CEE IN FOCUS Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Room 1-290 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 Holliston, MA Permit 20 Holliston, MA Permit 20 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED CEE IN FOCUS Vol. 4 We welcome your news and photos! Send email to [email protected]. Cover Photos / © Stuart Darsch Issue 2 Spring 2012 Alumni Newsletter / MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering IN THIS ISSUE The application of novel, multidisciplinary methodologies to engineering problems and the mining of new types of datasets yield new insights into basic science and engineering concepts. For instance, by studying the molecular dynamics of spider silk — an incredibly strong building material — and the behavior of spider webs at the macro level, researchSpider silk’s unusual combination of strength and stretchiness helps make spider webs exceptionally resilient structures. Photo / Jesse Yardley ers discover how damage to a web’s overall structure is localized. Using mathematics’ category theory, the structure of spider silk and music are compared, while statistical physics approaches produce improved models of human dynamics and contagion processes. WHAT’S INSIDE The Molecular Building Blocks of Spider Webs Reveal One of Nature’s Secrets for Attaining Structural Stability \ page 4 The Growth in Users of the Microblogging Website Twitter Relied on Traditional Social Networks \ page 8 CEE Celebrates the Lifetime Achievements of Professor Chiang Mei With a Symposium and Banquet \ page 11 CEE IN FOCUS \ SPRING 2012 MESSAGE FROM THE DEPARTMENT HEAD It is a great pleasure to begin this issue of CEE In Focus by welcoming two new faculty members: Colette Heald and Saurabh Amin. Colette completed News Briefs Weaving a Powerful Web: 4 Spider Webs Resist Damage Through a Harmonious Balance of Strength and Stretchiness Environmental Research Council Proposes new Global Environment Initiative 12 Hip-Hop Superstar GZA Visits Chisholm Lab to Learn About Ocean Science 12 7 Mathematical Ologs: Researchers Show Spider Silk as String Symphony her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2005 and comes to MIT after three years 2 Research Feature 3 in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University. Her primary expertise is in the development and application of atmospheric News and Research models to understand the sources, transport and fate of gases and particles in the troposphere and their impacts on air quality and climate. Colette Andrew and Jesse Kroll now give the department a strong research presence in Whittle and aero-astro departments. Saurabh has a background in transportation and atmospheric chemistry that is well linked to related activities in MIT’s EAPS Berkeley in 2011. His research focuses on control algorithms for networked infrastructure systems with emphasis on survivability in uncertain and adversarial conditions (e.g., cybersecurity). He has also been appointed as an affiliate in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. Coincidentally, several articles in this issue also highlight research on complex systems, a pervasive theme across the department for many years: Markus Buehler has applied category theory (ontology logs) to understand how the functional properties of biological materials, such as spider silk, PSB 07-08-0703 / Design: Moth Design computer science, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Profiles Twitter’s Growth Relied on Traditional Social Networks 8 First DES4 Lecture Highlights Similar Architecture in Man-Made and Natural Networks 9 Department Welcomes Four to Faculty: Amin, Heald, Jennings and Osorio 10 Symposium and Banquet Honoring Chiang Mei Held at American Academy of Arts and Sciences 11 Alumni Profile: Veronica Cedillos 13 Student Profile: Scott Landers 14 Faculty Profile: Heidi Nepf 15 Faculty and Staff News 16 Student News 17 Alumni News 18 Gifts to CEE 23 are related to the hierarchical structure of protein building blocks. This methodology may have very broad applications in multiscale material modeling and other biological systems. Marta González’s research provides new insights into the contagion process of social networks that contributes to a broader theme of understanding human dynamics and related patterns of mobility and land use. The linkage “From Network Science to Human Dynamics” was also the topic of a fascinating lecture by Professor Albert-László Barabási of Northeastern University, the first in a series of Distinguished Engineering and Science Speaker Seminar Series (DES4) to be hosted by CEE. Last May, CEE hosted a special symposium to celebrate the career of Professor CEE IN FOCUS CEE In Focus is published twice annually by the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering to keep our alumni and friends informed about the department’s educational and research activities and its faculty, students and staff, and to help alumni stay in contact STAFF CONTACT Denise Brehm CEE In Focus Editor-in-chief, CEE In Focus Senior Communications Officer Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Caroline Barnes Designer, CEE In Focus Kathryn O’Neill Editor, CEE In Focus Room 