The CEAE Visitation Day will be held in the Engineering Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder (see the Contact Us link for maps).

Events:

Events on Visitation Day include program and faculty introductions, lab tours, a seminar, CEAE Graduate Program overview, and meetings with faculty and graduate students.

Schedule:

Friday, March 2 – Activities will be in the Engineering Center and the Discovery Learning Center (DLC)

Saturday, March 3 – Free day to explore Boulder

Registration:

All newly admitted graduate students in civil engineering may participate in the CEAE Visitation Day. Registration is required. Confirm your participation with Pamela Halstead Williamson, the CEAE graduate program coordinator, before February 27, 2012 (pamela.williamson@colorado.edu).

Graduate Committee:

Faculty on the CEAE Graduate Committee are your first point of contact for information and scheduling for Visitation Day. Faculty, and their specialty areas, are listed below.

Lodging:

Lodging near the CU Engineering Center is available at the Best Western Boulder Inn and Boulder Outlook Hotel & Suites. They are located at the east edge of campus along the 28th Street Frontage Road and are in walking distance to the Engineering Center. There are also other hotels available near the University.

Boulder Outlook Hotel & Suites http://www.boulderoutlook.com/
$74 – $104
800 28th Street
Boulder, CO 80303
303-443-3322
Toll Free Reservations: 800-542-0304
Code: Civil Engineering Group

Best Western Boulder Inn CU http://boulderinn.com/
$82 (must make reservations 14 days in advance to guarantee rate)
770 28th Street
Boulder, CO 80303
303-449-3800
Toll Free Reservations: 800-233-8469
Code: Civil Engineering
Complimentary hot breakfast served 6:30 AM to 10:00 AM – Includes: scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, juices, 3 cereals, English muffins, bagels, doughnuts, assorted fresh fruit, and coffee.

Millennium Harvest House Boulder CU http://www.millenniumhotels.com/millenniumboulder/index.html
$104
1325 Twenty-Eighth Street
Boulder, CO 80302
303-443-3850
Toll Free Reservations: 800-545-6285

Engineering Center:

The CU Engineering Center is on the east side of campus at the intersection of Colorado Avenue and Regent Drive. Please visit the Contact Us link on the menu above for maps of the campus and engineering center.

On Foot: From Outlook & Best Western, cross under US 36 using the culvert passway at Aurora Avenue. Aurora is just north of the inns. From New West Inn, use the culvert at College Avenue. Or from all three motels follow 28th St. Frontage Road and cross US 36 at Colorado Avenue (left).

By Car: A Visitor Parking lot is located south and east of the Engineering Center.

Air Travel to Boulder:

Air travelers will fly to Denver International Airport (DIA), and use ground transportation to continue to Boulder. DIA information is available at www.flydenver.com. Options for ground transportation from DIA are:

RTD Bus: Use the AB Boulder/DIA route. Fare is $12.00 one way (exact change). Buses leave from the west (first) and east (2nd) side of the DIA terminal. The last bus leaves DIA at 11:25 PM (east side). In Boulder, the bus travels along Broadway. In Boulder, exit the bus at 16th Street/Regent, University of Colorado. Heading east, follow Regent Dr. to reach the Engineering Center and motels. The longer, but more clear route to the motels is to take Regent Dr. to Colorado (turn right), cross over the highway (US 36 and 28th St.) and immediately turn right on 28th St. Frontage Road.

Van Service: The Super Shuttle http://www.supershuttle.com/
(Advance reservation required, $25 each way/$50 round trip)
(303) 444-0808

Car: Take Pena Boulevard south to I-70. Travel west on I-70 to I-270. Take I-270 and follow signs for Boulder via US 36.

To Reach CU Campus: As you arrive in Boulder, the first traffic signal on US 36 is at Colorado Avenue. At this intersection, turn left to enter campus. Go left again at the next light. This is 26th St – Regent Drive. Ahead on the left is the visitor parking lot.

To Reach Boulder Inn & Outlook Hotels: In Boulder, take the exit for Baseline Road. There is a light at the intersection, go straight through. Keep right for the ramp to Frontage Road. At the stop sign, bear left and continue on the Frontage Road for Best Western Boulder Inn and Outlook Inns.

To Reach Millennium Harvest Hotel: In Boulder, stay on Highway 36-28th Street. After the first intersection at Colorado Ave, go straight and turn left after Taft Drive. The hotel is before the next intersection 28th St & Arapahoe Ave.

Rental Car Agencies Located at the Denver International Airport

Advantage www.arac.com

Enterprise www.enterprise.com

Alamo www.alamo.com

Hertz www.hertz.com

Avis www.avis.com

National www.nationalcar.com

Budget www.budget.com

Payless www.paylesscarrental.com

Dollar www.dollar.com

Diane McKnight (photo by the University of Colorado)

Diane McKnight, professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering and a fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

McKnight is among 66 new members and 10 foreign associates of the academy. She joins 16 other faculty from the campus who have been elected since the academy’s formation in 1962.

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

McKnight was recognized for making clear the interrelationship between natural organic matter and heavy metals in streams and lakes.

