2007 News in Brief
Helping transit agencies use data wealth wisely
December 19, 2007
Public dissatisfaction with transit systems won’t make it easy to convince people to leave their cars behind for the daily commute. But transit agencies’ ability to improve services has been hampered by limited data on passenger travel patterns and preferences, in large part because the primary method of data collection has been the expensive and unreliable passenger survey. The introduction of automatic vehicle location systems, automatic fare collection systems and smart fare cards is changing that. Read more.
Plants' impact on landscape evolution made evident
December 19, 2007
Scientists modeling Earth’s cycles sometimes include vegetation, but commonly treat plants as static in type and lifespan, rather than as biota that wax and wane in response to their environment. Yet the magnitude of vegetation’s short-term impact is evident in the large seasonal fluctuation of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, which decreases drastically during the growing season. If plants have such an enormous impact on climate seasonally, might we be shortchanging their effect in long-term models of hydrology and climate? Read more.
Environmental engineering jobs heating up
November 20, 2007
An article in the Nov. 11 issue of the Boston Sunday Globe reports that the Bureau of Labor Statistics “projects that by 2014, there will be 31.2 percent more jobs for environmental engineers than there were in 2004.” The article goes on to say that “as environmental awareness has grown, so has the employment outlook for environmental engineers, who study and monitor the quality of soil, air, and ground water and make recommendations on cleanup.” Read article.
CEE faculty host seven-year-old scientist
November 16, 2007
Professor Heidi Nepf spent the morning with seven-year-old Juliana Bach on Nov. 13, helping the Make-A-Wish Foundation grant Juliana’s wish to be a scientist for five days. Nepf gave the young scientist an elementary lab course in the physics of water flow in wetlands. That afternoon, Professor Phil Gschwend and Juliana looked at the effect of acid rain on lakes. Read news story.
CEE research paper named best of the year
November 5, 2007
A research paper by Professor Oral Buyukozturk and Ching Au (S.M. 2001, Sc.D. 2005) has just been named Best Basic Research Paper 2006 published in the Journal of Composites for Construction, a publication of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The paper, “Peel and Shear Fracture Characterization of Debonding in FRP Plated Concrete Affected by Moisture” (Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 35-47), deals with the durability of multi-layer composite material systems under varying environmental conditions. Au is now manager of the technologies group at Sensitron Semiconductor in New York. Read paper.
Speed plays crucial role in breaking protein's H-bonds
October 30, 2007
Researchers at MIT studying the architecture of proteins have finally explained why computer models of proteins’ behavior under mechanical duress differ dramatically from experimental observations. This work could have vast implications in bioengineering and medical research by advancing our understanding of the relationship between structure and function in these basic building blocks of life. The scientists explain in a paper published as the cover article of the Oct. 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Read news release.
CEE alumnus credited with Nobel Peace Prize work will speak at MIT
October 29, 2007
CEE alumnus Adil Najam, a lead author on two of the reports that garnered the Nobel Peace Prize for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will speak on campus at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 6. Najam, who earned two S.M. degrees from CEE in 1996 and a Ph.D. from DUSP in 2001, teaches international negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering there. He is a lead author on the IPCC’s third and fourth climate change assessment reports. Read news release.
Sussman named AAAS Fellow
October 26, 2007
Joseph M. Sussman, the JR East Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Engineering Systems Division, is one of six MIT faculty members to be elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 2007, the AAAS announced today. Read news release.
CEE attends Alumni Leadership Conference
October 19, 2007
Several members of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering made presentations during the MIT Alumni Leadership Conference held on campus, Sept. 28-29. Professor Patrick Jaillet (S.M. 1982, Ph.D. 1985), head of CEE, described how the field has changed since MIT offered its first civil engineering classes in 1865. Doctoral student Todd Radford (S.M. 2003) described his bridge-building project in the Congo, and senior Shannon O'Connell presented her research on ocean currents and CO2 deep ocean storage. Read article.