1-290 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 Chiang Mei on the occasion of his retirement, with presentations by an invited with one another. We welcome your news and group of prominent fluid mechanicians. Thanks to the generous support of comments. Please send correspondence Debbie Levey Tel: 617.253.7101 Fax: 617.258.6775 alumni and friends, CEE has established the Chiang C. Mei Lecture in Applied to [email protected]. Editor, Alumni News [email protected] Andrew J. Whittle http://cee.mit.edu Mechanics as a testament to Chiang’s profound influence in this field. Department Head Edmund K. Turner Professor Patricia Dixon Andrew J. Whittle Administrative Officer CEE In Focus is winner of a Gold Award in the 2009 Circle of Excellence Awards of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Follow us on Facebook Research Feature \ Spider Silk “Even if it has a lot of defects, the web actually still functions mechanically virtually the same way. It’s a very flaw-tolerant system.” — Markus Buehler 4 An Argiope bruennichi spider and its web. Photo / Francesco Tomasinelli and Emanuele Biggi Associate Professor Markus Buehler of CEE has previously analyzed the complex, hierarchical structure of spider silk and its amazing strength — on a pound-for-pound basis, it’s stronger than steel. Now, Buehler and colleagues have applied their analysis to the structure of the webs themselves, finding evidence of the key properties that make webs so resilient and relating those properties back to the molecular structure of silk fibers. The lessons learned from this work, Buehler said, could not only help develop more damage-resistant synthetic materials, but could also provide design principles that might apply to networked systems such as the Internet or the electric grid. WEAVING A POWERFUL WEB Spider Webs Resist Damage Through a Harmonious Balance of Strength and Stretchiness By David L. Chandler / MIT News Office A paper describing the new findings was published online in Nature Feb. 1. In addition to Buehler, the study was carried out by CEE graduate students Steven Cranford and Anna Tarakanova, and Nicola Pugno of the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. It turns out that a key property of spider silk that helps make webs robust is something previously considered a weakness: the way it can stretch and soften at first when pulled, and then stiffen again as the force of the pulling increases. This stiffening response is crucial to the way spider silk resists damage. Buehler and his team analyzed how materials with different properties, arranged in the same web pattern, respond to localized stresses. They found that materials with other responses — those that either behave as a simple linear spring as they’re pulled, or start out stretchy and then become more plastic — perform much HIDDEN less effectively. STRENGTH T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L W E E K LY J O U R N A L O F S C I E N C E The silk that spiders use to build their webs, trap their prey and dangle from your ceiling is one of the strongest materials known. But it turns out it’s not simply the material’s exceptional strength that makes spider webs so resilient; it’s the material’s unusual combination of strength and stretchiness — silk’s characteristic way of first softening and then stiffening when pulled. These properties, scientists have found, vary depending on the forces applied, as well as on the overall design of the web. Spider webs, it turns out, can take quite a beating without failing. Damage tends to be localized, affecting just a few threads — the place where a bug got caught in the web and flailed around, for example. The damaged portion can simply be repaired, rather than replaced, or even left alone if the web continues to function as before. “Even if it has a lot of defects, the web actually still functions mechanically virtually the same way,” Buehler said. “It’s a very flaw-tolerant system.” Buehler’s research is mostly theoretical, based on computer modeling of material properties and how they respond to “It’s a real opportunity. It opens a new design variable for engineering.” — Markus Buehler stresses. But in this case, to test the findings, he and his team literally went into the field; they tested actual spider webs by poking and pulling at them. In all cases, damage was limited to the immediate area they disturbed. The effect was somewhat surprising, Buehler said: The initial response was a deformation of the entire web, since the strands are initially relatively easy to deform. But then, because of the fibers’ nonlinear response, only the threads where the force was applied carried the load — by stretching out and then becoming stiff. As the force increased, they eventually broke. “No matter where you pull, the web always fails exactly at that location,” Buehler said. Anyone can try this simple experiment, he added. Simply pluck a single silk thread from a spider web, and it should break only where it’s pulled. In a web made of material with a more uniform stretching response, by contrast, local stresses cause much more widespread damage. Nonlinear failure of spider silk is secret of its success PAGE 72 NUTRITION SWEET SORROW Should sugar join tobacco and alcohol on restricted list? PAGE 27 LITERATURE MICROBIOLOGY THE OLD CURIOSITY RESISTANCE FIGHTERS PAGE 32 PAGE 23 Science and imagination in the world of Charles Dickens The rocky road to an MRSA vaccine NATURE.COM/NATURE 2 February 2012 continued on page 6 5 Research Feature \ Spider Silk Research Feature \ Olog as Abstract Comparison Mathematical Ologs: Researchers Show Spider Silk as String Symphony continued from page 5 In a strong wind, on the other hand, it’s the initial stiffness of the silk that helps a web survive. Webs in Buehler’s simulation were able to tolerate winds up to almost hurricane strength before tearing apart. 