Dear CEE Community and Friends,

In this month’s newsletter CEE students were invited by the Aspen Institute to attend the Aspen Ideas Climate conference in Miami Beach alongside leaders in government and climate policy. A new research collaboration between MIT Professors Admir Masic and Vladimir Bulovic explores the nanoworld of biogenic gems, and a new project with J-WAFS has Assistant Prof. César Terrer using images from space to build high-resolution drought monitoring systems that look into drought effects on plants. Professor Emeritus Eduardo Kausel shares his expertise on the damage caused by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. We congratulate Prof. Ruben Juanes for receiving the 2024 Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Leadership Award and PhD students Yu Qiu and Katya Boukin for receiving the AGU Outstanding Presentation Award and the MIT Sustainability Connect “Campus as a Test Bed” Award respectively. 

Also in this issue, we share new research from PhD student Dat Ha and Prof. Josephine Carstensen that integrates humans with AI in structural design, the first-ever microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants, and a biodegradable tag to reduce seed counterfeiting. We highlight MEng student Mollie Wilkinson, who seeks to combat climate change through methane removal. Lastly, we share a recording from the C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series with Prof. Pradeep Sharma.

Sincerely,

Ali Jadbabaie

JR East Professor

Department Head, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering

Core Faculty, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Graduate student Robert Fetell SM ‘24 and undergrads Runako Gentles ‘24, Alice Zehner ‘25 and Lilly Heilshorn ’25 were invited by the Aspen Institute to join an international cohort of 250 young climate leaders at Aspen Ideas Climate conference in Miami Beach. The future leaders worked with some of the biggest voices in government and climate policy to develop strategies and recommendations for energy, environment, and equity challenges facing countries and communities today. Photo courtesy of the White House.

Exploring the nanoworld of biogenic gems

A new project led by Professors Admir Masic and Vladimir Bulović in collaboration with The Bahrain Institute for Pearls and Gemstones (DANAT) will seek to develop advanced characterization tools for the analysis of the properties of pearls and to explore technologies to assign unique identifiers to individual pearls.

Detailed images from space offer clearer picture of drought effects on plants

Assistant Professor César Terrer received seed grant funding from J-WAFS to produce drought monitoring systems for farmers. The project is leveraging a new generation of remote sensing devices to provide high-resolution plant water stress at regional to global scales.

Could the tragedy in Turkey and Syria have been prevented?

Professor Emeritus Eduardo Kausel explains how buildings can be built to withstand strong earthquakes and minimize destruction and damage.

Prof. Ruben Juanes receives the 2024 Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lectureship Award

Prof. Ruben Juanes received the 2024 Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lectureship Award for his outstanding track record of achievements and contributions to the field of porous media research, his commitment to excellence in education and mentoring, and his exceptional skills as lecturer and communicator.

CEE graduate student receives AGU Outstanding Presentation Award

Yu Qiu received the AGU (American Geophysical Union) Outstanding Student Presentation Award for her presentation “Wettability effects on fluid-fluid displacement in a capillary tube: phase-field modeling and experiment.” This award recognizes students for their quality research in Earth and space science and the ability to effectively communicate it.

CEE graduate student receives the MIT Sustainability Connect Campus as a Test Bed Award

Katya Boukin received the MIT Sustainability Connect “Campus as a Test Bed” award for her past and continued research assessing the flood risk of the MIT campus.

New research from PhD student Dat Ha and Assistant Prof. Josephine Carstensen integrates humans with AI in structural design. The new human-informed topology optimization framework allows design engineers to evaluate the work in progress and make tweaks or adjustments before letting the computer resume its design process.

Tackling counterfeit seeds with “unclonable” labels

To reduce seed counterfeiting, a team of researchers including MIT’s dean of engineering Anantha Chandrakasan, Prof. Benedetto Marelli, postdoc Hui Sun, and EECS graduate student Saurav Maji, have developed a biodegradable tag that provides seeds with a unique code that cannot be duplicated.

SMART researchers develop the world’s first microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants

A team of researchers including Prof. Benedetto Marelli have developed the first-ever microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants. This method can be used to precisely deliver controlled amounts of agrochemicals to specific plant tissues for research purposes and improve crop quality and disease management.

Graduate Spotlight: Mollie Wilkinson

MEng student Mollie Wilkinson’s research in the Plata Lab seeks to combat climate change through methane removal. “Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas, and it’s more powerful than carbon dioxide,” Wilkinson says. “It’s shorter lived in the atmosphere, but while it’s around it causes more warming, faster, than an equivalent mass of carbon dioxide.”

C.C Mei Distinguished Speaker Series: Prof. Pradeep Sharma

Pradeep Sharma, MD Anderson Chair Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston, gave a talk on “Flexoelectricity & Electrets” on February 27.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Civil 

and Environmental Engineering

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