USC Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

A big thank you to Jerome Jontry from USC Facilities Planning and Management Services and Jose Alday from Turner Construction Company for speaking in last night's CE 573 class as part of our Emerging Technologies in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction lecture series! appreciates their valuable contributions to our MSCE - Emerging Technologies in Construction (formerly MSCE - Advanced Design and Construction Technologies) program.

Our newly renamed MSCE - Emerging Technologies in Construction program is designed for students with a passion for technologies and a drive to influence the design and engineering of the built environment. We aim to prepare the next generation of innovators to not only harness the power of technological innovation, but to bridge the industry’s fragmentation in order to foster collaboration, catalyze change, and offer advanced and sustainable solutions to global problems. As part of preparing our graduates for design, engineering, construction, management and leadership roles in the built environment, Professor David Ge**er [profile link] continues to bring in industry partners and experts to share their vision for the present and future of the AEC industry and the technologies to support their missions. Learn more about : https://cee.usc.edu/academics/masters-degree/civil-engineering/msce-emerging-technologies-in-construction/

Are you a USC student? An ? A budding ? The USC Sonny Astani Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering invites our USC community to join us for our 3rd annual Innovate X LA: Das Family Student Competition! will be hosting a to our competition on Monday, September 16, 3:00-5:00 PM in the front of the KAP building. USC students of all majors are welcome (with RSVP); you DO NOT need to be a CEE student to participate in this event.

Learn more and RSVP: https://daschallenge.com/

USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Bora Gencturk was selected to a study committee mandated by the US Congress on high performance materials through The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). The study will identify key demands and challenges facing the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) related to navigation and flood risk management assets; consider how innovative materials can support capabilities critical to meeting these demands and challenges; and make recommendations to inform strategies that USACE can pursue to further the development, demonstration, and deployment of promising materials in new and existing infrastructure.

As appropriate, the committee will make recommendations to inform strategies that USACE can pursue in concert with its partners in government, industry, and academia to further understanding of how innovative materials may be used and readied for deployment in water resources infrastructure.

Learn more: https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/study-on-furthering-the-development-and-use-of-innovative-materials-in-water-resources-infrastructure

USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Burcin Becerik-Ge**er was awarded at $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study "Behavior-driven Building Safety and Emergency Management for Campus Communities."

This project aims to explore new ways in which human behaviors are systemically and robustly incorporated into building design and emergency protocols. Specifically, the focus of the project is to understand how people in different roles respond to building emergencies, both individually and collectively, with empirical data collected from human-subject experiments, behavioral theories, and insights from domain experts. Intelligent crowd simulations are developed to represent the goals, preferences, and actions of diverse groups of building occupants as well as their interactions with others and the environment.

How do you combine innovation, entrepreneurship, and engineering? At , students can take the year-long course CE 486 (more commonly known as "Lives, Not Grades") to explore ways to harness technology to address global crises. The class, spanning two semesters and transcending traditional academia, teaches students to identify and solve problems faced by those who are displaced or disadvantaged, combining , , and . Student teams also receive funding for and .

This year’s course, like last year’s, focused on the millions of Ukrainians who have suffered greatly since Russia’s unprovoked war began in February 2022. After an initial visit last October, students returned to Romania for a second visit in mid-March to test their solutions and cement partnerships.

🎤 USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Farzad Naeim will be giving a keynote speech at the "International Conference in Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the 1999 Chi-Chi Earthquake" in Taipei, Taiwan on September 13-14, 2024. Measuring in at a magnitude of 7.3, the earthquake hit central Taiwan’s Chi-Chi Township around 2 a.m. local time on September 21, 1999, damaging buildings as far away as 145 kilometers to the north in Taipei. It was the second deadliest earthquake in Taiwan's recorded history. Dr. Naeim will address the "Evolution of Earthquake Engineering Since the 1999 Chi-Chi Earthquake," focusing upon earthquake resistant design.

Dr. Farzad Naeim is the current President of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE).

USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Chukwuebuka Nweke is working on a grant from the Statewide California Earthquake Center (SCEC) studying "Frequency-Based Validation of Site Response for Physics-Based Ground Motion Simulations in Northern California." The project will scrutinize physics-based earthquake simulations by comparing it with recorded earthquake data. The goal is to identify locations where the simulations give good prediction performance and where it does not. The biggest outcome of the results will be improvements to the resilience and performance of engineering infrastructure systems.

📢 Are you a student looking for some fun organizations and activities to be involved in? Consider joining the USC ASCE student chapter!

to earlier this spring when our ASCE student chapter traveled to Hawaii to attend the 2024 ASCE Pacific Southwest Student Symposium hosted by the University of Hawaii at Manoa. 🏝

👏 The USC ASCE student team placed 7th overall in the competition.

🏆 Our team won 2nd Place in the Geo-Wall competition, knocking out national teams. (Our first time competing since 2019!)