6 Engineers tend to focus on materials with uniform, linear responses because those materials’ properties are so much easier to calculate, Buehler said. But this research suggests that there could be important advantages to materials whose responses are more complex. In the unusual response of spider silk, for example — initially stiff, then stretchy, then stiff again — “each little piece of that funny behavior has a fundamental role to play” in making the whole web so robust, he said. Materials with the same ultimate strength, as measured by their breaking point, often perform very differently in real-world applications. “The actual strength is not so important; it’s how you get there,” he said. The basic principle of permitting localized damage so that an overall structure can survive, he said, could end up guiding structural engineers. For example, earthquake-resistant buildings are generally designed to protect the whole building by dissipating energy, reducing the load on the structure. When they fail, they tend to do so in their entirety. A new design might allow the building to flex up to a point, but then provide for certain specific structural elements to break first, enabling the rest of the structure to survive; this might ultimately allow the building to be repaired rather than demolished. Similar principles might apply to the design of airplanes or armored vehicles that could resist localized damage and keep functioning. Such “sacrificial elements” might be used not just for physical objects but also in the design of networked systems. For example, a computer experiencing a virus attack could be designed to shut down instantly, before its problems propagate. Someday, then, the World Wide Web might actually be strengthened thanks to lessons learned from the backyard version that inspired its name. “It’s a real opportunity,” Buehler said. “It opens a new design variable for engineering.” David Kaplan, a professor of engineering at Tufts University and director of its Center for Biological Engineering, called these findings “quite exciting.” He said, “The combination of modeling and experiment makes this particularly attractive as a platform for study and inquiry into materials designs and failure modes in general, with structural hierarchy in mind.” “These principles, I believe, will have an impact in a wide range of fields such as medicine, future materials and architecture,” added Philip LeDuc, a professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office and the MIT-Italy Program. n This story first appeared on the MIT News site, http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice. The interplay of mechanisms at different scales of its hierarchical structure endows the spider web with superior mechanical properties, including the capacity to deal with large wind loads and large local deformation. Image / Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation, in collaboration with Steven Cranford, Graham Bratzel and Markus Buehler of MIT, and Richard C. Yu and Andaluz Yu of Green Pacific Biologicals. Using a new mathematical methodology, CEE Professor Markus Buehler, graduate student Tristan Giesa and mathematics postdoctoral associate David Spivak created a scientifically rigorous analogy that shows the similarities between the physical structure of spider silk and the sonic structure of a melody, proving that the structure of each relates to its function in an equivalent way. The step-by-step comparison begins with the primary building blocks of each item — an amino acid and a sound wave — and moves up to the level of a beta sheet nanocomposite (the secondary structure of a protein consisting of repeated hierarchical patterns of protein assemblages) and a musical riff (a repeated pattern of notes or chords). The study explains that structural patterns are directly related to the functional properties of lightweight strength in the spider silk and, in the riff, sonic tension that creates an emotional response in the listener. While the comparison of spider silk and musical composition may appear to be more novelty than breakthrough, the methodology behind it represents a new approach to the comparison of research findings in disparate scientific fields. Such analo“The seemingly incredible gap gies could help engineers between spider silk and music is develop materials that make no wider than the gap between use of the repeating patterns of simple building blocks the two disparate mathematifound in many biological cal fields