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Message from the Chair
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Dear Friends of Civil & Environmental Engineering,
While our nation is facing infrastructure, technological, economic and political challenges, the students, staff, faculty, alumni and industrial advisory board of the John A. Reif, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) have been busy implementing strategic initiatives that continue to elevate our department and NJIT to greater excellence.
It gives me great pride to report that in a recently updated 2017 rankings report by College Factual, NJIT's civil engineering program was ranked #5 of 211 programs nationwide and #1 in New Jersey. This places the civil engineering program at NJIT in the top 5 percent of CEE programs in the United States.
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To begin the new year, let me first touch upon the retirements of two of our distinguished faculty, Professors Robert Dresnack and John Schuring, who joined CEE in 1966 and 1982, respectively.
On behalf of the CEE family, I would like to extend our best wishes
and deepest gratitude to them for decades of enduring impact on the department and generations of alumni.
They have been dedicated master teachers, mentors, scholars and servicemen who have made the department what it is today.
We wish them a healthy and happy retirement. They will be dearly missed.
This past fall semester, CEE welcomed Dr. Lucia Rodriguez-Friere to the family as Assistant Professor in Environmental Engineering.
Dr. Rodriguez-Freire
comes to NJIT from the University of New Mexico, where she was a
postdoctoral research fellow
investigating the transport, deposition and interaction of metals and radionuclides in the environment. Her research goals are to harness the interaction between biological and inorganic systems to solve environmental challenges, such as environmental pollution, the deterioration of ecosystems and resource depletion. We also welcomed
Nasser Channaoui
this past semester to the CEE family as
Director of Labs
for
Research
.
Mr. Channaoui
has more than 20 years of experience in electromechanical operations and facilities maintenance and upgrades. He will help support CEE's growing research laboratory and infrastructure needs.
While NJIT is constantly changing and improving, one thing that remains the same is our exceptional and dedicated faculty in CEE
who work with our outstanding students on academic, research and service activities. Our award-winning ASCE Steel Bridge Team began fabricating the 2018 steel bridge for this year's competitions. Under the leadership of team faculty advisor Professor
Matthew Bandelt
, the team is incorporating innovative designs of unique T-slot and double-shear connections into a bridge with significant structural stiffness to reduce deflections during load testing.
Last semester, students from Professor John Schuring's hydraulics laboratory class in our Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering Program, offered at
Mercer County Community College
campus since the Fall 2017 semester, put together an experiment they designed that is based on Bernoulli's Principle to demonstrate blood circulation in the human body.
Our team in the Intelligent Transportation Systems Resource Center (ITSRC), under the leadership of Professor Lazar Spasovic, is performing cutting-edge research into intelligent transportation technologies, while deploying and testing them within our transportation networks. The team is, for example, working on connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology designed to fundamentally transform the mobility, safety and environmental sustainability of roads and highways. This technology includes test beds in and around the cities of Camden and Newark and the installation of various traffic sensors and communication devices. In tandem with the instrumentation of test beds, the ITSRC is adding two new Ford Fusion hybrid cars that will be customized by our undergraduate and graduate students with CAV sensors and communication systems. The cars will be used to develop "Smart City" solutions to help people move more quickly, cheaply and reliably. The Center will study the vehicle interactions with the roadside devices, as well as other vehicles. The Center's "Smart City" research will also advocate for more livable and sustainable cities that
will benefit residents, city authorities, local companies and industry.
This and other projects in our
intelligent transportation, resilient infrastructure and environmental systems research areas
continue to make a positive impact on society.
I invite you to read this newsletter to learn about some of the recent accomplishments and activities of our students, staff and faculty. As always, I sincerely appreciate and welcome your support to our Department's academic and community service programs and initiatives.
Sincerely,
Taha F. Marhaba, P.E., F.ASCE
(973) 596-2444
(973) 596-5790 fax
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Celebrating 50 Years of Service
At the
NJIT
Service Award Ceremony on
May 12, 2017,
Robert Dresnack
was presented with a
Certificate of Recognition
from
President Joel S. Bloom
, marking his
50 years of service.
Read
about
Professor Dresnack's
career and milestones during his tenure with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, which began on September 1, 1966.
