Dear CEE Community and Friends,

In this month's newsletter, we highlight two alumni panels where CEE alumni shared insights and advice on navigating their career journeys. We congratulate Prof. Gioele Zardini on receiving the 2024 ETH Doctoral Dissertation Award for his exceptional work on designing and operating complex systems.

Also in this issue, we feature research from Prof. Cathy Wu and her team, who developed a new approach to more efficiently train reinforcement learning models, and a study from Professors Saurabh Amin and Michael Howland that uses detailed mapping of weather conditions and energy demand to guide the optimal siting of solar and wind farms. Additionally, we share a study from Prof. Josephine Carstensen on reusing steel components to significantly reduce carbon emissions. Finally, we highlight graduate student Kirby Heck, whose research is advancing sustainable energy through innovations in wind power.

Sincerely,

Ali Jadbabaie

JR East Professor

Department Head, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering

Core Faculty, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Course One alumni offered advice and insight into career paths for MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering students at the CEE Undergraduate and Graduate Alumni Panels. Panelists shared advice on topics including navigating industry challenges, advancing research, and transitioning from academia to the professional world.

Gioele Zardini receives 2024 ETH Doctoral Dissertation Award

Prof. Gioele Zardini received the Silver Medal of ETH Zurich for his 2023 doctoral thesis, which explores the contemporary era struggles with the intricate challenge of designing and operating “complex systems.” Given annually, for outstanding dissertations, the award will be conferred at the ETH doctoral awards ceremony in January. 

Researchers at MIT, including Prof. Cathy Wu and CEE graduate student and lead author Jung-Hoon Cho, have developed an efficient approach for training more reliable reinforcement learning models, focusing on complex tasks that involve variability.

So you want to build a solar or wind farm? Here’s how to decide where.

A new study co-authored by Professors Michael Howland and Saurabh Amin and postdocs Liying Qiu and Rahman Khorramfar shows how detailed mapping of weather conditions and energy demand can guide optimization for siting renewable energy installations.

Enabling a circular economy in the built environment

A team of MIT researchers has begun to assess what may be needed to spur widespread circular transition within the built environment in a new open-access study that aims to understand stakeholders’ current perceptions of circularity and quantify their willingness to pay.

Automatic design generation of trusses from a reused steel stock library using graphic static

Reuse of undamaged reclaimed steel components in new structural design offers an opportunity to reduce construction related waste and carbon emissions. Research from Prof. Josephine Carstensen presents a new automated design algorithm where carbon savings as high as 83%–90% are possible compared to conventionally designed trusses made from recycled steel.

MIT graduate student Kirby Heck advances wind power by merging fluid mechanics and sustainable energy. “Being in the civil and environmental engineering department has opened me up to the depth of climate solutions happening at MIT,” he says.

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