of geometry… and materials that, like spider algebra.” — David Spivak silk, are lightweight yet extremely failure-resistant. The work also suggests that engineers may be able to gain new insights into biological systems through the study of the structure-function relationships found in music and other art forms. They created the analogy using ontology logs, or “ologs,” a concept introduced about a year ago by Spivak, who specializes in a branch of mathematics called category theory. Ologs provide an abstract means for categorizing the general properties of a system — be it a material, mathematical concept or phenomenon — and showing inherent relationships between function and structure. To build the ologs, the researchers used information from Buehler’s previous studies of the nanostructure of spider silk and other biological materials. “There is mounting evidence that similar patterns of material features at the nanoscale, such as clusters of hydrogen bonds or hierarchical structures, govern the behavior of materials in the natural environment, yet we couldn’t mathematically show the analogy between different materials,” Buehler said. “The olog lets us compile information about how materials function in a mathematically rigorous way and identify those patterns that are universal to a very broad class of materials. Its potential for engineering the built environment — in the design of new materials, structures or infrastructure — is immense.” “This work is very exciting because it brings forth an approach founded on category theory to bridge music (and potentially other aspects of the fine arts) to a new field of materiomics,” said Associate Professor Joyce Wong ’88, Ph.D. ’94 (materials science) of Boston University, a biomaterials scientist and engineer, as well as a musician. “This approach is particularly appropriate for the hierarchical design of proteins, as they show in the silk example. What is exciting is the opportunity to reveal new relationships between the seemingly disparate fields with the aim of improving materials engineering and design.” At first glance, an olog may look deceptively simple, much like a corporate organizational chart that shows reporting relationships using directional arrows. But ologs demand scientific rigor to break a system down into its most basic structural building blocks, define the functional properties of the building blocks themselves with respect to one another, show how function emerges through the building blocks’ interactions and do this in a self-consistent manner. With this structure, two or more systems can be formally compared. “The fact that a spider’s thread is robust enough to avoid catastrophic failure even when a defect is present can be explained by the very distinct material makeup of spider silk fibers,” Giesa said. “It’s exciting to see that music theoreticians observed the same phenomenon in their field, probably without any knowledge of the concept of damage tolerance in materials. Deleting single chords from a harmonic sequence often has only a minor effect on the harmonic quality of the whole sequence.” 7 “The seemingly incredible gap between spider silk and music is no wider than the gap between the two This pictorial olog uses symbols rather than words disparate mathemati- to show the mathematical olog comparing the cal fields of geometry structure-function relationships in the spider silk — think of triangles and a musical composition. and spheres — and Image / Markus Buehler and Tristan Giesa algebra, which uses variables and equations,” Spivak said. “Yet category theory’s first success — in the 1940s — was to express a rigorous mathematical analogy between these two domains and to use it to prove new theorems about complex geometric shapes by importing existing theorems from algebra. It remains to be seen whether our olog will yield such striking results; however, the foundation for such an inquiry is now in place.” n — Denise Brehm Markus Buehler, Tristan Giesa and David Spivak published their findings in the December issue of BioNanoScience. An English-language interview with the three by the “Voice of Russia” radio program can be heard at http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/28/63057069.html. News and Research \ DES4 Lecture News and Research \ Twitter’s Contagion Process “The big question for people in industry is ‘How do we find the right person or hub to adopt our new app so that it will go viral?’ But we found that the lone tech-savvy person can’t do it; this also requires word of mouth. The social network needs geographical proximity.” — Marta González Twitter’s Growth Relied on Traditional Social Networks First DES4 Lecture Highlights Similar Architecture in Man-Made and Natural Networks By Denise Brehm / Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering By Denise Brehm / Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering As with most technologies, Twitter’s popularity initially spread via young, tech-savvy innovators, in this case from Twitter’s birthplace in San Francisco to Greater Boston. But the site’s popularity then took a more traditional route, traveling short distances indicative of face-to-face González and Toole said their model of Twitter contagion didn’t fit Cha’s data until they added media influence, based on the number of news stories appearing weekly in Google News searches, data acquired using Google Insights for Search. “Other studies have included news media in their models, but usually as a constant,” says González. “We saw that news media is not a constant. Instead, it’s media responding to people’s interest and vice versa, so we included it as random spikes.” n Center for Complex Network Research Northeastern University Skitter data depicting a macroscopic snapshot of Internet connectivity, with selected backbone ISPs (Internet Service Provider) colored separately By K. C. Claffy (www.caida.org) Wednesday, October 26th 2011 4-5pm Room 32-D463 Star Conference Room, Stata Center, MIT Speaker’s Bio: Born in Transylvania, and educated in Bucharest and Budapest, he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1994 from Boston University. After a year at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, he joined Notre Dame in 1995. His research has led to the discovery and understanding of scale-free networks, capturing the structure of many complex networks in technology and nature, from the World Wide Web to the cell. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and a foreign member of Academia Europaea. He is the recipient of the 2005 FEBS Annual Award for Systems Biology and the 2006 von Neumann prize from the John von Neumann Computer Society of Hungary. His general-audience book, “Linked: The New Science of Networks” (Perseus, 2002), is currently available in 12 languages. ur e Meeyoung Cha of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (the third co-author) began downloading Twitter-published user data (via Twitter API) in May 2006, when there were only a couple hundred users. She downloaded data through August 2009. Albert-László Barabási ct “Nobody has ever really looked at the diffusion among innovators of a no-risk, free or low-cost product that’s only useful if other people join you. It’s a new paradigm in economics,” says graduate student Jameson Toole, a co-author of the paper. From network science to human dynamics Le Just as marketing experts sometimes label consumers as early adopters, early majority adopters, late majority adopters or laggards, the researchers characterized cities in those terms, based on when Twitter accounts in a given city reached critical mass. They defined critical mass as 13.5 percent of the maximum number of Twitter users recorded in a city through August 2009, the end of the study period. For nearly 50 years, marketers have studied the “diffusion of innovations” to predict how the purchase of expensive, durable goods such as cars will spread. But the diffusion of high-tech Web sites and cheap smartphone apps is thought to occur differently. “What is really amazing about this is that these networks — that differ both in nature and in age — have over time and through many different processes converged to a somewhat similar architecture as if the same designer tried to build them,” CEE’s Distinguished said Barabási. This architecEngineering and Science ture is known as a “scale-free Speaker Seminar Series network,” a concept first introduced by Barabási in 1999 using the Web as an example. al In an effort to update traditional models of information distribution and technology adoption, the researchers studied Twitter’s contagion process, examining data from 16,000 U.S. cities, and focusing on the 408 with the most Twitter users. “Even on the Internet where we may think the world is flat, it’s not,” says Marta González, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering systems at MIT, who is co-author of a paper on this subject that appeared in the journal PLoS ONE. “The big question for people in industry is ‘How do we find the right person or hub to adopt our new app so that it will go viral?’ But we found that the lone tech-savvy person can’t do it; this also requires word of mouth. The social network needs geographical proximity.” gu r The social networking and microblogging site has more than 300 million users worldwide, but MIT researchers who studied Twitter’s development from 2006 to 2009 say its growth in the United States is not primarily a result of global cyber-connections but rather of media Each circle corresponds to a city’s total number of Twitter user attention and traditional accounts during the three years of data collection. social networks — those Image / Jameson Toole based on geographic proximity and socioeconomic similarity. Complex networks such as the World Wide Web, the U.S. airline system, and the daily travels of people all share a similar underlying structure, according to Professor Albert-László Barabási of Northeastern University, who on Oct. 26 gave the first talk in the Distinguished Engineering and Science Speaker Seminar Series (DES4) organized by the CEE junior faculty. interactions. This approach made early adopters of Somerville, Mass., and Berkeley, Calif. — cities close to Boston and San Francisco, respectively. au We’ve all heard it. The Internet has flattened the world, allowing social networks to spring up