Georgia Institute of Technology School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Though they’re relatively rare, the consequences of disasters like earthquakes, flooding and landslides are dire — and growing. Just ask Jorge Macedo, who thinks a lot about the risks to people, communities and engineering systems from those kinds of extreme events.

In the next two decades, the world faces a yawning gap in the energy we produce and the energy we consume. The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Sheng Dai is working with the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy on one of the renewable sources that could help us make up ground: geothermal energy.

Two months of engineering lessons culminated in this: a 3-D printed plastic model buried in a bucket of sand.

The Geosynthetic Institute has named Ph.D. student Rodrigo Borela one of its 2017 fellows, an honor afforded only a handful of students across the globe.