Pictured from left: Professor Robert Dresnack and President Joel Bloom
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Events
February 1, 2018
Robert Dresnack
and John Schuring Retirement Party
May 5, 2018
Regional Steel Bridge Competition at NJIT
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Where are they now?
Drew McCaskey '72 retired from the Delaware Transit Corporation (DART).
Rob Foley
'87 was promoted to associate at Dewberry's.
Manuel Da Silva '93, vice president for construction operations at the New Jersey Development Authority, was honored with a Star of Essex award.
Jason Pancoast
'13 joined P.W. Grosser Consulting as a project manager in the environmental unit.
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Scholarship
Donations
The
Civil and Environmental Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) has created an annual scholarship fund to assist CEE undergraduate students in preparing for professional licensure. The fund reimburses testing fees to students who pass the Fundamentals of Engineering exam.
Thank you for your generous support of this program.
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2017 Scholarships
CEE Campaign
Aswina Ranasinghe
William Sanchez
CEE IAB
J
oseph Angeli
Marc Coimbra
Patrick DeLong
Shaun Delaney
James Dietze
Daniel Fryer
Michael Gambardella
Gabrielle Grompone
Connor Hughes
Kevin Laforteza
Christopher Menge
Tuan Nguyen
Onashile Obagbemileke
Andres Osorio-Sanders
Stefanie Pacifico
Lahiru Pathirage
Rebieann Reyes
Mark Ulinski
Cassera Family
Daniel Cirasa
Joshua Loterena
GZA GeoEnvironmental
Brandon Lapeyre
Jenny Endowed
Catherine Simpson
Kulhawy '64, '66
Justin Khalawan
Robert Medina '74
Gabriel Garcia
MOLES
Whittier Hua
Ankur Patel
Papanicolau
Peter O'Connor
Quasi Construction
Alessandro Sestito
John. A Reif, Jr.
Cesar Alvarado
Fatima Gamalel-Din
Tiaja Harley
Johanna Khemraj
Ismael Mercado
Richard Peters
Isaac Rodriguez
Marcos Sosa
Dileyanne Spezio
Turner Construction
James Dietze
Calvin Gould
Naveen Kamath
Candice Leung
Timothy O'Donnell
Connor McVey
Christopher Siwczak
Turner Construction
Management
Joseph Angeli
Arzu Alimjan
Clara Basanti
Ali Fardos
Aliyar Kasumov
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Advisory Board
Representing a diverse cross section of civil and environmental engineering professionals, including design consultants, construction managers, contractors and attorneys
.
Jerome F. Gallagher, Jr., Esq. '80 (Chair)
Norris, McLaughlin, Marcus, PA
Ted Cassera, P.E., '72
Bowman Consulting
Anthony Castillo, P.E., '95 '02
SESI Consulting Engineers
David Good, P.E., '78, '92
Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers
Andre Grebenstein, LEED AP '95,
The Martin Group
Tony DeJohn, P.E., P.P.
WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff
Gareth Middleton, P.E., '93 '04
Tishman Construction, an AECOM Company
Rocco Palmieri, P.E, P.P., PLS '72, '77, Partner Engineering and Science
Maurice Rached, P.E.
Maser Consulting
Ken Sisk, P.E., '95
Pizzarotti IBC
Joseph Stanley, P.E., P.P., '78, '85,
Mott MacDonald
Wei Wang, P.E., '95
Urban Tech
Michael Wright, P.E., P.P., PMP '79 Arora and Associates, P.C.
Editors
Cynthia Gincel
Tom Jaworski
Tracey Regan
Heidi Young
Special Thanks
Strategic Communications
Office of Alumni Relations
Faculty/Staff, Students & Alumni
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NJIT Steel Bridge
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Meet the 2018 Steel Bridge captains
From left: Aliyar Kasumov,
Rocco Cioffi and Francesca Arias
The NJIT
Steel Bridge Team is comprised of undergraduate civil engineering students
who work together through three phases: design and testing, fabrication, and competitive assembly against teams from other schools on both the regional and national levels.
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The aim of this program is to prompt team members to take on leadership roles once they have the necessary technical skill set.
This year's captains have put an emphasis on getting younger members involved in the design fabrication process. Freshmen and sophomore students now have an opportunity to participate in a "Design Bootcamp" to learn the intricacies of the bridge design competition early in their academic career.
