Author: College of Engineering

Several Michigan Tech faculty will deliver presentations during the 2017-18 Carnegie Museum Natural History Seminar Series: Citizen Science.

Citizen Science

Can citizens impact governance by collecting climate data?: A case from the tropical mountains in Veracruz state, Mexico

Dr. Alex S. Mayer
Charles and Patricia Nelson Presidential Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Professor, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences
Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Carnegie Museum Community Room
6:30 p.m.-7 p.m. Social and introductions
7 p.m.-8 p.m. Lecture and discussion

Open to the public. Free admission.

Facebook Event

Professor Bill Bulleit spoke on the thought processes of engineers for the Environmental Engineering Seminar last Monday, January 29, 2018. The talk was entitled
The Engineering Way of Thinking – An Introduction.

Tech prof offers inside look into engineer’s mind

Bulleit sees a distinction between engineering and science and other disciplines commonly grouped with it.

In engineering, you use rules of thumb, safety rules and approximations. Failure will occur and advances will come from those failures.

Read more at the Mining Gazette, by Kali Katerberg.

Channel 3-UPMatters aired a story about what you need to know about snow on your roof, quoting Professor Bill Bulleit (CEE).

What to know about snow on your roof

William Bulleit is a structural engineering professor at Michigan Tech. He says, “The more complicated the roof the more difficult it is to decide what you should do with it.”

There are things you can look out for that may be a sign there’s too much snow on your roof.

Read more at Channel 3-UPMatters.

Bill Sproule (CEE) has been appointed by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) to be an Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Ambassador for a two-year term.

ACRP is an industry-driven, applied research program that develops practical solutions to problems faced by airport operators. It is managed by TRB and sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

ACRP Ambassadors are volunteers who serve as liaisons between the TRB and ACRP, the research community, and airports operators at conferences and industry events and will make presentations on the ACRP research process and products, and other airport topics, and promote opportunities for others to be involved in ACRP research panels and projects.

Interlochen Public Radio and Michigan Public Radio aired a story about toxic chemicals in fish in the Great Lakes, particularly their impact on indigenous peoples, quoting Noel Urban (CEE) and Jerry Jondreau (SFRES).

When fish advisories threaten a traditional way of life

If you eat wild caught fish from Michigan, you might know about fish consumption advisories. They’re recommended limits on safe amounts of fish to eat, and they’re necessary because toxic chemicals build up in fish in the Great Lakes and inland lakes and streams.

A toxic burden

Around this same time, an invisible problem emerged: toxic contamination of fish by chemicals like methylmercury and poly-chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Noel Urban is a professor at Michigan Technological University who studies pollutants cycling through the environment. He tells me the chemicals that build up in fish are still being emitted around the world.

“So mercury’s primary sources are coal-fired power plants, mining, metal processing. PCBs are emitted from landfills, from wastewater treatment plants, from transformers that are still in use that have PCBs, agricultural chemicals are also in this so there’s a wide variety of sources,” he explains.

Read more and listen to the audio interview at Interlochen Public Radio and Michigan Public Radio, by Kaye LaFond.

U.P. tribe wants to know: “When can we eat the fish?” Researchers try to answer.

“When can we eat the fish?”

That’s what the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wants to know.

“Culturally-relevant” fish advisories

In 2008, Valoree Gagnon was still an undergraduate student at Michigan Technological University. She learned that toxic chemicals like mercury and PCBs build up in fish in the region. And she learned that not everyone limits their fish intake, especially tribal communities.

“They were consuming fish at rates that were above human health criteria, and that was a really big concern for me,” she says.

Read more and listen to the audio interview at Michigan Public Radio, by Kaye LaFond.