Two grad students win national scholarships from foundation drilling association

Ph.D. student Seth Mallett. (Photo: Jess Hunt-Ralston)
Mallett
Master's student Nicholas Sianta. (Photo: Belal Elnaggar)
Sianta

Graduate students Seth Mallett and Nicholas Sianta have won scholarships from the construction trade association for deep foundations.

They are two of just 17 winners nationwide selected this year by ADSC: The International Association of Foundation Drilling.

Sianta, a master’s student studying with Higginbotham Professor David Frost, said he wanted to challenge himself and plug into the organization’s industry network. The scholarship will support his work on a lab-scale model testing a new approach to boosting geothermal power generation using deep pile foundations.

“The global population is only increasing and becoming more urban. This means more and bigger buildings, both residential and commercial, that require pile foundations,” Sianta said. “A large portion of global energy consumption comes from buildings, and this technology allows us to combat that.”

As scholarship winners, Mallett and Sianta will travel to the Bahamas in the spring for ADSC’s annual conference.

“Winning the scholarship, to me, means that the hard work I have put in has been recognized for its high quality,” Sianta said.