On October 14, CE112 students went to the Center for Smart Infrastructure at Richmond Field Station to observe a pipeline failure test in a lecture by Professor Kenichi Soga and East Bay Municipal Utility District staff. Soga adds that as part of the test, students observed the failure of the pipeline to understand the mechanism behind how the pipeline works and get to know the details.
Last Friday, students from CE 249, an "Experimental Methods in Structural Engineering Class" taught by Professor Khalid M. Mosalam, conducted a test on the sixth-floor outdoor bridge of Davis Hall to investigate the behavior of the structure. They evaluated the bridge's condition at different intervals using a computer to get the frequency data points and other measures.
Dr. Ioanna Kavvada, who just graduated from the ECIC program (and was advised by Professors Arpad Horvath and Scott Moura), has won the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's 2023 EERI Annual Graduate Student Paper Competition for the article "Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis for Spatially Distributed Infrastructure Considering the Correlation of Spectral Acceleration Across Spectral Periods," published in Earthquake Spectra with Professors Moura, Horvath, and Abrahamson.
In a San Francisco Examiner article, CEE Professor Susan Shaheen comments on essential factors that the California Public Utilities Commission should consider in their decision to uphold or negate both Cruise and Waymo's requests for confidentiality regarding trip-level data. Both companies filed requests with the CPUC to protect trip data from riders, including location, date, time, and trip distance offered through their autonomous vehicle ride-hailing services.
On October 13, the department hosted an advising forum for undergraduate students to learn more about faculty members' career paths and the classes that they teach. Students got to learn about the value of a CEE degree, courses that will help advance their chosen career, and the importance of research opportunities. Faculty members also shared what makes the program or area they work in the department interesting and the value and potential for pursuing a graduate degree program.
After two years of meeting virtually, the National Academy of Engineering held its annual meeting on October 2nd to welcome new inductees from the Classes of 2020, 2021, and 2022! This year, CEE alumni and faculty were part of the inductees honored in the NAE ceremony, one of the highest professional honors in engineering.
In a Nature article, CEE Professor Amy Pickering talks about how she created a water purification device named the Venturi that runs without electricity and removes contaminants that can enter leaky pipes. In her postdoctoral research, from 2012 to 2015, she helped make drinking water safe in Dhaka by developing an automated disinfection system to sterilize water directly from the tap in communities that lack access to clean water, or sanitation tools and have many diseases circulating.
Professor Dimitrios Zekkos and PhD students Weibing Gong, Parker Blunts, and Mirna Kassem, participated this summer in an expedition to characterize rock masses and landslides caused by the 2017 Hurricane Maria and 2020 Puerto Rice earthquake.
By Karen Holtermann
Some 250 friends and colleagues gathered on September 17 to remember CEE professor Karl S. Pister, whose 70-year career at the University of California included service as Dean of the College of Engineering at Berkeley, chancellor at UC Santa Cruz, and UC’s first vice president for educational outreach.
