Page 4 - CEGE Magazine Fall 2022

high-school, undergraduate, and grad- uate students.
MICHAEL LEVIN recently completed a project with MnDOT that could affect the daily commute for thousands of people. Levin and graduate student Simanta Barman started working
on this project in September 2019. They applied a new adaptive method for controlling signal timings, called max-pressure control. The method has been mathematically proven, but its performance was not well-known in practice. Levin and Barman conducted methodological improvements and simulation experiments on a cali- brated model of seven intersections
in Hennepin County. They found that max-pressure signal timing achieves higher throughput during peak demand and is more responsive to queues.
SONIA MOGILEVSKAYA and
JOSEPH LABUZ will represent the geomechanics group in the project titled “Diagonal,” which was recently funded by the European Commission. Diagonal involves a consortium of four European institutions (University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain; University of Seville, Spain; Institute of Fundamental Tech- nological Research, Poland; School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy) and six partner universities (University of Florida, USA; Northwestern University, USA; Texas A&M University, USA; University of Minnesota, USA; Monash Univer- sity, Australia; Universidade Federal
de Santa Maria, Brazil). Diagonal will advance the state of the art in flow and fracture of brittle and ductile functionally graded materials through (1) training and knowledge sharing activities and
(2) a series of international workshops for doctoral candidates and postdoc- toral researchers from the consortium. The scientific objective is to extend the use of functionally graded materials, including fabrication with additive manu- facturing techniques, in the construction of parts designed for critical structural applications in the transportation and security industries.
RAPHAEL STERN is contributing to research on deer-vehicle collisions. “The idea is to identify hot spots and
4 CEGE | CSE.UMN.EDU/CEGE
see what might be contributing to these collisions,” said Stern, who is working with MnDOT. The research appeared in the Star Tribune September 19.
JUDY YANG, Assistant Professor in CEGE, has received four substan-
tial research grants. 1) Yang received $110,000 over 2 years through the Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grants program. She will study “Pore scale investigation of the impacts of swelling clay on oil-brine transport in porous media.” 2) A $553,400 NSF grant through the Hydrological Sciences program will support her project, “Multiscale Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Impacts of Turbulence and Vegetation on Flow and Solute Transport in Hyporheic Zone.” Her co-PI is Peter Kang (Geosciences, UMN). 3) A $326,000 grant from the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) was awarded for her project titled “Mitigating Cyanobacterial Blooms and Toxins Using Clay-Algae Flocculation.” She and co-PI Miki Hondzo will investigate solutions to excessive algae growth in Minnesota’s lakes and rivers. 4) She received a second NSF grant in excess of $300,000 for her project “Collabora- tive Research: Grain to Channel Scale Experimental and Numerical Investiga- tion of Cohesive Sediment Transport.”
EMERITI
PROFESSOR EMERITA EFI FOUFOULA- GEORGIOU was elected to the Amer- ican Academy of Arts and Sciences. Now a
professor at UC Irvine, Foufoula-Geor- giou’s research is focused on hydrology and geomorphology. While at Minne- sota, she served as director of the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics. She was also a presidential appointee to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. She most recently received the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System, an international scientific organization.
JOHN GULLIVER presented “Infiltration Measurements for Infiltration Practices,” for the Virtual Stormwater Conference, Walden Environmental Engineering on April 19. He also presented “Measuring Infiltration Rates: The pros and cons of several infiltrometers,” at the EWRI 2022 Conference Operation and Maintenance of Stormwater Control Measures, Wilm- ington, North Carolina in March.
ALUMNI
MATTHEW BERENS (Ph.D. 2020), worked with PAUL CAPEL, and
BILL ARNOLD to research neonicotinoid insecticides in surface water, ground- water, and wastewater. Neonicotinoids are the most widely used class of insecticides worldwide. These insecti- cides act non-selectively against most insects and may adversely affect non-targeted organisms. Their write-up of this research in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C) was recognized by the journal as one of the Top 10 Exceptional Papers of 2021.
CEGE Advisory Board members
DAN MURPHY (BCE 1974, second left), ALI LING (BCE 2008, center front), SEAN SWARTZ (BGeoE 1998, second right), and LISA CERNEY (BCE 1999, far right), participated in a panel at the ASEE 2022 Conference in Minneapolis. The panelists discussed the positive value for engineering companies of engaging with students at universities through capstone projects, site visits, and internships.
DICK (H. RICHARD) COLEMAN (BCE 1973) posed with Paige Novak and Joe Labuz under the portrait of W. David Lacabanne, the namesake of the newly renovated rock
mechanics laboratory. The Coleman
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