🏆 Our team also placed 5th Place in Steel Bridge with podium finishes in the following categories: 3rd Place in Cost Estimation , 2nd Place in Aesthetics , 2nd Place in Lightness

🎉 🏆 Please join us in congratulating USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Burcin Becerik-Ge**er for receiving the 2024 Peurifoy Construction Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)! Dr. Becerik-Ge**er was presented with her award in-person at the i3CE conference in Pittsburgh earlier this month.

📢 It's official! SAVE THE DATE 📅 📌 The 14th International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability (ICOSSAR'25) will be held on the campus of the University of Southern California (USC), in Los Angeles, on June 2-6 2025. The INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR STRUCTURAL SAFETY AND RELIABILITY (IASSR) promotes the study, research, and applications of scientific principles of safety, risk and reliability in the analysis, design, construction, maintenance and operations of structures and other engineering systems. We are now accepting proposals for sessions; proposals must be submitted online in the submission system by August 31.

Submit a proposal: https://submissions.icossar2025.org/

🥉 🤽‍♀️ We're cheering on our incoming first-year student Emily Ausmus, who is part of the US Women's Water Polo team in the 2024 Paris Olympics! The US will be playing against the Netherlands in the Bronze Medal Match this weekend. GOOOOOOO Team USA!!! Good luck! 🗼🤞

USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Najmedin Meshkati was appointed to the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee (DCISC). The DCISC is a three-person Committee charged with reviewing and making recommendations concerning the safety of operations at Pacific Gas and Electric Company's (PG&E) Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant (DCPP). The DCISC provides an additional layer of oversight of the DCPP, which is the only remaining operating nuclear plant in California, above and beyond the federal U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Roger Ghanem, in collaboration with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), is studying "Computational Evaluation and Design of Actuators for Core-Edge Integration (CEDA)" with support from the U.S. Department of Energy. The project contributes to accelerating the quest for fusion energy at scale by providing a consistent set of high-fidelity simulation tools for the design, performance assessment, and optimization of Fusion Pilot Plant (FPP) concept. Dr. Ghanem's role is to develop uncertainty quantification, verification and validation methodologies that are adapted to the experimental data collected as part of the effort and to the suite of mathematical and computational models used in the project.

This project, led by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), is a collaboration between physicists at Princeton University, The University of Texas at Austin (UT), and General Atomics, and computational scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Southern Methodist University (SMU) and University of Southern California.

🥇 Gooooooo Team USA! 🥇 US Women's Water Polo is going to the Olympic quarterfinals! is cheering on our very own Emily Ausmus, who is a first-year student in our department. Good luck, Emily! ✨

USC Sonny Astani Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Farzad Naeim opened and presided over the 2024 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (WCEE2024) in Milan, Italy earlier this summer. As the current president of the International Association of Earthquake Engineering (IAEE), Dr. Naeim welcomed over 4,250 conference attendees, making this year's event the largest gathering in the conference's history. Learn more: https://www.wcee2024.it/

USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Bora Gencturk is working on a project with Caltrans focused on the "development and testing of a novel anchor-profiled FRP jacket system for effective confinement of rectangular concrete columns." His project will pioneer an innovative retrofitting technique for rectangular concrete columns commonly used in transportation infrastructure. The new method involves a specialized fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) jacket that can be applied directly to columns without the need for extensive and costly modifications. This project aims to enhance the safety and durability of aging concrete structures, ensuring they remain robust in the face of environmental challenges and increased usage.

USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Harmita Golwala presented her research on the "Fate of mobilized colistin resistance genes with increasing concentration of last resort antibiotic in anaerobic membrane bioreactors" at the 18th IWA World Conference on Anaerobic Digestion in Istanbul, Turkey earlier this year. would like to thank the Das Family for its generous support enabling our students to travel worldwide to further enhance their education, knowledge, and research.

Pictured: Harmita Golwala and her labmates (Bianca Costa, Connor Sauceda and Christelle Sawaya) with their advisor (Dr. Adam Smith) at 2024 IWA World Conference.

👏 🎉 Please join in congratulating our department chair, Dr. Burcin Becerik-Ge**er, on being honored as an American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Fellow. During the last 15 years, her has focused on advanced data acquisition, , for design, construction, and control of user-centered responsive and adaptive built environments. She pioneered a new field: Human-Building Interaction (HBI), which converges to represent the growing complexities of the dynamic interplay between human experience and intelligence within built environments. Her work is published in more than 200 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. It has received the support of over $14 million from a variety of sources, including the NSF, DoE, DHS, and DoT and corporate sponsors. Read more: https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/article/2024/06/18/becerik-gerber-earns-fellow-honors

🎉 🏆 Please join in congratulating Professor Amy Childress on being named as the 2024 Clarke Prize Laureate by the National Water Research Institute (NWRI)! Her research at addresses the global challenge of freshwater scarcity. “Dr. Childress’s contributions as a researcher, educator, and mentor personify the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize,” said NWRI Executive Director Kevin Hardy, “and her substantial contributions to optimizing membrane technologies and systems will help water providers in Southern California – and around the world – to ensure long-term water security.”