Rafael Bras to receive AGU's Horton Medal
October 15, 2007
The American Geophysical Union will award Professor Rafael Bras the 2007 Robert E. Horton Medal at a ceremony in December, the AGU announced. An internationally recognized researcher in hydrology and hydroclimatology whose work encompasses many aspects of the Earth’s water cycle, Bras is being recognized for his contributions to the geophysical aspects of hydrology. The Horton Medal is the highest award given to hydrologists by geophysicists. Read more.
Increase in corn ethanol production could prove costly
October 11, 2007
A committee of the National Research Council said in a report released yesterday that boosting ethanol production in the U.S. through increased corn crops nationwide without considering the quality and availability of water by region could put a significant strain on water resources in some parts of the country. The report’s authors, who include Professor Dara Entekhabi of MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, recommend that conversion of U.S. agriculture to biofuel cultivation should only be undertaken in tandem with regional water assessments, the adoption of environmentally sound farming practices, and consideration of the full life cycle of biofuel production. Read more.
New study will compare European and American supply chains
October 5, 2007
Professor David Simchi-Levi began a research project in September in cooperation with TruEconomy Consulting, a Netherlands-based consulting firm specializing in supply chain management. The researchers will investigate and analyze challenges and peculiarities specific to European supply chains. They anticipate that the results of this study will identify business processes and technologies to improve the performance of European supply chains. Simchi-Levi plans to compare data from North American and European supply chains, as well as look at the impact the European Community’s structure has on supply chain strategies on that continent. For more information on having your company participate in this study, please contact Jaap-Willem Bijsterbosch, TruEconomy Consulting at +31 418 570755.
CEE grad student called a 'revolutionary mind' by SEED Magazine
September 28, 2007
SEED magazine named CEE doctoral student Arne Bomblies to its list of “Revolutionary Minds” for his hydrological and entomological research on the connection between water, mosquito breeding and malaria in Niger, Africa. In its October issue, the magazine profiles eight “revolutionary thinkers whose global research has the potential to effect worldwide change,” including Bomblies. Read excerpt.
Yossi Sheffi to head Engineering Systems Division
September 26, 2007
Dean of Engineering Subra Suresh announced this week that Professor Yossi Sheffi will be the next director of the Engineering Systems Division, effective Nov. 15. Sheffi holds faculty appointments in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in the Engineering Systems Division, an interdiscipinary academic and research division formed in 1998 to tackle large-scale engineering challenges. An expert in systems optimization, risk analysis and supply chain management, Sheffi serves as director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, a position he will continue to hold as ESD director. Read news release.
CEE alumnus harnesses the wind in Nicaragua
September 18, 2007
A CEE alumnus received the CNN Heroes award in July for his persistent hard work and ingenuity in providing sustainable electricity to isolated communities along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. Just after getting his S.M. degree from MIT in 2003, Mathias Craig, his brother Guillaume, and their childhood friend Lâl Marandin founded a nonprofit company called blueEnergy, which builds and installs wind turbines in rural communities of Nicaragua. Read the story.
Small-scale parasitic battles may have epic evolutionary proportions
September 5, 2007
Scientists at MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Technion have recorded the entire genomic expression of a host bacterium and infecting virus over the eight-hour course of infection. Their study leads them to speculate that the meeting between a marine bacterial host and its virus may be not just a battle between individuals, but an evolutionarily significant exchange that helps both species become more fit for life in the harsh ocean environment. Read news release.
Op-Ed: High-tech inspection essential for nation's aging infrastructure
September 5, 2007
The tragic total and instant collapse of the Interstate 35 highway bridge in Minneapolis should force us as a nation to make a careful reassessment of the methods we use for inspecting and repairing our infrastructure. Professor Oral Buyukozturk explains why as a Guest Blogger on the Technology Review web site. Read Blog.
