Upon the recommendation of the Structural Engineering Institute, Arman Tatar has been selected by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as the recipient of the 2022 O.H. Ammann Research Fellowship in Structural Engineering.
The award will allow Tatar to purchase the necessary parts and material to pursue his original research topic in addition to the research he is currently conducting under Dan Dowden’s supervision.
By Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering.
Michigan Tech student, staff, and faculty researchers planned, implemented, and attended the NSF-sponsored Build and Broaden Indigenous Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Symposium at Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and Northern Michigan University from May 20-22, 2022.
Among the planning team were co-principal investigator (co-PI) Valoree Gagnon (CFRES/GLRC), Erika Vye (GLRC), Emily Shaw (CEGE), Shelby Lane-Clark (CFRES), Elizabeth Brown (SS) and Kate McGowen (CFRES).
The event was led by the Intertribal Agriculture Council (principal investigator Dan Cornelius); Northern Michigan University (co-PI Martin Reinhardt); Ferris State University (co-PI Scott Herron); and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. The Michigan Tech team is currently writing the Proceedings document, which will be publicly available later this summer at food-sovereignty.com.
By College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science.
Several Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC) affiliated faculty, research staff and students represented Michigan Tech on May 14 to May 20 at the 2022 Joint Aquatic Science Meeting (JASM) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. JASM is the world’s largest gathering of aquatic scientists, students, practitioners, resource agency staff and industry representatives.
This year, the GLRC was a Silver Sponsor for the event and had a booth in the exhibit hall. Those who presented include:
In addition, Michael Gretz (BioSci) attended as an executive committee and board of trustees member representative for the Phycological Society of America administration.
Other Michigan Tech representatives included GLRC Director Tim Havens (CS/GLRC/ICC) and Jamey Anderson (GLRC/MRAF).
By Great Lakes Research Center.
The Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE) congratulates Noel Urban for being named the Best Journal of Great Lakes Research Associate Editor for 2021.
The Journal of Great Lakes Research is the official journal of the International Association for Great Lakes Research (IAGLR). Urban is a member of its editorial board, which includes many associate editors with a wide range of expertise.
By Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering.
This award is made annually to an undergraduate civil or environmental engineering student who has demonstrated leadership, passion, and activism for effecting environmental sustainability at the local, national, or global level.
Brian Goldberg has been selected for the 2022 Nicole Bloom Award – Brian is the current co-president of the Green Campus Enterprise. Brian was nominated for this award by Robert Handler, advisor for the Green Campus Enterprise and adjunct faculty in the CEGE Department. The Green Campus Enterprise works to design and assess projects that could have a meaningful impact on the environmental footprint of the Michigan Tech campus. Brian has been instrumental in developing new campus projects for the Green Campus Enterprise. His leadership has helped move the Green Campus Enterprise in the right direction.
The Nicole Bloom award is accompanied by the Pati and Soumitri Reddy $1000 endowed scholarship.
Thomas Pastell was selected to represent the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering as our 2022 Department Scholar and to be considered for the Provost’s Award for Scholarship. Thomas is civil engineering major that exemplifies the intellectual curiosity and creativity that are the hallmarks of a high achieving student and scholar, additionally, he is extremely conscientious, honest, and hardworking. Thomas is captain of the Steel Bridge team and he is using his steel bridge activities to participate in the Built World Enterprise. He is also a trailblazer as he thought to combine the two experiential learning activities.
The Department Scholar recognition is accompanied by a $500 scholarship.
This award is named after Professor Emeritus David Hand who designed the environmental engineering process lab and taught the class for over 15 years. Dr. Hand is internationally known for his expertise in water treatment.
This award recognizes a team of students from the CEE 4509 capstone environmental engineering class for: outstanding technical skills in the laboratory, outstanding teamwork and professionalism, effective oral and written communications, and excellence in safety protocol as recognized by your peers and supported by the instructor.
This year there were two teams that Dr. Jennifer Becker and Dr. Eric Seagren found best embodied the spirit of this award and both will be recognized.
Aden Clark
Margaret Purvis
Evan Rye
Malina Gallmeyer
Jack Hoffman
Anabel Needham
Each team member will receive a $100 scholarship from the CEE Department.
