Dear CEE Community and Friends,

As the fall term comes to an end, I would like to wish you all an enjoyable winter break and Happy New Year.

In this month’s newsletter we share an MIT News profile on Prof. Benedetto Marelli, an article by Prof. Saurabh Amin highlighting 5 priorities for developing resilient infrastructure, and a video from the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium featuring Prof. Michael Howland. New research from Cathy Wu and colleagues uses AI to solve optimization problems in complex scenarios, and Prof. Charles Harvey and researchers at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology developed a satellite-based method that measures carbon in peat bogs. Lastly, we highlight graduate student Zane Schemmer, whose research focuses on topology optimization and share photos from our Holiday Party.

Sincerely,

Ali Jadbabaie

JR East Professor

Department Head, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering

Core Faculty, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Prof. Benedetto Marelli develops silk-based technologies with uses “from lab to fork,” including helping crops grow and preserving perishable foods.

Making Our Infrastructure Resilient: 5 Priorities for Security R&D

As cybersecurity attacks continue to rise, Prof. Saurabh Amin identifies five R&D efforts with the goal of addressing pressing challenges in security engineering.

A new data-driven approach, developed by Prof. Cathy Wu and colleagues, could lead to better solutions for challenging optimization problems like global package routing or power grid operation.

Satellite-based method measures carbon in peat bogs

Prof. Charles Harvey and researchers at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology have developed a mathematical analysis of how peat formations build and develop, which could enable restoration efforts and doesn’t require labor-intensive onsite sampling.

Collaborative Climate Resilience: Industry & Academia Working Together to Prepare for Climate Change

The Howland Lab collaborates with the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium and member companies to understand the opportunities and risks for climate change mitigation.

Graduate Spotlight: Zane Schemmer

Graduate student Zane Schemmer’s research focuses on topology optimization of structures using a mixed-integer linear program to minimize the embodied carbon of structural designs.

CEE Holiday Party

The department held its annual holiday party on Tuesday, December 5. View photos in the CEE Flickr album and download photo booth prints from the celebration.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Civil 

and Environmental Engineering

77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 1-290 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 

(617) 253-7101

CEE.MIT.EDU