The team recently finished the structural design of the bridge, and will begin fabrication in early 2018.
The team will focus on developing a bridge with significant structural stiffness to reduce deflections during load testing. Unique T-slot and double shear connections will be incorporated into the final design.
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| View Civil Students building the bridge |
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Bernoulli's Principal
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From left: Dana Channaoui,
Katia Granados Keith Woods, "Danny", Ali Baig and Nathaniel Bourdeau
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Students from the NJIT Hydraulic Engineering Laboratory,
a junior-level course, put together an experiment they designed based on
the Bernoulli Principle (Wikipedia). This principle in fluid dynamics is the key for designing all water supply systems. It explains why airplanes fly and blood circulates through the body.
The students named their experimental creation "
Danny" in honor of
Daniel Bernoulli, who discovered the principle in 1732.
"I congratulate this student group in designing and building a superior experiment. The best part was how they overcame various challenges to convert a fun idea into a real working engineering model," said
Professor John Schuring, the course instructor.
This laboratory section was offered through NJIT's
BSCE program at
Mercer County Community College.
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What led you to study at NJIT?
I like the approach that NJIT takes to environmental engineering. The great reputation of the program encouraged me not to go anywhere else. I thought it was the best choice for my career.
What project are you working on for your doctoral dissertation?
The formation, characterization and environmental applications of nanobubbles as a clean technology for
water purification. I chose this research as it is clean, green and a sustainable technology, a requirement of today's American Society of Civil Engineers Code of Ethics.
What impact has your research work had in environmental engineering?
Among others, I am fortunate to be in a position to help advance the technology for the benefit of society. Organizing water laboratories for students has helped me understand their interest in treatment. Water treatment without harmful chemicals is essential for human health and
the environment. My target is to help develop simple, cheap, eco-friendly and safe technologies to purify water for all parts of the world.
Has your research been published?
I co-wrote an article with Taha Marhaba, chair of the NJIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Another article, written in partnership with CEE team members, is pending publication:
Ahmed Khaled Abdella Ahmed, Cuizhen Sun, Likun Hua, Zhibin Zhang, Yanhao Zhang, Taha Marhaba, Wen Zhang.
(In press, 2018), "Colloidal Properties of Air, Oxygen, and Nitrogen Nanobubbles in Water: Effects of Ionic Strength, Natural Organic Matters, and Surfactants", Environmental Engineering Science.
Since your graduation is approaching, what are your plans for the future?
Upon completion of my dissertation, I will pursue a postdoc position and prepare myself to follow an academic path towards a tenured professorship.
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The NJIT
Scour Research Project
recently achieved an important milestone.
The team's newly developed method
of scour analysis, known as the
Scour Evaluation Model (SEM),
was recently approved by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
and
New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT)
for application analysis to bridges throughout the State of New Jersey. The approval followed a 14-month-long "Implementation Phase," during which full SEM evaluations were performed on 19 scour critical bridges across the State.
Bridge scour
is the result of erosive action by running water, which excavates and carries away material from the bed and bank of a stream.
The
SEM
model launch was performed by three New Jersey consulting firms working in cooperation with the
NJIT Scour Research Team (led by
Robert Dresnack and John Schuring). The
firms include
AECOM of Piscataway, McCormick Taylor of Mount Laurel
and
Mott McDonald of Iselin.
details about Scour Project,
including reports and presentations
from NJIT and NJDOT.
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Reversing Mining's Toxic Legacy on Tribal Lands
When a federal inspection team inadvertently released three million gallons of heavy metal-laden waste from a century-old, defunct gold mine near Silverton, Colorado into the Animas River,
Lucia Rodriguez-Freire
was one of the first responders on the scene.
"The gold plume was crossing the border from Colorado to New Mexico the day I started my new position as a
postdoc researcher at the
University of New Mexico,"
Rodriguez-Freire, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, said of the 2015 spill, which famously turned the river gold.
"We knew we needed to react immediately: to analyze the metal content in the water and sediments and to assess the movement of contaminants from the spill site to downstream in the river."