The Danielle Ladwig Award is made annually to a graduate-level student in civil or environmental engineering in recognition of outstanding achievement in academics, research, and service, in memory of our friend and colleague, Danielle Ladwig.
This year Rose Daily was selected for the 2022 Danielle Ladwig Award. She was nominated for the award by Joan Chadde who highlighted her admirable record of service accomplishments. Rose has been especially active in promoting sustainable solutions for campus and the local community. She has been involved in numerous ways with outreach and has presented to Grade 4-12 students through the Water Festival and the Lake Superior Youth Symposium as well as career path presentations on environmental engineering for local high school students. In the past academic year, Rose has been expanding her expertise in sustainable systems at Instituto Monteverde in Costa Rica. There she has been working on a project to construct a rainwater collection system for a local K-12 school (Monteverde Friends School) and designing a constructed wetland to treat all of the grey water leaving another local K-12 school (Cloud Forest School). Rose was the recipient of an NSF GRFP Fellowship which has funded her work in Costa Rica.
This award is accompanied by the Pati and Soumitri Reddy $1000 endowed fellowship.
The Graduate Research Excellence Award is made annually to a graduate-level student in civil or environmental engineering to recognize outstanding student scholarship and research contributions.
This year Dongzhao Jin and Yunxiang Ma have both been selected for recognition with the 2022 Graduate Research Excellence Award. The quality of their research and publications is very deserving of recognition.
Dongzhao (Kobe) Jin is a civil engineering doctoral candidate advised by Dr. Zhanping You. He is researching sustainable asphalt pavements. To date, his research has led to a number of papers including 15 published peer-reviewed journal papers, 2 conference proceedings, and 1 under-review paper. His strong track record is equivalent to those of many assistant professors in well-known institutions. In addition to his publications, he has also been very active to help seek funding and preparing proposals for my research group. He is enthusiastically preparing himself to become a future researcher to develop sustainable construction materials. His efforts in teaching made him earn the Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award in 2020. He also received the 2022 Graduate Student Government Exceptional Student Scholar Award.
Yunxiang Ma is a civil engineering doctoral candidate advised by Dr. Qingli Dai. He is researching the mechanical behavior of CLT walls and wind and seismic performance of CLT shear wall structures. Mr. Ma has dedicated his research to developing the research results on performance evaluation of CLT panels and resilient CLT shear wall structures. His research has resulted in 8 journal papers, 2 under second-review papers, and 1 to-be-submitted manuscript. It is noted that he has published papers in several high-impacted journals (in our field) including the Journal of Cleaner Production (IF: 7.246), the Journal of Construction and Building Materials (IF: 4.419), and ASCE Journal of Structure Engineering (IF: 2.528). These three journals are the most highly rated in the field of construction materials and structural engineering, respectively. He has also worked collaboratively with the scientists in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest product Lab and Colorado School of Mines for different research projects. He is the recipient of the Graduate School Finishing Fellowship and the 2022 Department Outstanding Scholarship Award.
This award is accompanied by a $1000 Wilbur Haas Memorial Fellowship.
The Department Citizenship Award recognizes a faculty and staff member that ‘goes the extra mile whether it be in representing the Department, helping colleagues, or participating at events. The award is decided by the Department Chair and is accompanied by a $1000 to a faculty IRAD or staff extra compensation.
This was a tough decision as so many have stepped up to ensure our teaching, research and service activities excelled during the last year, despite shrinking budgets, colleague departures, and challenges created because of COVID.
Jeffery Hollingsworth is being recognized for his incredible service this year. Jeffery is recognized for stepping up following a sudden departure of a faculty member, filling in for a faculty member who was having health problems, and for serving on the faculty search committee. In addition to all that, Jeffery has actively participated in the recruitment process, kept up with binder changes on behalf of the geospatial program, leading the departmental assessment activities, and is participating in teacher and K-12 outreach events this summer. Thank you Jeffery for your service to your colleagues, our students, and prospective students.
