarded a 2023 Gold Medal Award by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) for the rapid development of a positive control reference material to ensure the validity of diagnostic testing for mpox, previously known as monkeypox.

The Gold Medal Award is the highest award given by the DOC. It honors “extraordinary, notable or prestigious contributions that impact the mission of the Department of Commerce and/or one operating unit, and which reflect favorably on the Department.”

By Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering.

Sustainability Film Series Spring 2024

Films shown on the third Thursday of each month.

Location

Fisher 135 or 138 (refreshments in the lobby)

Schedule

January to May at 7 p.m.

The Seeds of Vandana Shiva

The Seeds of Vandana Shiva (2021) February 15

“The Seeds of Vandana Shiva” explores the interconnectedness of seeds, food, environment and social justice through the remarkable life story of Gandhian eco-activist and agro-ecologist Vandana Shiva. Fisher 138


Going Circular (2021) March 21

Imagine a future where we mimic the genius of nature — to re-calibrate the way humankind lives, breathes, builds — respecting the limits of our resources and transforming the modern world. The film investigates the concept of circularity, an economic system that eliminates waste and saves the planet’s resources, and offers concrete solutions to move toward a more circular economy. Fisher 138


Climate Sisu (2022) April 18

Take a journey through Michigan in search of community knowledge about climate action, resilience, adaptation and education. Climate SISU offers an urgent, yet optimistic call for climate action. Fisher 135


The Engine Inside (2023) May 16

Follow the lives of six individuals from around the globe who have devoted themselves to a simple, age-old machine — the bicycle. Witness how bicycles have the potential to transform lives and contribute to a better world. Fisher 138


Cost

FREE. $5 suggested donation per film to support the Sustainability Film Series is appreciated. Make donation online or in-person at the film showing.

Cosponsored By

Michigan Tech’s Great Lakes Research Center, Department of Social Sciences, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering, Center for Science and Environmental Outreach, College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Sustainability Demonstration House and Keweenaw Youth for Climate Action, as well as the Keweenaw Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Keweenaw Land Trust, Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative, Friends of the Land of Keweenaw and WUP MiSTEM.

ASCE 2024 Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize for Abdolmajid Erfani

Abdolmajid Erfani
Abdolmajid Erfani

Dr. Abdolmajid Erfani, assistant professor in Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering, in collaboration with Zihui Ma, Qingbin Cui, and Gregory B. Baecher, University of Maryland, has been selected by ASCE’s Construction Institute to receive the 2024 Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize for the paper “Ex Post Project Risk Assessment: Method and Empirical Study,” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, December 2022.

The award, which consists of a plaque, will be presented during the Society’s CI & CRC Joint Conference in Des Moines, IA, March 20-23, 2024.

In the award of the prize, preference is given to papers whose author or authors describe in detail accomplished works of construction or which are valuable contributions to construction management and construction engineering.

Dr. Erfani’s research includes data-driven infrastructure management, project delivery and procurement, smart construction, and risk management.

From the Abstract

Project risk is an important part of managing large projects of any sort. This study contributes to the state of knowledge in project risk management by introducing a data-driven approach to measure risk identification performance using historical data. It investigated the quality of early risk registers and risk assessments on large transportation projects and compared them to how the identified risks evolved on historical projects. The investigation involved the use of textual analysis of archival risk register documents.

A project team with positive doer behavior (i.e., actively monitoring and identifying risks during project execution) performed better in delivering projects on time and within budget.

“Ex Post Project Risk Assessment: Method and Empirical Study”
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 149, Issue 2
https://doi.org/10.1061/JCEMD4.COENG-12588

Related

ASCE 2023 Best Paper Award for Abdolmajid Erfani

Ribbon-Cutting the Resurfaced County Road 577 with Zhanping You

Zhanping You
Zhanping You

Zhanping You (CEGE) was pictured in the Iron Mountain Daily News alongside a story about the completion of road projects in 2023 in Dickinson County, with some roads resurfaced using a mix of recycled tire rubber and asphalt.

The Dickinson County Road Commission partnered with Michigan Tech and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) for the C.R. 577 projects.

Projects used different methods, such as the use of recycled tire rubber in hot mix asphalt as well as engineered crumb rubber as a stabilizer or the use of recycled tire rubber and recycled glass as an aggregate.