Her research expertise is in the interactions between freshwater biota, trace metals, and natural organic material in diverse freshwater environments, including lakes and streams in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.

In the Rocky Mountains, she has focused on the impact of metal contamination in acid mine drainage streams and the influence of climate change and nitrogen deposition on alpine lakes and wetlands. McKnight has interacted with many state and local groups involved in mine drainage and watershed issues in the Rocky Mountains.

“Diane is a worldwide leader in the interactive effect of metals in our water system with natural organic matter,” said Professor Ross Corotis, who was dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science when McKnight joined the faculty and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in 1996. “In addition to her advanced research for protecting environments from the Antarctic to the Rocky Mountains, she is a leader in developing books for children to help them learn about the water cycle.”

McKnight has been working in Antarctica since 1987, and is a leading investigator studying extreme life at the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research site funded by the National Science Foundation. In the harsh polar environment, stream channels flow only a few weeks out of the year and the only life forms inhabiting the area are microorganisms, mosses, lichens and a few groups of invertebrates.

She wrote and published a children’s book, “The Lost Seal,” in 2006, that tells the true story of a wayward seal discovered near the research camp in 1990 and its eventual rescue. The story gives children an understanding of Antarctica’s extreme environment and the work of scientists there.

She earned three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1975, a master’s degree in civil engineering in 1978 and a doctorate in environmental engineering in 1979.

She was a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Research Program for 17 years before she came to CU-Boulder. She was named a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2004 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009.

She is a former member of the National Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board and Polar Research Board, and she received a Meritorious Service Award from the U.S. Geological Survey in 1995.

Jessica Kaminsky

Jessica Kaminsky, a doctoral student working with Assistant Professor Amy Javernick-Will, was awarded a three-year fellowship through the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Science To Achieve Results (STAR) program. Jessica is a student studying in the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities. Her research aims to improve the sustainability of household sanitation infrastructure.

Household sanitation systems, like septic tanks, are one of the most common sources of groundwater contamination in the United States. Both domestically and internationally, they suffer from high failure rates. While some of these failures are due to poor design, many are instead caused by inadequate maintenance and operation. To address this issue, Jessica’s research will quantify the social networks that impact sanitation systems in an effort to understand how knowledge flow impacts maintenance and operation.

Sarah Bounty receiving her award from conference organizer Ron Hofmann (University of Toronto)

Sarah Bounty, an MS candidate working with Professor Karl Linden in environmental engineering, won the Best Student Presentation Award at the International UV Association (IUVA) North American Conference in Toronto, Canada in September 2011 for her paper “Inactivation of Adenovirus using Low Dose UV/H2O2 Advanced Oxidation”. Co-authors on her paper were Luke Martin, a high school student she mentored, Roberto Rodriquez, a post-doc working in the Linden group, and Professor Linden. Sarah received a plaque and a cash prize.

Sarah is currently researching molecular biology techniques to identify inactivation mechanisms of UV light disinfection of viruses in water.

The annual DeCook Scholarship dinner

A 1971 CU-Boulder graduate and his wife are helping to pay the tuition of as many as 20 undergraduate students in the architectural engineering program each year through the David DeCook Scholarship fund. The fund, which is one of the largest scholarship gifts to students in architectural engineering, awards $1,500 toward each student’s tuition.

Dave DeCook is a 1971 architectural engineering graduate; he also earned a business degree from Colorado State University in 1967. Dave’s career began with several years as an environmental engineer at the City of Colorado Springs. His duties included beautifying existing electrical substations and siting new ones with a goal of less visibility, cleaner appearance, and low-profile or underground power transmission. Changing positions in 1974, Dave began work at United Parcel Service as a project engineer in charge of construction of major facilities throughout the Southwest. He rose to the position of regional plant engineering manager, moving his family to New York, Georgia, California, and back to Georgia, where he managed overall construction and facilities engineers in those UPS regions. He finished his career in the corporate office of UPS and retired following 26 years of service. He and his wife Deborah are dedicated Colorado Buffaloes, providing an athletic scholarship in football as well as providing awards to highly deserving architectural engineering students.

To be considered for the DeCook scholarship, students must be entering their junior or senior year of study and apply online for the college’s merit scholarships. The deadline to apply for 2012-2013 scholarships is March 1, 2012 at 5:00 pm.

The students partnered with nonprofit organizations, private companies and universities for four- to 12-week “practicum” experiences in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia, Uganda, Nepal and China.

The Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities at CU-Boulder arranged the practicum experiences, which included support for drinking water and sanitation systems, low-carbon approaches to affordable housing, cook stove optimization and emission testing, and other community development projects.

Among the CU students who went abroad were Chalie Nevárez, Katie Spahr and Chance Steffey, who helped to implement a monitoring and evaluation system that uses smartphones to assess the sustainability of community-based drinking water and sanitation projects in Nicaragua.

The three students worked with El Porvenir, a nonprofit organization based in Denver that provides technical assistance and training for rural communities lacking access to government services to build and manage their own drinking water and sanitation systems.

Over a period of seven weeks, Nevárez, Spahr and Steffey helped train El Porvenir staff and local university students in the use of the smartphone system, and supervised the rollout of a pilot evaluation system in 44 rural communities.