Genomics will help explain the microbial world
September 5, 2007
The National Research Council released a report last spring, titled "The New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of Our Microbial Planet." What is microbial metagenomics, and what is its relevance to the future of biology, biological engineering, and biotechnology? In metagenomics, DNA sequence information is extracted from entire microbial communities in situ. Metagenomic approaches use this bulk data to infer underlying properties of both individual microbes and microbial communities as a whole to advances the understanding of complex microbial systems in several ways. Professor Ed DeLong explains more in an opinion piece in the July/August issue of Technology Review. Read article.
Barnhart named associate dean of engineering
August 31, 2007
Professor Cynthia Barnhart of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Engineering Systems Division has been named associate dean for academic affairs for the School of Engineering. Barnhart, who is co-director of the MIT Operations Research Center, will assume her new role Sept. 1. She is a world-renowned expert in logistics problems in the airline industry. Her research interests include mathematical programming models and large-scale optimization approaches for transportation and logistic systems, and service network design and operations planning for scheduled transportation systems. Read news release.
London’s deputy mayor meets with CEE faculty
August 30, 2007
London’s Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron met with MIT faculty, including half a dozen members of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Aug. 24 to discuss ways of reducing that city’s carbon dioxide emissions. Gavron has leadership responsibility for enacting the mayor’s Climate Change Action Plan, which calls for a 60 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions across metropolitan London’s energy, water, waste and transport sectors by 2050. Read more.
Green concrete: Nanoengineered materials could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions
August 30, 2007
In an opinion piece in the July/August issue of Technology Review, CEE Professor Franz-Josef Ulm writes that: “The 21st-century engineer should … look to the natural world as a powerful design partner and a source of sustainable solutions. A good place to begin is by studying the way natural materials are constructed at the nanoscale and drawing inspiration from them as we engineer our own materials. Take, for example, the civil engineer's construction material of choice: concrete, the oldest engineered building material and one of the most widely consumed materials on earth, second only to water." Read article.
MIT probes secret to bone's strength
August 24, 2007
Scientists and engineers are eager to understand the secret behind bone’s lightweight toughness so they can mimic it in the design of new materials, but experimental studies have revealed a number of different strength mechanisms at different scales of focus, rather than a single theory. New research from MIT appearing in the July 25 issue of Nanotechnology reveals for the first time the role of bone’s atomistic structure in a toughening mechanism that incorporates two previously proposed theories. This combination mechanism allows for the sacrifice of a small piece of the bone in order to save the whole, helps explain why bone tolerates small cracks, and seems to be adapted specifically to accommodate bone’s need for continuous rebuilding from the inside out. Read press release.
CEE lab writes Materials Today cover story
August 17, 2007
Members of Professor Markus Buehler’s Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics wrote the cover story for the September issue of Materials Today, a magazine for materials science and technology researchers. The article, “Fracture Mechanics of Protein Materials,” by Buehler and Theodor Ackbarow, reviews recent advances in the use of large-scale atomistic and molecular modeling to understand the deformation and fracture mechanics of protein-based materials, and compares the mechanics of those materials with the mechanics of crystalline materials like metals and ceramics. Read the article.
Sussman named to national ITS advisory committee
August 17, 2007
U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters appointed Professor Joseph Sussman to the Intelligent Transportation Systems Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Transportation on July 26. The 19 members of the committee come from industry and academia and are charged with reviewing areas of ITS research being considered for funding by the DOT and advising the secretary on ITS aspects of the DOT’s strategic plan.
Tracking all things great and small
August 7, 2007
CEE Professor John Williams, director of MIT’s Auto-ID Lab, believes it’s possible to track every physical item in the world. “This might seem far-fetched,” says Williams, “but it is rapidly becoming reality. Two states in the U.S. have already mandated the tracking of drugs from manufacturer to retail store—to make sure the drugs are not counterfeit.” Renee Boucher Ferguson of EWeek recently interviewed Williams about his quest to build the “Internet of Things.” Read news article.
