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NSF Research Traineeship Award - Transforming STEM Graduate Education
Air Pollution Reduces Global Life Expectancy by More Than One Year, Study Finds
Nine alumni and one faculty member from the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have been elected to the Academy of Distinguished Alumni.
The following awards were presented at the 15th annual Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Spring Banquet, which was held on April 19, 2018, at the Darrell K Royal—Texas Memorial Stadium Touchdown Club.
John A. Focht Academic Excellence Award
Abigail Smith
Presented to a Civil Engineering student who started as a freshman at UT Austin, has the highest GPA in the class and is completing their degree in four years.
Werner E. Dornberger Academic Excellence Award
Ryan Boehm
Presented to an Architectural Engineering student who started as a freshman at UT Austin, has the highest GPA in the class and is completing their degree in four years.
CE Leadership Award
Molly Patterson
Presented to a Civil Engineering student who demonstrates outstanding leadership in campus and community activities.
ARE Leadership Award
Sabrina Ransbarger
Presented to an Architectural Engineering student who demonstrates outstanding leadership in campus and community activities.
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
Hagen Fritz
Presented to a teaching assistant who has shown exemplary dedication and motivation in their teaching.
Department Teaching Award
Kasey Faust
Presented to a faculty member who has excelled in teaching and has demonstrated exceptional motivation for students in the classroom.
Ervin S. Perry Student Appreciation Award
Fernanda Leite
Presented to a faculty member who best meets the ideals of an excellent teacher and a good friend.
Staff Excellence Awards
Elizabeth Clayton and Danny Quiroz
Presented to staff members who have distinguished themselves and contributed significantly to the CAEE department’s teaching, advising, mentoring and/or research efforts.
Alumnus Paul Biju-Duval was selected to receive the 2018 SOM Foundation Structural Engineering Travel Fellowship. The $20,000 award enables a gifted graduate to experience works of architecture and engineering firsthand.
The SOM Foundation was established in 1979 by the Partners of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) and launched its Traveling Fellowship Program in 1981 to enrich the education of the nation’s most promising young architecture and engineering students.
The fellowships offer recent graduates the opportunity to travel in connection with carrying out in-depth research, collaborate with other professionals, and pursue independent study outside the established patterns of formal education. The foundation’s hope is that the student will gain a critical appreciation of the aesthetics of structures, thus influencing the teaching and practice of structural engineering in the future.
Paul earned a doctoral degree in civil engineering at The University of Texas at Austin in 2017. His research focused on the development of UT Bridge, a finite element program that is now being used by bridge engineers across the country to quickly and accurately evaluate the stability and behavior of curved steel bridges during construction.
Born in Paris, France, Paul developed a passion for architecture and engineering as a young man. “Structural engineering at its best is also an art,” he said. The Fellowship will allow him to appreciate works of structural art worldwide and the aesthetics inherent to structural materials such as steel, concrete, and glass.
The last time a student from the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering received the SOM Foundation Structural Engineering Travel Fellowship was in 1999.
Assistant Professor Joshua Apte’s study of air pollution was named the Top Environmental Technology Paper of 2017 by the journal Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T).
Apte’s study, entitled “High-Resolution Air Pollution Mapping with Google Street View Cars: Exploiting Big Data,” relates to the development of a new hyper-local approach to mapping air pollution at the sub-city block scale. This technique could address major air quality monitoring gaps and has the potential to transform the way air pollution is monitored in urban areas worldwide. It can also shed light on the health effects for urban dwellers.
ES&T is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Chemical Society since 1967. To highlight notable publications each year, ES&T editors identify outstanding papers and select one from the categories of Environmental Science, Environmental Technology, Environmental Policy and Features. Apte’s paper was selected from among over 1500 papers published in ES&T in 2017.
In partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, Google and Aclima, Apte led a research team to develop the most detailed and extensive local map of air pollution ever produced for an urban area. The team used specially equipped Google Street View cars to measure air quality on a block-by-block basis.
Using Aclima’s measurement system integrated into Google Street View cars, the team mapped air pollution in 78 square miles of Oakland, California, over an entire year, collecting one of the largest data sets for air pollution ever measured on single city streets. This new technique maps urban air pollution at 100,000 times greater spatial resolution than is possible with traditional government air quality monitors.