Due to the sudden departure of Dave Perram and the retirement of Chris Wojick, a huge void was created in the CEGE safety program. Kiko (aka Henrique de Melo e Silva) is receiving the Departmental Citizen Award for willingly stepping up to fill the vacancy and subsequently leading safety activities at the college and university level. Thank you for being willing to grow in taking on this role.
The CEGE Department has two awards that are voted on by the departmental students, the GTA of the Year and the Faculty of the Year Award. We appreciate the work of Chi Epsilon and their advisor, Stephen Morse, for conducting the voting.
The Faculty of the Year award will recognize two faculty – the top voted faculty from the Civil/Geospatial Engineering specialties and the top voted faculty from the Environmental/Water Resources Engineering specialties. This award will be accompanied by a $1000 transfer to the faculty IRAD index.
Dr. Stan Vitton joined the faculty of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering in 1994. Over the years he has shared his knowledge with CEGE students on a wide variety of engineering topics as well as his industrial engineering experience with Shell Oil. He has instructed numerous courses in the geotechnical engineering specialty. His research has been in the area of geotechnical materials and during his twenty-eight years at Michigan Tech, he had 31 peer-reviewed publications, 20 peer-reviewed conference proceedings, 27 reports, 4 book chapters, 61 professional presentations, 2 U.S. and international patents, and a total research funding of $6.3 million with $2.3 million directly attributed to Dr. Vitton. In June 2022, Stan will retire from the CEGE Department.
Dr. Urban joined the faculty of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering in 1995. His teaching interests are in the environmental engineering domain and include: Environmental Engineering Chemical Processes, Surface Water Quality Engineering, and Global Biogeochemistry. He has an active research program and has interests in wetland biogeochemistry, sediment diagenesis, and the environmental impact and fate of pollutants.
The GTA of the Year award recognizes the top voted graduate teaching assistant from all the Department’s specialty areas. This award will be accompanied by a $500 fellowship.
Tyler LeMahieu is the 2022 GTA of the year. He was a GTA for CEE 3620, Water Resources Engineering.
A group of three undergraduate environmental engineering students from Built World Enterprise (BWE) — Francine Rosinski, Jake McDowell and Morgan Hallberg — competed in the 32nd annual Waste Management Education Research Consortium (WERC) Design Contest. For WERC, they had to prepare a written report, oral presentation, poster presentation and bench scale demonstration. At the competition, they placed first overall in their task for the bench scale demonstration, second overall in their task, and second for the flash talk presentation.
They focused their research experiment on value-added copper smelting slag use. They were asked to recover an economically valuable material from the copper slag and/or produce a useful product from copper smelting slag that makes use of its unique properties. In the theoretical business plan, the team extracted the high content of iron from the copper slag and used the remaining material to replace sand with copper slag in ceramic tiles. This, overall, increased the sustainability and strength of ceramic tiles.
Way to represent Michigan Technological University, BWE WERC team!
By Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering.
Two Michigan Tech graduate students, Tessa Steenwinkel and Tyler LeMahieu, have been awarded National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships, and one undergraduate student, Jenna Brewer, has been given an honorable mention.
The oldest STEM-related fellowship program in the United States, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is a prestigious award that recognizes exceptional graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines early in their career and supports them through graduate education. NSF-GRFP fellows are an exceptional group; 42 fellows have become Nobel Laureates and about 450 fellows are members of the National Academy of Sciences.
The fellowship provides three years of financial support, including a $34,000 stipend for each fellow and a $12,000 cost-of-education allowance for the fellow’s institution. Besides financial support for fellows, the GRFP provides opportunities for research in national laboratories and international research.
The Graduate School is proud of these students for their outstanding scholarship. These awards highlight the quality of students at Michigan Tech, the innovative work they have accomplished, the potential for leadership and impact in science and engineering that the country recognizes in these students and the incredible role that faculty play in students’ academic success.
LeMahieu is an environmental engineering MS student under advisor Cory McDonald. LeMahieu’s proposal was titled, “Understanding Wild Rice Site Suitability in a Changing Climate.”
