Course One eNews | October 2022

Dear CEE Community and Friends,

October’s newsletter highlights graduate student Katya Boukin's research to improve flood propagation models, two CEE led Climate Day events at the Cambridge Science Festival, and the MIT Methane Network's efforts to reduce methane emissions. We share a downloadable coloring book created by MIT Nano featuring two CEE professors, and we congratulate two graduate students for their accomplishments.

Also in this issue, we share research from postdoc Yeon-Woo Choi and Prof. Elfatih Eltahir that predicts how future climate change could affect the Arba’een pilgrimages, new research from Prof. Buehler's lab on collagen sequences, and Prof. Charles Harvey discusses the effectiveness of carbon capture and storage with GBH Forum Network.

Lastly, alumna Grace Melcher and graduate student Ipek Bensu Manav discuss what inspires their work, and we share information about the upcoming Graduate Admissions Webinars and C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series.

Sincerely,

Ali Jadbabaie

JR East Professor

Department Head, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering

Core Faculty, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

CEE Faculty Retreat in Falmouth

The department held its second annual full day faculty retreat to strategize and prioritize department goals, while following up on the progress developed from last year's retreat.

Studying floods to better predict their dangers

Graduate student Katya Boukin's research seeks to improve flood propagation models, which often fail to account for an unpredictable and misunderstood type of flooding known as pluvial flooding.

CEE leads hands-on demonstrations at 2022 Cambridge Science Festival

Students and postdocs from the Marelli and Nepf labs showcase how nature and natural materials can improve and sustain our planet for the Climate Day events at the newly expanded MIT Museum.

MIT Methane Network committed to reducing methane levels

Methane emissions cause about 120 times more warming to the Earth's atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Researchers at the MIT Methane Network, directed by Associate Prof. Desiree Plata, are working to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030, saving up to 0.5 degree C of warming by 2100.

Nano Day 2022

For National Nano Day, our friends over at MIT Nano created Explorers of the Nano Age, a coloring book celebrating researchers at MIT who are using the tools of nanoscale science and engineering, including Prof. Benedetto Marelli and Prof. Admir Masic.

Download now

Best Paper Award at the 2022 IEEE ITSC Conference

Graduate student Aron Brenner, Manxi Wu PhD '21, MS '17, and Prof. Saurabh Amin were awarded the Best Paper at the 2022 IEEE ITSC conference for their paper, "Interpretable Machine Learning Models for Modal Split Prediction in Transportation Systems." The paper predicts how aggregate demand for public transit will shift in response to travel time caused by variables such as traffic congestion.

MIT Morningside Academy for Design Fellow

Congratulations to graduate student Elijah Martin who was selected to join the inaugural cohort of design fellows at the MIT Morningside Academy for Design. Elijah is a second year PhD student who is working on developing environmental degradation models for plastics to optimize the design of new polymers for functional and environmental performance.

Climate change is a threat to Arba'een pilgrimage

New research from postdoc Yeon-Woo Choi and Prof. Elfatih Eltahir uses regional climate models to predict how rising temperatures due to climate change could threaten the health of Arba’een pilgrims.

Discovering design principles of collagen molecular stability

New research from Prof. Buehler's lab published in PNAS uses a deep learning framework to discover design principles of collagen molecular stability, providing scientist insights into developing collagen sequences for bio-based materials.

Carbon capture and storage

In this video interview with GBH Forum Network, Prof. Charles Harvey discusses why billions of dollars are being used to support carbon capture and storage projects, despite failing to reduce CO2.

Alumni Spotlight: Grace Melcher '19

CEE alumna Grace Melcher '19 works as a test Engineer at Icon, a 3D printing construction company. She finds motivation in Icon's mission to build beautiful and resilient structures.

Learn more

Graduate Spotlight: Ipek Bensu Manav

Graduate student Ipek Bensu Manav's research on the risk factors associated with existing and new construction in hazard-prone areas is partly inspired by her experience growing up in Miami, FL and Istanbul, Turkey.

Learn more