Green Concrete
July, 2007
Protecting the built environment from the forces of the natural world with dams and seawalls is important work (see "Saving Holland"), as is protecting the natural environment from the engineered world. But the 21st-century engineer should also look to the natural world as a powerful design partner and a source of sustainable solutions. A good place to begin is by studying the way natural materials are constructed at the nano–scale and drawing inspiration from them as we engineer our own materials. Take, for example, the civil engineer's construction material of choice: concrete, the oldest engineered building material and one of the most widely consumed materials on earth, second only to water. Read article.
Researchers solve mystery of the throbbing drop of oil
July 16, 2007
In work that could have applications in fields from biology to environmental engineering, an MIT team has solved the puzzle of what makes a drop of oil appear to pump like a beating heart—then stop when deprived of fresh air. In the July 25 issue of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, MIT Professors Roman Stocker of civil and environmental engineering and John Bush of mathematics explain the “curious behaviour that may arise” when an oil drop containing a water-insoluble surfactant is placed on a water surface, a problem of long-standing interest to the scientific community. Read news release.
Ben-Akiva honored for lifetime achievement in transportation research
July 13, 2007
Professor Moshe Ben-Akiva, the Edmund K. Turner Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the MIT Intelligent Transportation Systems program, received the Dupuit Prize from the World Conference on Transport Research Society (WCTRS) at its conference at the University of California, Berkeley, in June. The Dupuit Prize, the highest honor presented by the society, is named after Jules Dupuit, often credited as the founder of transportation research. Read news article.
Landslide risk during typhoons analyzed; system could aid Southeast Asia
June 25, 2007
Engineers at MIT have devised a simple yet effective system for determining an area’s landslide risk, a tool that could help planners improve building codes, determine zoning, and strengthen mitigation measures in mountainous tropical regions frequently hit by typhoons or hurricanes. Devised originally for Baguio City, Philippines—a city that averages five typhoons annually and holds the world record for most precipitation received in a 24-hour period (46 inches on July 14-15, 1911)—the risk rating system relies on data commonly available in developing countries. Read news article.
Glamour magazine names CEE senior to Top 10 College Women list
June 22, 2007
Environmental engineering major Alia Whitney-Johnson admits to a bit of culture shock when she took time out of her semester’s work in Sri Lanka to return to the U.S. for a Glamour fashion photo shoot in New York City. The MIT senior had been selected as one of Glamour magazine’s Top 10 College Women for 2007. Read news article.
Buehler of CEE to attend NAE's Frontiers of Engineering meeting
June 19, 2007
Markus J. Buehler, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, is one of 83 engineers invited by the National Academy of Engineering to attend its prestigious 2007 Frontiers of Engineering meeting. The annual three-day meeting brings together outstanding engineers ages 30-45 from industry, academia and government to discuss pioneering research in different engineering fields. Each year’s program is designed to provide these top-notch engineers with an opportunity to learn about cutting-edge developments in fields other than their own, so that they may begin collaborative work and establish cross-disciplinary and cross-sector contacts with their peers early in their careers. Read article.
Prof. Lerman of CEE named Dean for Graduate Students
June 11, 2007
Steven R. Lerman, the Class of 1922 Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the new Dean for Graduate Students at MIT, effective July 1. In making the announcement, Chancellor Phillip Clay said, “Professor Lerman brings to his new role both exceptional knowledge of MIT and deep understanding of the full range of issues in graduate education...Professor Lerman has demonstrated a remarkable ability to build bridges between people and groups and to develop consensus through consultative processes.” Read news article.
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering awards 113 degrees
June 7, 2007
Graduates are gathering with families, friends and alumni this week to celebrate the completion of their degree programs during MIT’s Hooding Ceremony (June 7) and 141st Commencement Exercises (June 8). This spring, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is awarding 113 degrees: 12 doctorates; 17 Master of Science degrees; 21 Master of Science in Transportation; 31 Master of Engineering; and 32 Bachelor of Science degrees (11 in environmental engineering, 16 in civil engineering and five undesignated). Read more.
