Page 4 - CEGE Magazine Fall 2023

RAY HOZALSKI, JIA-LIANG LE, and STEFANO GONELLA have been named Record Professors. Record Professor- ships are made possible thanks to a generous donation by Dorothy Record Bauman, who left a gift through her estate that created the James L. Record Fund for the benefit of our department. The Record Fund supports the research and teaching of CEGE faculty.
BILL ARNOLD is one of two-dozen-plus co-authors on a paper that received
a lot of attention in the media. Their article reviews several studies from multiple disciplines looking at the pros and cons of using disinfectants. Tom Perkins, a writer at The Guardian told the authors that his article about the paper was the most-read article across all of The Guardian’s websites (US, UK, and Australia). The article reinforces recommendations to choose soap and water. https://cse.umn.edu/cege/news/ disinfect-or-not-disinfect-question
BILL ARNOLD (PI), along with co-PIs SEBASTIAN BEHRENS and Will Pomer- antz (Chem) received a new NSF Division of Chemistry grant for their study “Fluorine Beyond PFAS: Pathways to Sustainable Fluorochemical Design Through Environmental Degradation Studies and Fluorine Mass Balances.”
EMMANUEL DETOURNAY, Kaixiao Tian, and Ganesh Ramakrishnan received U.S. Patent #11,321,506 for a Fast Algo- rithm to Simulate the Response of PDC Bits. (Published on August 29, 2023)
GARY DAVIS, JOHN HOURDOS, and JINGRU GAO (Ph.D. student advised
by Davis) published the MnDOT report, Criteria and Guidelines for Three-Lane Road Design and Operation. “Our
goal for this project,” said Davis, “was to develop a better understanding of road conversions and their impact on motor vehicle capacity at different traffic volumes.”
XUE FENG has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Feng is also a McKnight Land-Grant Associate Professor, and a researcher at the
St Anthony Falls Laboratory. Through her research, Feng aims to discover
new ways that water shapes ecosystem response to climate change and use this knowledge to advance Earth system modeling and climate predictions.
She is currently teaching courses on Stochastic Ecohydrology, Hydrologic Design, and Uncertainty and Decision Analysis.
XUE FENG co-authored a newly published article on women’s contribu- tion to the field of hydrology. “We hope that this article will highlight the contri- butions that women have already made to the hydrological sciences,” said Feng, “and help identify where the field still has a way to go in terms of reaching gender parity in leadership and decision-making roles.”
XUE FENG moderated a discussion between two climate champions at ARCS’ Minnesota Scientists of the Year event. The 2023 Climate Champion awards were presented to J. Drake Hamilton and Patrick Hamilton, two indi- viduals who contributed significantly to improving the local and global climate. Their presentation, “Seizing our Climate Moment,” was presented May 17, 2023, at the Weisman Art Museum on the UMN campus.
JOHN GULLIVER’S research is part of a discussion about stormwater manage- ment in Finance & Commerce. “How infrastructure can curb growing storm- water challenges,” Sept 22, 2023.
RAYMOND HOZALSKI was awarded $2.1 million by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study oppor- tunistic pathogens in the US water distribution systems. Hozalski (Principal Investigator), along with his co-PIs, Srijan Aggarwal, University of Alaska Fairbanks; TIMOTHY LAPARA, UMN; and Carsten Prasse and John Sivey of Johns-Hopkins University developed
an innovative approach to explore the tradeoffs between controlling oppor- tunistic pathogens (OPs) and the risks of introducing disinfection byproducts (DBPs). They will study water utilities located across the U.S., including small systems in rural Alaska that are typically understudied.
JIA-LIANG LE (Ph.D., P.E., F.EMI, M.ASCE) has been elected as a Fellow of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute. EMI confers this recognition on members with a distinguished record of research, accomplishments, and service to the Institute.
JIA-LIANG LE was elected to the Board of Governors of the International Associ- ation of Fracture Mechanics of Concrete and Concrete Structures (IA-FraMCoS). Founded in 1991, IA-FraMCoS aims
to promote use of fracture mechanics in the analyses and design of concrete materials and structures, towards safer and more durable infrastructures.
PEDRAM MORTAZAVI, who will join the faculty in January, co-authored a paper selected as the Editor’s Choice for the July issue of ASCE Journal of Struc- tural Engineering. The paper presents the design and experimental validation of an alternative design of cast steel replaceable yielding links, which have been proven to significantly improve the response of steel eccentrically braced frames under earthquakes.
PAIGE NOVAK
is the Principal Investigator for one of 8 projects to receive a 2022 Sustainable Develop- ment Goals
(SDG) Research Grant Award from the UMN Global Programs and Strategy Alliance. This research addresses outcomes related to SDGs #6, #11,
and #13. The research will be exploring existing “low-tech” wastewater treat- ment technologies such as wastewater treatment ponds that can be leveraged globally for improved sanitation. The basis of operation for treatment ponds is microbiological, so studying pond microbiomes should allow researchers to determine the most influential factors under engineering control. https://sdg. umn.edu/news/u-m-sustainable-devel- opment-goals-initiative-announce-2022- sdg-research-grant-awards
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