CEEatGT Update: March 2015

Top of the class

U.S. News & World Report’s annual graduate program rankings once again put CEE’s civil and environmental engineering degrees among the nation’s best. The environmental program is ranked No. 4 and civil is No. 5. Meanwhile, three students won Sigma Xi Research Awards for their graduate studies, three professors earned accolades from Georgia Tech for their work, and the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers hailed two alumni and a current student as Georgia’s best.
 
A chat with the president
You’ve heard President Obama stopped by a few weeks ago. Maybe you got to witness his speech in McCamish Pavilion. But how about talking to POTUS directly? Laura O’Connell did.		 Reimagining transportation planning
Josie Kressner has turned her Ph.D. research into a startup company to improve the way planners forecast transportation needs decades into the future. She’s working now on a pilot project with the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Packed house

Georgia Tech President Emeritus Wayne Clough said engineers must plan for climate change during the inaugural Hyatt Distinguished Alumni Leadership Lecture.  Watch his presentation and see his list of suggested further reading.

Among the alpacas A dozen CEE students traveled to Bolivia during Spring Break to test the air and water in La Paz and the surrounding areas. Their work even attracted the attention of the Bolivian media.

Science that matters Mustafa Aral’s Multimedia Environmental Simulations Laboratory has won the grand prize in research from American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists. Their work on water contamination at U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune influenced the passage of a federal law providing medical services for affected Marines and their families.

National service School Chair Reginald DesRoches is one of the newest members of the Board on Army Science and Technology at the National Research Council. DesRoches will serve in the prestigious role for three years.
Crowded buses CityLab highlighted alumna Candace Brakewood’s research showing real-time arrival information actually does boost ridership, especially on high-volume routes. The findings come from Brakewood’s Ph.D. dissertation.
Our artsy side Been by Clough Commons lately? A bunch of CEE students have artwork on display as part of the annual Clough Art Crawl. And others wrote or performed pieces as part of the exhibition’s opening.
Co-op success Georgia Tech’s Co-op program has named CEE’s Corinna Slater as one of its top students this year, giving her the Joe T. Laboon Award for her academic and on-the-job excellence.
Eno Fellow The Eno Center for Transportation named Alice Grossman one of its 2015 fellows, punching her ticket to the annual Future Leaders Development Conference this summer. Grossman is a third-year doctoral student.
Leading Douglas County Mark Teal joined the ranks of CEE alumni in leadership positions around the state and around the globe this month. The Douglas County Commission named Teal the new leader in the Georgia county.
Earthquake progress Boss Magazine’s new cover story prominently features School Chair Reginald DesRoches. In the piece on the progress engineers have made in understanding and designing for earthquakes, DesRoches said more powerful computer modeling and new isolation techniques have made us much better at building our structures to withstand shaking ground.

Until Next Month...http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2930/14204824807_2b3cfdf185_b.jpg
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Map of School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Phone: 404-894-2201
Fax: 404-894-2278