The evaluations will help El Porvenir determine the factors that influence communities’ ability to operate and maintain their water and sanitation systems in the long term. According to Rob Bell, executive director of El Porvenir, these factors could include hygiene education, environmental education, training of young people, or incorporation of women into the water and sanitation committees.

For students, the practicum experience gave them the opportunity to apply their engineering skills to a real-world project. The experience opened Nevárez’s eyes to the world of development and has encouraged her interest in working in the field upon graduation.

“I learned that community development is not a linear problem and solution, and it’s not just about the technology. There are many factors you have to consider such as politics, power, organization and economics,” said Nevárez, who expects to graduate from CU in December with a master’s degree in civil engineering and who is bilingual in English and Spanish.

“The experience in Nicaragua was a great opportunity for me and I was so impressed with the ability of the local students and staff,” she said. “The smartphones made the evaluation so much quicker; we uploaded a survey every 15 minutes and we got richer data with pictures of the projects.

“I would love to go back and keep working in the field as a development engineering consultant,” she said.

The Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities promotes integrated, participatory and sustainable solutions to the engineering challenges of the developing world, with a focus on clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene; energy; sustainable and disaster-resistant building materials and shelter; and cook stoves and indoor air quality.

The center sponsors courses in engineering and sustainable community development; administers a graduate certificate in engineering for developing communities; conducts research and design on appropriate technologies for developing communities; and provides technical assistance and training related to sustainable community development and appropriate technologies.

For more information about the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities, visit their website.

 The research, which starts this month, is aimed at creating a more accurate representation of the impact of buried landmines and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, on light-armored military vehicles so that the vehicles can be better designed to withstand such blasts.

 The award is administered by the Office of Naval Research as part of the defense department’s competitive Multi-University Research Initiative or MURI program, which supports basic science and engineering research at U.S.universities related to long-term national security needs.

 MURI awards are provided to accelerate progress in cutting-edge research areas by supporting multidisciplinary teams with larger and longer awards than other DOD research programs.

 The grant will provide $4.2 million to CU-Boulder and $3 million to co-investigators at four other institutions. The other schools involved are the University of California, Berkeley; University of Texas at Dallas; University of Tennessee Knoxville; and the University of Utah.

 Richard Regueiro, assistant professor in CU-Boulder’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, is the principal investigator. CU-Boulder professors Ronald Pak, John McCartney and Stein Sture of civil engineering, and Oleg Vasilyev of mechanical engineering, also are involved.

 The research initiative will involve experiments using CU-Boulder’s large 400-g ton geotechnical centrifuge coupled with computational modeling. The objective is to develop and validate a model that accurately represents explosive blasts of varying charges, depths and soil types.

 CU-Boulder’s proposal was one of 27 MURI awards made to academic institutions in different topical areas in 2011. The proposals, which are being funded with a total of $191 million over five years, were selected from a field of 332 proposals, including 17 on the topic of soil blast modeling and simulation.

Professor Henze’s work has also earned him the 2011 Excellence in Energy Efficiency Technology Commercialization Award from the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association.

Julie Korak, a doctoral student in the environmental engineering program, is working with Professor R. Scott Summers to develop an analytical method for detecting hydraulic fracturing fluid in groundwater. Hydraulic fracturing is widely used for the extraction of oil and natural gas. There is a growing concern that the chemical compounds, some of which are toxic, used in the fracturing process have the potential to contaminate groundwaters or enter surface waters during disposal. Julie plans to use fluorescence spectroscopy to develop an economic and simple method for detecting the presence of these compounds. Such a method would benefit both rural and urban communities wherever there is a prevalence of oil and gas development.

Austa Parker, a doctoral student in the environmental engineering program, is working on a research project with Professor Karl Linden, examining the use of advanced oxidation technologies to destroy chemical contaminants in drinking water. Her work will utilize advanced analytical chemistry techniques such as mass spectrometry and toxicity testing to identify oxidation byproducts for select chemicals on the US EPA Candidate Contaminant List. Her work will provide important information on the treatability of these contaminants, supporting policymakers, water utilities, consultants, and other academics.

Melissa Stewart, an MS candidate in the geotechnical engineering and geomechanics program, is working on a research project with Professor John McCartney involving centrifuge modeling of soil-structure interaction in energy foundations. After she completes her MS degree, Melissa will continue will her PhD degree at CU-Boulder, focusing on the impact of heat exchange on the deformation response of geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures.

Click image to make larger

CEAE assistant professor Richard Regueiro’s research proposal “Simulation of blast loading on an ultrastructurally-based computational model of the ocular lens” has been funded through the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Vision Research Program (VRP). The goal of the VRP is to support research targeting the causes, effects, and treatment of eye damage and diseases that result in impairment or loss of vision in service members. Professor Regueiro’s research objective is to better understand how traumatic cataract is formed in the combat soldier as a result of blast loading. Better understanding of these mechanisms, through computational modeling and tissue experiments, could help maximize vision recovery for injured soldiers and civilians and improve how protective eye gear is designed.