The study included co-authors from the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia, Utrecht University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Aclima and the Environmental Defense Fund.
Apte and his research team study human exposure to air pollution in the built environment. They use methods from environmental engineering, aerosol science, exposure assessment and environmental health to understand the relationships between emissions, atmospheric transformations, concentrations, human exposures and health effects.
Assistant Professor Trevor Hrynyk was recently selected to receive the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Raymond C. Reese Research Prize in recognition of outstanding contributions to the application of structural engineering research.
His paper, “Modeling of Steel-Concrete Composite Elements under In-Plane and Out-of-Plane Loads,” was awarded for applying fundamental research to design practice.
Hrynyk’s research focuses on modeling procedures for the design and assessment of reinforced concrete structures; computational modeling of reinforced concrete structures subjected to blast and impact; behavior and modeling of fiber-reinforced concrete structures; behavior and modeling of steel-concrete composite structures.
He will receive the award during the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE Structures Congress in April 2018.
The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering is once again highly ranked in the U.S. News & World Report's 2019 graduate program rankings, affirming the department's position as one of the nation’s top engineering programs.
The graduate program in Civil Engineering is ranked No. 2 and the Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering program is ranked No. 6.
The department's graduate program provides students with the educational background needed to develop solutions, technologies, and sustainable systems that impact society and improve lives around the world. Graduate students work collaboratively alongside faculty who are internationally recognized leaders in their fields.
In addition, the Cockrell School of Engineering is ranked as the No.10 best engineering school in the country, and several of UT Austin’s engineering programs ranked in the nation’s top 10 for their respective programs, according to the rankings.
U.S. News & World Report’s engineering graduate program rankings are based on student acceptance rates, faculty/student ratios, research expenditures, reputation among engineers in industry and academia, the number of doctoral degrees produced, the percentage of faculty elected to the National Academy of Engineering and entrance exam scores.
The department's civil and environmental engineering undergraduate programs are both ranked No. 4 in the U.S. News and Report's 2018 undergraduate program rankings.
Amit Bhasin, associate professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering, has been named the new director of the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) at The University of Texas at Austin. He assumed the role on Feb. 15 and is the fifth director in the center’s 55-year history.
Bhasin succeeds Professor Chandra Bhat, who served as director of CTR since September 2012 and who guided the center through a period of significant growth, success and interdisciplinary research. Bhat will continue to serve as a faculty researcher in CTR.
CTR was founded in 1963 and specializes in advancing technologies and developing safety innovations that influence future policy. The transportation program and CTR at UT Austin was ranked #2 in the nation last year in the field of Transportation Science and Technology by the Shanghai-based Academic Ranking of World Universities. The center partners with local, state and national agencies and organizations and brings in over $15 million in research funding annually. In addition to research, CTR focuses on education, workforce development and technology commercialization.
“Amit is a tremendous choice to lead our Center for Transportation Research into the future,” said Sharon L. Wood, dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering. “As a recognized expert in infrastructure materials, Amit will provide critical leadership as we work with state and federal organizations to develop long-term solutions and improve our highways and transportation systems.”
As director of CTR, Bhasin oversees an extensive research portfolio that addresses many aspects of transportation, including traffic congestion relief, driver behavior, technological development, transportation policy and environmental and energy impacts. CTR’s portfolio includes over 100 faculty members, full-time researchers and administrative personnel, and more than 175 graduate and undergraduate students are actively involved in research projects through the center.
“I am honored to serve as the new director of CTR, and I look forward to continuing the excellent work that Chandra has done over the past five years to advance our enterprise,” said Bhasin, who holds the Temple Foundation Endowed Teaching Fellowship in Engineering #2 in the Cockrell School. “CTR is a world-class organization, and I will work to ensure that we remain at the forefront of transportation research in this country.”
Bhasin’s research focuses on infrastructure materials with emphasis on asphalt materials and pavement infrastructure. His research activities are at the intersection of materials science and mechanics with a focus on sustainable materials and design tools for the construction and preservation of pavements.
Bhasin, who received his B.S. from the Indian Institute of Technology and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, is a former National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient and the winner of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association-Council for University Transportation Centers Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research and the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Walter L. Huber civil engineering research prize. As an educator, he is a former recipient of the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award from UT Austin and the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award from The University of Texas System.