Professor Einstein honored by national association
June 6, 2007
Professor Herbert Einstein has received the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Rock Mechanics from the American Rock Mechanics Association. The citation praises Einstein for his work in education and engineering, calling him a “distinguished educator, engineer and scientist in civil engineering, geotechnical engineering and rock mechanics.” His primary research interests are rock mechanics, underground construction, engineering geology, and risk analysis. He has worked as a consultant on some of the major railroad tunnels of the Swiss Alps, and has educated many civil engineers in the basics of design, as the lead teacher of the CEE senior design course, 1.103 Civil Engineering Design.
Sophomores put their energy to practical use
May 25, 2007
Start with a little sawdust. Throw in a flywheel, some pulleys, a pendulum, a ball and lever, and you’ve got…not just a gizmo, but also a vehicle for teaching engineering design to civil and environmental engineering sophomores, who began their lab work this year with a shared project. Read news article.
Footbridges carry students from theory to practice
May 25, 2007
Students in the senior engineering design class (1.013 Civil Engineering Design) once again designed and built portable footbridges that could be used in a savannah climate where seasonal streams crop up, then dry up once the rainy season ends. The CEE seniors assembled and tested the bridges at lunchtime May 16 on the Student Center Plaza, where a small crowd gathered to watch. Read news article.
Handheld device 'sees' damage in concrete bridges, piers
May 21, 2007
Engineers in CEE have developed a new technique for detecting damage in concrete bridges and piers that could increase the safety of aging infrastructure by allowing easier, more frequent, onsite inspections that don't interfere with traffic or service. Read news article.
New graduate fellowship announced at awards dinner
May 11, 2007
At the annual awards dinner May 8, Patrick Jaillet, head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), announced the creation of a new graduate fellowship, the Speedwell Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Transportation, made possible by a grant from Michael (S.M. 1980) and Jenny Messner. The Messners, who attended the ceremony in Morss Hall, created the fellowship to honor Professor Joseph Sussman and Senior Research Associate Carl Martland, who served as teachers and mentors for Messner when he was a CEE student. Martland was Messner’s thesis advisor on “A System for Controlling a Railroad’s On-Line Freight Car Cycle,” February 1980. More awards.
Grant may help industry tap into enormous new energy source
May 10, 2007
A $1.5 million grant from the Department of Energy to a young professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ruben Juanes, could lead to a better understanding of methane, a potential source of enormous amounts of energy. The discovery in the 1970s of accumulations of methane under the ocean floor has fueled hopes of tapping into this energy resource, which some researchers estimate has the potential to provide twice the energy of all other fossil fuels combined. But mining this resource won’t be as simple as obtaining oil or gas from underground basins, because much of the methane is in the form of hydrate clathrates—crystalline ice-like compounds composed of methane molecules caged in a lattice of water molecules. Read more.
NSF grant will fund study of proteins’ mechanical properties
May 2, 2007
Assistant Professor Markus Buehler received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for continued study of the mechanical properties of proteins. This research will follow on work he did last year to develop a mathematical model describing the distinctive structure of collagen from the atomic up to the tissue scale. According to Buehler, evolution has yielded a vast array of biological materials, such as bone and spider silk, that have incredible elasticity and strength, due mainly to the molecular precision of their structural formation. To date, scientists can’t mimic the properties of these materials because they don’t understand how the particular arrangements of atoms and molecules give rise to materials’ unique properties. With the $400,000 award from the NSF, Buehler will focus on elucidating how building blocks at the nanoscale define material properties at the macroscale, using atomistic modeling. Buehler's research site.