💦 The Clarke Prize is awarded annually to thought leaders in water research, science, technology, or policy. It is broadly considered as one of the most prestigious awards for outstanding achievements in water science and technology. Read more: https://www.nwri-usa.org/2024-clarke-prize-laureate

One of the many ways fosters a sense of and is through hosting the Innovate x LA: Das Family Student Competition. Students from across USC have the chance to develop and pitch impactful ideas informed by civil and environmental engineering concepts. The city of Los Angeles provides a test site for ideas with global application, motivated by the commitment to strengthen communities and address the ecological health of the planet. Student teams spend six months working on their startup idea pitches, prototyping, and learning about the startup experience. The team with the winning pitch receives an award of $20,000 to be used as seed funding toward transforming their pitch from an idea to reality. Special thanks to Kelly and Santanu Das, whose generous support has allowed this competition to be held annually by the USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.

Pictured: FungiFix, the winning team from this year's competition, accompanied by competition advisors Brad Cracchiola, Maral Mardirossians, Santanu Das, and Burcin Becerik-Ge**er.

USC Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Najmedin Meshkati was interviewed on BBC News regarding his thoughts about the Boeing 737 Max case being settled through a plea deal with the US Justice Department. He is a well-known aviation safety expert, and for the past 35 years, he has been teaching and conducting research on risk reduction and reliability enhancement of complex technological systems, including nuclear power, aviation, petrochemical, and transportation industries.

Earlier this year, Dr. Meshkati testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding Boeing safety concerns as an aviation safety expert on the Committee's expert review panel.

One of 's newest , Dr. Mohamad Awada, is working to develop “smarter” office environments that dynamically adapt to reduce stressors and enhance worker well-being. His research on dynamic, human-centered workspaces could significantly impact how we design and interact with work environments. "My plan is to establish a lab focused on creating human-centered solutions that aim to enhance the functionality of our built environments. The goal is to continue developing innovative approaches that integrate technology and design to optimize the way we live and work," he said. Dr. Awada will be joining NYU’s Civil and Urban Engineering department as a faculty member this September.

In collaboration with Trussell, the USC ReWater Center has released Issue 2 of the Potable Water Reuse Report! Read the latest issue: https://rewater.usc.edu/

Based at , the USC ReWater Center aims to empower an engineering work force that is invested in the development of state-of-the-art technology for the advancement of national and global water security.

USC Sonny Astani Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Jiachen Zhang, Ph.D. was awarded a grant from the Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) Center for Environmental Health Disparities to support her research study "Assessing Health Disparities Arising from Air Pollutant Emissions Linked to Port-Related Activities: A Case Study of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach." Find out more about MADRES: https://lnkd.in/g6qSnM8f

Port-related activities, encompassing the operation of vessels, trucks, and cargo handling equipment, are a significant source of air pollutants, leading to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Low-income, often minority-populated communities are more likely to be located near ports or freeways, and are therefore at a greater risk of exposure to air pollutants from port-related emissions. Dr. Zhang's research will develop a modeling framework to assess the air quality and health impacts of port-related emissions at a high spatial resolution and investigate the unequal burden of adverse environmental health impacts in disadvantaged communities.

Professor Esref Bora Gencturk, Dr. Huanpeng Hong, and their colleague Dr. M. Saiid Saiidi extensively studied for the first time, the mechanical behavior of shape memory alloys to be used in self-centering columns in seismic regions. Their open-access article was just published in "Smart Materials and Structures."

's Professor Lucio Soibelman explores the digital twins phenomenon in the upcoming book "Twin Systems: The End of the Beginning." He and his co-authors delve into the philosophical underpinnings of , a concept that has stirred the industry's imagination but whose potential remains largely untapped.

Pre-order book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9Y5Zfsx

's Dr. Burcin Becerik-Ge**er was interviewed on Get the kNACk podcast from the National Academy of Construction (NAC) about the ways humans interact with buildings and her work to increase the comfort of our individual spaces within office settings. Listen here: https://www.naocon.org/knack-episode/s4e12-a-journey-into-human-centric-spaces-with-burcin-becerik-gerber/

Dr. Becerik-Ge**er describes her work to increase the comfort of our individual spaces within office settings and relates this to measures of improved cognitive performance and productivity. The conversation shifts gears to discuss modeling human behavior in emergency settings and using the results to improve design and facility operations. The discussion provides insights into ongoing R&D that can tangibly improve the ways we interact with buildings.

Professor Kandis Abdul-Aziz was awarded a grant from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology to study "Electrothermal Integrated Carbon Capture and Utilization." The project will focus on incorporating joule heating from renewable energy in a new reactor. Dr. Abdul-Aziz and her research group will develop materials that will selectively capture CO2 and transform the captured CO2 into chemical building blocks.

🎉 Best of luck with your new at , Alejandro Alfaro! We know you'll make us proud! 🥳

We love to hear what our and are up to, so don't forget to tag us on social media to share jobs, awards, and accomplishments! Use the two hashtags: to catch our attention!

🎉 Please join in congratulating recent Dr. Bozhou Zhuang for winning third place in the Structural Health Monitoring and Control Student Paper Competition at EMI/PMC 2024 in Chicago! We are so proud of you! 🎓 🏆