Page 15 - CEGE Spring 2024

SAURA JOST (BCE 2010, advised by Timothy LaPara) was elected to the
St. Paul City Council for Ward 3. She is part of the historic group of women that make up the nation’s first all-female city council in a large city.
STUDENTS
The 2024 ASCE Western Great
Lakes Student Symposium combines several competitions for students involved in ASCE. CEGE sent a large contingent of competitors to Chicago. Each of the competition groups won awards: Ethics Paper 1st place Hans Lagerquist; Sustainable Solutions team 1st place overall in (qualifying them
for the National competition in Utah in June); GeoWall 2nd place overall; Men’s Sprint for Concrete Canoe with rowers Sakthi Sundaram Saravanan and Owen McDonald 2nd place; Product Prototype for Concrete Canoe 2nd place; Steel Bridge (200 lb bridge weight) 2nd place in lightness; Scavenger Hunt 3rd place; and Aesthetics and Structural Efficiency for Steel Bridge 4th place.
Students
competing on
the Minnesota
Environmental
Engineers,
Scientists, and
Enthusiasts
(MEESE) team
earned second
place in the
Conference on
the Environ-
ment undergraduate student design competition in November 2023. Erin Surdo is the MEESE Faculty Adviser. Pictured are NIKO DESHPANDE,
ANNA RETTLER, and SYDNEY OLSON.
The CEGE CLASS OF 2023 raised money to help reduce the financial barrier for fellow students taking the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, a cost of $175 per test taker. As a result of this gift, they were able to make the exam more affordable for 15 current CEGE seniors. CEGE students who take the FE exam pass the first time at a rate well above national averages, demonstrating that CEGE does a great job of teaching engineering fundamentals. In 2023,
46 of 50 students passed the challenging exam on the first try.
This winter break, four CEGE students joined 10 other students from the College of Science and Engineering
for the global seminar, Design for Life: Water in Tanzania. The students visited numerous sites in Tanzania, collected water source samples, designed rural water systems, and went on safari. Read the trip blog:http://globalblogs.cse.umn. edu/search/label/Tanzania%202024
Undergraduate Honor Student
MALIK KHADAR (advised by Dr. Paul Capel) received honorable mention for the Computing Research Association (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award for undergraduate students who show outstanding research potential in
an area of computing research.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
AKASH BHAT (advised by William
Arnold) presented his Ph.D. defense
on Friday, October 27, 2023. Bhat’s thesis is “Photolysis of fluorochemicals: Tracking fluorine, use of UV-LEDs, and computational insights.” Bhat’s work investigating the degradation of fluori- nated compounds will assist in the future design of fluorinated chemicals such that
persistent and/or toxic byproducts are not formed in the environment.
ETHAN BOTMEN (advised by Bill Arnold) completed his Master of Science Final Exam February 28, 2024. His research topic was Degradation of Fluorinated Compounds by Nucleophilic Attack of Organo-fluorine Functional Groups.
XIATING CHEN, Ph.D. Candidate in Water Resources Engineering at the Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory is the recipient of the 2023 Nels Nelson Memorial Fellowship Award. Chen (advised by Xue Feng) is researching eco-hydrological functions of urban
trees and other green infrastructure at both the local and watershed scale, through combined field observations and modeling approaches.
ALICE PRATES BISSO DAMBROZ has been a Visiting Student Researcher at
the University of Minnesota since last August, on a Doctoral Disser- tation Research Award from Fulbright. Her CEGE advisor is Dr. Paul Capel. Dambroz is a
fourth year Ph.D. student in Soil Science at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria in Brazil, where she studies with her adviser Jean Minella. Her research focuses on the hydrological monitoring of a small agricultural watershed in Southern Brazil, which is located on a transition area between volcanic and sedimentary rocks. Its topography, shallow soils, and land use make it prone to runoff and erosion processes.
University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering | DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND GEO- ENGINEERING 15