Dear CEE Community and Friends,

July’s newsletter highlights a faculty feature of Prof. Cathy Wu by MIT ILP, a new program launched by J-WEL that expands Prof. Masic’s Refugee Action Hub’s work, and postdoc Wenzhe Jiao’s research in the Terrer Lab. CEE alumnus and founder of C-Crete Technologies, Rouzbeh Savary PhD’11, launched a new cement-free concrete product in Seattle and Prof. Michael Howland went on the Energy Environment Economy podcast to discuss his lab, renewable energy, wind farm optimization, climate change, and education. We congratulate Prof. Oral Buyukozturk on being elected to the American Society of Civil Engineers as an EMI Fellow and a team from MIT that received top prizes at the NASA RASC-AL Competition.

New research from Prof. Markus Buehler and grad students Wei Lu and Nic Lee opens opportunities for creating innovative graph-based designs inspired by spider webs, postdoc Leila Mirzagholi and colleagues show how global warming effects the timing of autumn leaf senescence, and a paper by Hao Sun and Oral Buyukozturk establishes a new learning model improving interpretability and generalizability of reaction-diffusion processes. Lastly, we share a feature profile of PhD student Nick Caros’ research that helps transit agencies adapt to a changing world, and a staff profile of Daria Levear, recipient of the 2023 CEE Excellence Award.

Sincerely,

Ali Jadbabaie

JR East Professor

Department Head, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering

Core Faculty, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Prof. Cathy Wu sits down with MIT ILP to discuss her research group’s current project addressing the issue of traffic control systems using machine-learning based methods to solve control and optimization problems.

J-WEL launches Emerging Talent effort and Certificate in Computer and Data Science

The Emerging Talent program will expand on the work of the MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT), founded by CEE Prof. Admir Masic to build education-to-employment pathways for underserved communities.

Understanding and mitigating the impacts of drought under climate change

Growing up in Hubei Province, China, Wenzhe Jiao observed how severely droughts affected the crops and farmlands in his village each year. As a postdoc in the Terrer Lab, Jiao’s research seeks to understand and mitigate the impact of droughts on our ecosystem.

C-Crete’s groundbreaking cement-free concrete gets inaugural pour in Seattle

CEE alumnus Rouzbeh Savary PhD’11, founder and president of C-Crete Technologies, had a deep desire to change the concrete industry landscape and irradiate its CO2 emissions since his time at MIT. Now, he, and his team at C-Crete, hit that milestone with a concrete product, which is CO2-emission free and absorbs CO2 over time.

Energy Environment Economy Podcast: Breezing into the future with Dr. Mike Howland

Episode 6 of Energy Environment Economy Podcast features CEE Prof. Michael Howland, whose fluid mechanics and modeling research is leading the way in optimizing renewable energy systems.

Prof. Oral Buyukozturk elected as an EMI Fellow

Prof. Oral Buyukozturk has been elected to the American Society of Civil Engineers as an EMI Fellow. This fellowship recognizes members with a distinguished record of research, accomplishments, and service to the Institute.

MIT team wins top prizes at NASA RASC-AL Competition

A team from MIT, including CEE graduate student Ignacio Arzuaga Garcia, won “Best in Theme” and “First Place Overall” at the RASC-AL (Revolutionary Aerospace System Concepts Academic Linkage) competition.

Spider webs are fascinating bio-inspired structures because they are lightweight yet made of strong silk strands arranged in intricate patterns. Replicating 3D webs with all their design features is challenging, but researchers in Prof. Buehler’s LAMM Lab introduce a new method to understanding their design principles and replicating the fabrication of complex 3D structures of spider webs using additive manufacturing. The new research from grad students Wei Lu, Nic Lee and Prof. Buehler opens opportunities for creating innovative graph-based designs inspired by nature and has implications for various engineering fields, where generative artificial intelligence can be used to design new materials with desired properties based on graph theory.

Effect of climate warming on the timing of autumn leaf senescence

New research in Science Magazine from postdoc Leila Mirzagholi and colleagues shows how global warming affects the timing of autumn leaf senescence.

Encoding physics to learn reaction-diffusion processes

Reaction–diffusion processes, which can be found in many phenomena in chemistry, biology, geology, physics, and ecology, can be modeled by partial differential equations (PDEs). Physics-informed deep learning approaches can accelerate the modeling and discovery of PDEs. In a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, Prof. Oral Buyukozturk, former postdoc Prof. Hao Sun, and colleagues establish a new learning model which improves interpretability and generalizability by strong encoding of the underlying physics structure in the neural network. The research offers a promising way to model and better understand and predict complex dynamic phenomena in various scientific disciplines.

Helping the transportation sector adapt to a changing world

PhD student Nick Caros works with major transit agencies across the country to understand how workers’ transportation needs have changed as companies have adopted remote work policies.

Staff Spotlight: Daria Levear

Meet Daria Levear, CEE’s Events Planning Assistant. Daria’s outstanding contributions to the department were recognized at the 2023 CEE Awards Ceremony, where she was a recipient of the CEE Excellence Award.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Civil 

and Environmental Engineering

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

(617) 253-7101

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