LeMahieu writes: “I plan to dedicate my career to bridging gaps between the scientific body and land managers. I would like to manage public and rural lands for the farmer, the logger and the hunter while managing those same lands for improved water and ecological health into perpetuity. Because fundamentally, rural land managers have the same goal in mind as those studying the environment — a useful, productive and sound ecosystem which will support and be supported by the next generation. That common ground is not always evident to both parties, but I am equipped to act as an intermediary with a foot in both worlds.”
By the Graduate School.
Living next to the world’s largest freshwater lake, it’s easy to forget that not everyone is as fortunate.
Bailey Papes, a master’s student in Environmental Engineering, is completing a research project that started in summer 2021 through an internship at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility (BGNDRF) in Alamogordo, NM. The facility focuses on pilot-scale testing of innovative water treatment processes for the desalination of brackish and impaired groundwater. During the internship, Bailey conducted her own research project focusing on the removal of per and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from brackish groundwater using different types of biochar produced from halophytes and cow bone. Biochar may be a sustainable alternative to powdered activated carbon (PAC) or granular activated carbon (GAC) for PFAS adsorption from aqueous solutions. The results of the experiments showed that PFAS do adsorb to biochars. However, compared to PAC, approximately ten times more biochar must be added to water to effectively remove PFAS, and a cost-benefit analysis is needed to determine if biochar is an economically viable option for PFAS adsorption.
The internship at BGNDRF exposed Bailey to a wide range of drinking water treatment technologies and gave her experience addressing PFAS contamination, which is a growing concern throughout the world. It also opened her eyes to how serious water scarcity issues are within the U.S. Prior to attending Michigan Tech, Bailey earned her undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Western Michigan University. Subsequently, she served in the Peace Corps as an education volunteer in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where she taught chemistry, biology, and physics at the local high school. During her service, the well in her community dried up, and Bailey was forced to send a motorcycle five miles away to fetch drinking water. After experiencing water scarcity firsthand, she decided to pursue her master’s in environmental engineering. In addition to completing an internship at BGNDRF during her M.S. studies, Bailey worked with Dr. David Watkins to develop models of the wastewater collection systems in Houghton-Hancock that can be used in conjunction with SARS-CoV-2 concentrations to describe COVID-19 dynamics in these communities. She also is conducting research in the laboratory of Dr. Rebecca Ong (Chemical Engineering), and is completing graduate certificates in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and Engineering Sustainability and Resilience. Dr. Jennifer Becker is Bailey’s graduate advisor. Upon graduation, Bailey will work for a water and wastewater engineering consulting firm to help ensure that everyone has access to clean and safe drinking water.
The Tech Forward Initiative on Sustainability and Resilience (ISR) is happy to announce the selection of two Sustainable and Resilient Communities Faculty Research Fellows!
Judith Perlinger is a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE) and an established scholar working in the realm of sustainability and resilience.
Ana Dyreson is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics (ME-EM) who works in the realm of energy systems transitions and the energy-water-climate nexus.
Perlinger and Dyreson will both be relieved of one course for the fall 2022 semester in order to focus on developing and submitting research funding proposals that will enhance Michigan Tech’s leadership in impactful sustainability and resilience research.
Perlinger will be working on new proposals for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Coastlines and People (CoPe) program, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Dyreson will be working on proposal submissions for NSF programs, including the NSF CAREER award program, and for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
With this fellowship program, ISR aims to support researchers in developing new collaborations and opportunities to grow research activities that address contemporary research challenges in sustainability and resilience. This program will propel research leaders at Michigan Tech to pursue new opportunities and increase impactful research activities. ISR is delighted to support these dedicated scholars through the Faculty Research Fellows program.
For more information or with any questions, please contact Chelsea Schelly at cschelly@mtu.edu.
By Tech Forward Initiative for Sustainability and Resilience.
The Vice President for Research Office (VPR) has awarded Century II Campaign Endowed Equipment Fund (C2E2) awards at the recommendation of the C2E2 Committee. In Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering, the recipients were:
Qingli “Barbara” Dai (CEGE) — Purchase of Freeze-Thaw and Internal Frost Damage Test System
Eric Seagren (CEGE) — The VisiSens TD System for 2-D In Situ Measurement of O2, CO2, and pH Using Optical Chemical Sensors: Opportunities for Research and Education