Transportation work integrates ideas from other disciplines
May 2, 2007
Professor Joseph Sussman presented a talk April 27 to the University of Michigan SMART program about his work with complex, large-scale, interconnected, open, sociotechnical (CLIOS) systems. Recent focus of Sussman’s research is on developing a new methodology for regional strategic transportation planning as a special case of the CLIOS process, integrating ideas from strategic management, scenario-building, and technology architectures and applying it to cases in the U.S.; Mexico City; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and most recently, Portugal. Read More.
Cape Cod cleanup advances groundwater research
April 23, 2007
The investigation into a single "plume" or tongue of contaminated water underground became a 25-year gold mine of research and fueled an effort to rid the Cape's groundwater of pollutants, explains alumnus Denis LeBlanc, a hydrologist with the project. Read the article.
CEE course looks at transport of nuclear fuel
April 17, 2007
An undergraduate course in CEE is exploring how to safely transport spent nuclear fuel from the approximately 130 nuclear power plants in the United States to a high-security repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev. Read more.
MIT steel bridge team takes second place
April 3, 2007
A team of CEE students won the award for fastest construction and took second place overall in the regional ASCE/AISC Steel Bridge Competition at the University of Connecticut March 16-17, earning a chance to compete at the national competition in Northridge, Calif., next month. The CEE team, the first from MIT to enter the annual competition in many years, constructed their bridge in just seven minutes at a “cost” of just over $4 milllion. Read more.
CEE junior awarded Truman Scholarship
April 2, 2007
Alia Whitney-Johnson, 20, a junior majoring in environmental engineering, won a 2007 Harry S Truman Scholarship, which she vows to use for graduate studies in sustainable development. The Truman Scholarship is awarded to college juniors who demonstrate a sense of community and who are committed to public service. Whitney-Johnson launched a program to help Sri Lankan victims of rape and incest during the summer 2005. Read more.
Ocean model reflects diversity of underwater forests
March 31, 2007
Scientists at MIT have created an ocean model so realistic that the virtual forests of diverse microscopic plants they “sowed” have grown in population patterns that mimic their real-world counterparts. This model of the ocean is the first to reflect the vast diversity of the invisible forests living in our oceans—tiny, single-celled, green plants that dominate the ocean and produce half the oxygen we breathe on Earth. And it does so in a way that is consistent with the way real-world ecosystems evolve according to the principles of natural selection. Scientists use models such as this one to better understand the oceans biological and chemical cycles and its role in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. Lead authors are Mick Follows of EAPS and Penny Chisholm of CEE. Read more.
Chiang Mei honored by American Society of Civil Engineers
March 28, 2007
Chiang Mei, the Ford Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will receive the 2007 Theodore von Karman Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) at a ceremony in June. Mei is being honored for his “fundamental contributions in fluid mechanics, wave theory, non-Newtonian flows, and understanding of ocean waves.” He’ll accept the award during the ASCE’s Engineering Mechanics Division annual conference in Blacksburg, Va.
Teaching students to think small, quickly
March 27, 2007
An educational experiment during IAP demonstrated that students can learn to apply sophisticated atomistic modeling techniques to traditional materials research in just a few classes, an advance that could dramatically change the way civil engineers learn to model the mechanical properties of materials and provide enormous benefit to industry. “Taking an atomistic approach to the study of materials’ design and analysis offers opportunities for making significant improvements in materials’ strength, reliability and sustainability,” said Markus Buehler, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who collaborated with Ivica Ceraj, a software developer in MIT’s Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (OEIT), to prepare the new simulation techniques. Read more.
Freeman Lecture
March 21, 2007
The 2007 John R. Freeman Lecture will be presented Monday, April 9 in the Tang Center, 70 Memorial Dr. This year’s speaker, Denis R. LeBlanc of the U.S. Geological Survey, MA-RI Water Science Center, will discuss “Cape Cod’s Billion Dollar Groundwater Cleanup: The Hydrologic Story.” Reception at 6 p.m. Lecture follows at 7 p.m. Read more.