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Developing Infrastructure to Last More Than a Century
Rethinking the material building blocks of civilization - the asphalt, concrete and steel that compose roads, bridges and tunnels - now requires an added dimension: the ability to make durability projections
not just for the standard 50 to 75 years of service life, but into a future in which climate change has made performance dynamic and unpredictable, notes Matthew Adams, assistant professor of civil engineering.
Some larger projects, such as hydroelectric power dams or iconic bridges, are expected to last up to 150 years, despite growing uncertainty over what environmental conditions those years may bring.
Adams has joined forces with Matthew Bandelt, an assistant professor of civil engineering, to attack the problem on two fronts.
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Tapping the Earth's Warmth for Renewable Energy
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From left:
Bruno Goncalves da Silva and
Aristides Chavez
fabricating at the new NJIT Makerspace
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There is a potentially limitless supply of renewable, carbon-free energy within the Earth's crust could we only permeate the thick layers of crystalline rock that sit over it, barring access. So far, success in harnessing the Earth's own heat has been mostly limited to tapping the boiling hot water that bubbles up with little prompting close to the surface.
"The main challenge is to tap into deeper and less fractured hot rocks. This would make geothermal energy accessible in many more locations across the world. In order to achieve this goal, we need to fracture the rock in order to increase its permeability," says
Bruno Goncalves da Silva, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering who, as a doctoral student at MIT, worked with a team of researchers who contend the U.S. alone could produce 100,000 megawatts of power within the next 50 years from what is called Enhanced Geothermal Systems.
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Paul A. Sarlo receives Lifetime Achievement Award
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From left: James F. Stevenson, Paul A. Sarlo '92 95; Raymond Cassetta '70;
President Joel S. Bloom; Edward J. Schmeltz '71; Brian Kiernan '70 and Al Frungillo
Celebration 2017, an annual fundraiser for campus-wide scholarship endowment funds, was held on November 10 at the Pleasantdale Chateau in West Orange. "The event, a festive evening of dinner and dancing, traditionally attracts approximately 300 attendees including senior executives, outstanding alumni and friends of the university," said Jacquelynn Rhodes, associate vice president for development at NJIT. " Along with raising funds, Celebration also is an occasion to recognize important friends and graduates of the university." At this year's event, Paul A. Sarlo, Deputy Majority Leader of the New Jersey Senate was awarded the President's Medal for Lifetime Achievement. Sarlo holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in civil engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology. Celebration 2017 Article
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Meet our new faculty member
 It is with pleasure that we welcomed Lucia Rodriguez-Freire as an assistant professor
in the fall of 2017. Lucia's
lab investigates the mechanisms of interaction between b
iological and
inorganic systems to:
(1) examine the effect of contaminants on natural biogeochemical cycles in order to predict, avoid and remediate current and future pollution
(2) engineer highly efficient and sustainable resource-recovery technologies from agricultural, industrial and mining waste
(3) design state-of-the-art wastewater treatment systems to remove persistent contaminants in the environment using ubiquitous and inexpensive materials....
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Meet our new staff member
It is with pleasure that we welcomed
Nasser Channaoui as our
new
Director of Labs for research in fall of 2017. He
has a B.S in m
echanical engineering
from
Mississippi State University.
Nasser
tests lab instruments and researches parts, functionality and the mechanics of lab equipment. H
e diagnoses and repairs instruments and maintains inventories of major and minor equipment.
Along with Steve George, the Director of Labs for education, Nasser
schedules
and executes preventative maintenance and calibration of major equipment to ensure it is operating optimally.
If not in their office, Nasser and Steve can be found in the concrete lab helping students.
Nasser
has over 20 years of experience in electromechanical systems operations, maintenance and upgrades, including HVA
C. He
worked for Johnson Controls, Inc. and Lennox International
and w
as instrumental in troubleshooting and resolving equipment malfunctions for numerous clients in New Jersey, New York and Vermont.
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Convocation 2017 Award Winners
CEE team members were honored at
Convocation 2017
at the newly built
NJIT Wellness and Events Center
on
September 27
.
Convocation
is an annual celebration and awards ceremony that marks the start of the academic year recognizing the accomplishments of students, faculty and staff.
Excellence in Instruction
Janitha Hewa Bathagoda, teaching assistant, geotechnical
Excellence in Instruction
John Lyssikatos, adjunct professor, construction management
Excellence in Service
Heidi Young, assistant to the chair for administration
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