Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering News

This time last year, the finishing touches were just being put on Michigan Technological University’s Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC). Researchers were starting to move in, and plans were being made for a mid-summer building dedication.

What a difference a year makes. Now celebrating its first anniversary, the GLRC is fast becoming the go-to source for data about the Great Lakes and the home of pioneering investigations into solutions to the challenges facing them.

“This is a unique, amazing place,” says Guy Meadows, director of the GLRC. Meadows came to Michigan Tech from the University of Michigan to lead the Great Lakes research efforts here. “Scientists from all across the basin have their eyes on us. The future of Great Lakes research is based right here.”
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Rail Transportation Program Announces AREMA Scholarship Recipients

Pasi Lautala, Director of the Rail Transportation Program (RTP), co-authored a spotlight article on the USDOT Research and Innovative Technology (RITA) the only Tier 1 University Transportation Center (UTC) focused on rail. Lautala is associate director of education for the NURail (National University Rail Center) center, a consortium of seven universities including Michigan Tech, led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and collaborating on the research theme of shared rail corridors. Lautala’s article, “NURail – Developing a Generation of Railway Professionals” is located online.

CTT Staffers Help Run and Present at Construction Career Days
Staff from the Center for Technology and Training (CTT), part of the Michigan Tech Transportation Institute, joined other construction industry professionals from across Michigan to coordinate the sixth annual Michigan Construction Career Days event in Howell last week. Construction Career Days attracted nearly 2000 middle and high school students and teachers from across Lower Michigan. The event is designed to show young people the wide variety of careers available in the construction industry—at all levels of education and experience.

Billions of people worldwide burn animal dung, crop residues, wood and charcoal to cook their meals. And the chemicals produced and inhaled sicken or kill millions. At particular risk are women who prepare their families’ food and children 5-years-old or younger.

Up to now, most interventions have focused on improving the cookstove to lower emissions. And that would be fine, if there were enough improved cookstoves to go around. But there aren’t. In 2012, only 2.5 million improved cookstoves were distributed, improving the household air pollution situation for exactly one-half of 1 percent of the world’s biomass burners.