Supply me to the Moon ... and back
March 19, 2007
If you think shipping freight from Cincinnati to El Paso is challenging, imagine trying to deliver an oxygen generation unit from the Earth to a remote location on the moon. To figure out how to do that, MIT researchers Olivier L. de Weck, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, and David Simchi-Levi, professor of engineering systems and civil and environmental engineering, created SpaceNet, a software tool for modeling interplanetary supply chains. The latest version, SpaceNet 1.3, was released this month. Read more.
Roman Stocker named 2007 Doherty Professor
March 8, 2007
In work that will improve our understanding of the marine microorganisms that are essential to healthy oceans, an MIT professor is using microfluidics to study these organisms in the lab under conditions close to what they experience in the wild. For his work, Roman Stocker, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been awarded the 2007 Doherty Professorship in Ocean Utilization from the
Murcott takes global approach to local problems
March 5, 2007
An MIT engineer working toward clean drinking water in Nepal describes in a recent issue of the Journal of International Development how people from developed and developing countries can work together to solve key humanitarian problems, ultimately meeting the basic human needs for security, broadly defined. Such a collaboration "begins with a relationship among partners in the global village, taking into consideration the specific conditions of the local culture, environment and location," said Susan Murcott , a senior lecturer in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.Read the article.
Rwanda field work garners attention
February 14, 2007
Work done by the three CEE Masters of Engineering students in Rwanda last month is featured in an article on the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund web site. Daria Cresti, Kelly Doyle and Christiane Zoghbi studied methods for improving access to and storage of clean drinking water for people living in the community of Bisate, near the Volcanoes National Park. Read the article.
Storing CO2 below ground may prevent pollution above
February 8, 2007
A new analysis led by an MIT scientist, Ruben Juanes, describes a mechanism for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a power plant and injecting the gas into the ground, where it would be trapped naturally as tiny bubbles and safely stored in briny porous rock. This means that it may be possible for a power plant to be built in an appropriate location and have all its carbon dioxide emissions captured and injected underground throughout the life of the power plant, and then safely stored over centuries and even millennia. The carbon dioxide eventually will dissolve in the brine and a fraction will adhere to the rock in the form of minerals such as iron and magnesium carbonates.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/co2-0207.html
Nanoengineering concrete could cut world CO2
January 31, 2007
While government leaders argue about the practicality of reducing world emissions of carbon dioxide, an important contributor to global warming, scientists and engineers are seeking ways to make it happen. One group of engineers at MIT decided to focus its work on the nanostructure of concrete, the world’s most widely used material and a major source of carbon dioxide (CO2). The production of cement, the primary component of concrete, accounts for 5 to 10 percent of the world’s total CO2 emissions. In the January issue of the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Franz-Josef Ulm and Georgios Constantinides reports that the source of concrete’s strength and durability lies in the organization of its nanoparticles. The discovery could one day lead to a major reduction in CO2 emissions during manufacturing. Read more
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CEE course leads to students’ tsunami exhibit
January 26, 2007
Undergraduates who took a CEE course through the Terrascope program last year are making waves with the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif. The students’ design ideas used in an on-campus exhibit in 2006 are being adopted for a new tsunami exhibit, which will be one component of the aquarium’s “Catch a Wave” exhibition opening later in 2007. “The students put an enormous amount of work into their projects, and their results are amazing,” said Ari Epstein, the MIT lecturer who co-taught the class where the students first made their tsunami exhibits. Read more.
Future of concrete discussed
January 22, 2007
Professor Franz-Josef Ulm participated in a debate at Columbia University earlier this month titled, “Concrete Reborn.” He and other author-contributors to Liquid Stone, New Architecture in Concrete (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006) served as panelists to discuss the future of concrete as a building material. Panelists included the books’ editors, Jean-Louis Cohen of New York University and G. Martin Moeller, Jr., senior vice-president of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and curator of the museum’s exhibition “Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete” (2004 to 2006), as well as other architects, historians and engineers.
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