Page 17 - CEGE Magazine Fall 2024

STUDENTS
The ASCE SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS
TEAM competed in the 2024 ASCE
Civil Engineering Student Champion-
ships in Provo, Utah. Their proposal,
titled ‘Planting Community: A Revital-
ized Riverfront for the City of ASCE,’
placed 4th overall, and their technical
design proposal received 2nd place.
KLARA KONDRAK will be the team
captain for 2024-2025.
OLUTOONI AJAYI (Ph.D. 2024) defended
her thesis August 19. Her research was
on the “Development of a flexible and
encapsulated microbial community for
the two-stage anaerobic treatment of
industrial food and beverage wastewa-
ters.” Ajayi will stay on as a Post Doctoral
Researcher with her advisor Paige Novak.
EMIRLAN ASKERBEKOV (MS 2024)
defended his master’s thesis on August
14. He was advised by Joseph Labuz and
Jia-Liang Le. His thesis explored “Experi-
ments on a quasibrittle material: strength
and fracture properties.” He is joining 2H
Offshore and will be working on advanced
systems engineering for the offshore
energy sector.
ROB AXTELL (BCE 2023, MS 2024,
advised by Kimberly Hill) defended his
Master’s thesis in May. His thesis was
titled “Experimental studies of
physics-driven segregation patterns on
alluvial fans.” In July, he started a new role
as a water resources engineer for WSP in
the US in the Salt Lake City area.
AKASH BHAT (Ph.D. 2023, advised by
William Arnold), a postdoctoral researcher
at Colorado State University, received
Honorable Mention for 2024’s Jacobs
Engineering Best Doctoral Dissertation
Award from AEESP. An honor rarely
granted for this award by AEESP. His
thesis, “Photolysis of fluorochemicals:
Tracking fluorine, use of UV-LEDs, and
computational insights.”
SOUKAINA BENAICH is a graduate
student advised by Judy Yang. Together
they co-authored a chapter titled “Impact
of Salt on Cohesive Sediment Transport” in
the book Sediment Transport Research:
Further Recent Advances, published by
IntechOpen. Benaich’s chapter delves
into the effects of salt on the transport of
cohesive sediments, contributing valuable
insights to sediment transport research.
MASON BICHANICH (BEnvE 2020) was
part of a team of graduate students at the
University of New Hampshire that worked
with the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory to design a tidal turbine for
data acquisition. The turbine was outfitted
with the Modular Ocean Data Acquisition
system so it can provide information on
strain, power output, and environmental
conditions, which will be key for future
turbine research.
After completing his Ph.D. with
Stefano Gonella in September,
MOHAMMAD CHARRA (Ph.D. 2024)
started a new position as Postdoctoral
Research Associate at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where he will
research the mechanics of metamaterials
across different scales using a combi-
nation of computational simulations and
experiments. His goal is to advance the
understanding and application of these
novel materials in various fields, such as
acoustics, optics, and mechanics.
JINGRU GAO (Ph.D. 2024, advised by
Gary Davis) defended his Ph.D. August
26. Gao’s thesis is titled “Surrogate-based
transferability of crash modification
factors.”
CEGE undergrad SANLEY GUERRIER
presented his research at Barr Engi-
neering. His work was supported by the
Doug Barr Memorial Student Research
Scholarship. He is pictured with Barr CEO
Ward Swanson.
Graduate student FRANTZ JOSEPH
(advised by Paige Novak and William
Arnold) is one of three applicants selected
to receive a $3,500 Advanced Degree
Scholarship on behalf of the Minnesota
Section of the American Water Works
Association.
SUPRIO KAMAL (advised by Boya Xiong)
received a $15,000 scholarship from the
Environmental Research and Educa-
tion Foundation’s Scholarship Program.
Read more at https://erefdn.org/scholar/
suprio-kamal/
ANNA MAHONY (a Ph.D. student, advised
by William Arnold) was awarded a UMN
Graduate School 2024-2025 Doctoral
Dissertation Fellowship. It allows Mahony,
one of UMN’s most accomplished
Ph.D. candidates, an opportunity to
devote full-time effort to her outstanding
research project, “Quaternary ammo-
nium compounds (QACs) in wastewater
and the environment: Quantification and
Removal.” Mahony, now in her fifth year,
has been working on this project since
she started graduate school in 2020.
OTHMAN OUDGHIRI-IDRISSI (Ph.D.
2022, advised by Bojan Guzina) started
a new position as Assistant Professor of
Civil, Architectural, and Environmental
Engineering at the University of Texas at
Austin. UTA is currently ranked 3rd best
in the country among the civil engineering
programs by US News & World Report.
He left UMN for a Postdoctoral Research
position in the Department of Mechan-
ical Engineering, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, where he developed the
next-generation of in-space manufactur-
able structures integrating metamaterial
technologies.
MINGFENG SHANG (Ph.D. 2024, advised
by Raphael Stern) defended his Ph.D.
thesis, “Enabling the next generation of
transportation systems by accounting
for heterogeneity in traffic flow: Modeling
and control of mixed autonomy traffic,”
and began a new position as Assistant
Research Professor at the University of
Arizona.
Read CEGE news online at:
cse.umn.edu/cege/news
University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering | DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND GEO- ENGINEERING 17
University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering | DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND GEO- ENGINEERING 17