You is a Distinguished Professor in Transportation Engineering. His research interests include

  • Design, construction, and maintenance of pavements
  • Micromechanics for road materials
  • Discrete element modeling and finite element modeling techniques
  • Construction materials: asphalt, aggregate, asphalt concrete

as well as alternative and recycled materials for civil engineering.

Read more at Iron Mountain Daily News.

2023 Best Paper Award for Bo Xiao

Bo Xiao, assistant professor in Construction Management, was recognized by the ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management for his journal article entitled “Deep Learning Image Captioning in Construction Management: A Feasibility Study.”

From the Editor-in-Chief:

“The authors present their systematic approach to automating deep learning for image captioning in a construction management context. This article is compelling for several reasons. The topic is one that has the potential to provide substantial benefits for construction engineering and management. The authors have clearly explained an involved methodology that produced results that were validated by comparison of eight metrics. The conclusions are presented in a nuanced manner that includes the strong points and limitations of the methods studied and useful suggestions for future development. This paper was selected from a field of 187 technical papers, 25 case studies, 2 technical notes, and 18 state-of-the-art reviews that were published from July 2022 through June 2023 in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.”

“This article is compelling for several reasons. The topic is one that has the potential to provide substantial benefits for construction engineering and management.”

Editor-in-Chief, ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

Authors: Bo Xiao, Aff.M.ASCE https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0798-8018 eric.xiao@polyu.edu.hk, Yiheng Wang yiheng6@ualberta.ca, and Shih-Chung Kang sckang@ualberta.caAUTHOR AFFILIATIONS
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 148, Issue 7
https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0002297

Xiao’s research interests include construction informatics, AI applications in construction, and construction robotics.

Ishi Keenum on the National Microbiome Data Collaborative Ambassador Program

Ishi Keenum
Ishi Keenum

Ishi Keenum (CEGE) was quoted by EurekAlert! in a story about the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) Ambassador Program. Keenum is a member of the program’s 2023 cohort of early career scientists  with diverse research interests who will receive training in best practices for biological data standardization.

Keenum researches how genes that give microbes antibiotic resistance are shared in human-built systems like wastewater treatment streams.

In her research, Keenum turned to datasets available in the published literature, hoping to perform some meta-analyses. She was stymied by the use of different data repositories.

“Can we like look at a million studies all at once? And we’re now at the point where, technologically, you really can do that, if the data is set up for it.”

Ishi Keenum, assistant professor in Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

As an NMDC Ambassador, she is excited to help build the scientific culture of the future, where FAIR data is the norm.

Her research interests include developing and manipulating the microbiology of wastewater, water reuse, agricultural systems, developing comparable metagenomic measurements, and developing bioinformatic methods and analysis tools for environmental systems.

Read more at EurekAlert!, by DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY.

ASCE 2023 Best Paper Award for Abdolmajid Erfani

Group of two presenters and three award recipients on the ASCE stage.
Pictured from left to right: President of ASCE Maria C. Lehman, Dr. Hickey, Assistant Professor Abdolmajid Erfani, Dr. Cui, and Executive Director of ASCE Thomas W. Smith III.

Dr. Abdolmajid Erfani, assistant professor in Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering, in collaboration with Dr. Hickey and Dr. Cui, University of Maryland, has been honored with the 2023 Best Paper Award for their article published in the ASCE Journal of Management in Engineering.

The Journal of Management in Engineering has achieved the highest impact factor among all the journals published by the American Society of Civil Engineers in recent years. The awarded article is titled “Use of LinkedIn Data and Machine Learning to Analyze Gender Differences in Construction Career Paths.” The study analyzed female representation in leadership roles within the top 400 engineering contractors.

Successful women leaders have more diverse career paths, working at 56% more companies, holding 19% more job titles, and being 73% more likely to have a graduate degree compared to men. However, as women’s perceived competence rises, their perceived likeability diminishes, according to language analysis on LinkedIn recommendations. These challenges are why many female engineering college graduates don’t pursue careers in the field. Although women earn about 22% of civil and environmental engineering degrees, they make up only 10.9% of the AEC workforce and 3.9% of engineering executives.

The award ceremony was held during the ASCE Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois, on October 18–21, 2023.

“Use of LinkedIn Data and Machine Learning to Analyze Gender Differences in Construction Career Paths”
Paul J. Hickey, Abdolmajid Erfani, and Qingbin Cui, A.M.
Journal of Management in Engineering, Volume 38, Issue 6
https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0001087