overnight, independent of geography or socioeconomic status. But MIT researchers studying the growth of Twitter have discovered that birds of a feather still flock — and tweet — together. In 8 “What is really amazing about this is that these networks — that differ both in nature and in age — have over time and through many different processes converged to a somewhat similar architecture as if the same designer tried to build them.” — Albert-László Barabási In a scale-free network, the distribution of connections to nodes follows a power law associating two measurements through an exponent (power laws hold true for both large and small entities and are thus “scale-free”). An example is the 80/20 rule used in business: 80 percent of sales come from 20 percent of customers. In a scale-free network, a very few nodes have many, many connections, while many, many other nodes have only a few connections. Some nodes fall in the middle, but the distribution is largely polarized. In the U.S. airline system, for instance, airports serve as nodes and direct flights between them serve as connecting links. Airline hubs have many links, while smaller airports have very few. As a scale-free network grows, the nodes with the most connections continue to get a larger share of new connections than less-popular nodes. Facebook is a good example, with exponentially more links than most of the other trillion pages on the Web. However, the large hubs that characterize a scalefree network also form its Achilles’ heel, Barabási said. The random destruction of small hubs has little effect, but a network can be destroyed by an attack on one key hub. “Scale-free networks are very robust to random failures, but very fragile to attacks,” he said. Barabási, working with CEE Professor Marta González, has also demonstrated that human mobility forms a scale-free network. Using information provided by cellphone towers about calls made by 50,000 anonymous users, researchers found that most people travel within one to two kilometers of their homes, while a few individuals regularly travel hundreds of kilometers. Those large-scale travelers may be few, but they play a significant role in the spread of disease; they are the hubs of the human network, said Barabási, who is also an associate member of the Center of Cancer Systems Biology at Harvard University’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Barabási also described mapping the interactions of employees at a Hungarian company with three locations to investigate how even the highest-level decisions were being broadly miscommunicated. In that network, the hubs were ordinary workers and low-level managers, rather than high-level managers, and Barabási’s research team was able to trace the source of the problem to one health and environmental manager who had no direct contact with senior management but widespread contact with employees — and who was apparently very adept at spreading misinformation, Barabási said. CEE’s new DES4 presents speakers from around the world who are pioneers in civil and environmental engineering research; the talks are designed to be of interest to a wide audience. To see a video of this lecture, visit http://cee.mit.edu/DES4. n 9 News and Research \ Chiang Mei Symposium News and Research \ Four New Faculty Members “Even though concrete is the most widely used building material on Earth, and commands the attention of most CEE departments in the world, its complex and variable nanostructure, which controls most of its engineering properties, has remained largely illusive to modern science.” — Hamlin Jennings 10 Department Welcomes Four to Faculty: Amin, Heald, Jennings and Osorio “It was great to see that many MIT students and colleagues and friends from faraway places came to enjoy these lectures. I secretly wished I could be a graduate student again.” — Chiang Mei Symposium and Banquet Honoring Chiang Mei Held at American Academy of Arts and Sciences By Kathryn M. O’Neill / Civil & Environmental Engineering Correspondent Saurabh Amin Assistant Professor Saurabh Amin studies cyberphysical systems and the control of networked infrastructures, which are considered important areas of growth in both research and practice. “My research is in high-confidence network control,” he said. “My group designs and implements control algorithms for networked infrastructures, emphasizing survivability in uncertain and adversarial conditions.” He works on robust diagnostics and control projects that involve using networked systems to facilitate the monitoring and control of large-scale critical infrastructures, including transportation and water and energy distribution systems. His group also designs incentivecompatible control mechanisms to reduce network risks and is developing an experimentation test bed (a facility that enables researchers to do rigorous testing and evaluation using computer modeling, simulations and hardware-software prototypes) to study the effect of security attacks and random faults on the survivability of networked infrastructures. Amin received a Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of California, Berkeley. Colette Heald Saurabh Amin, Colette Heald, Hamlin Jennings and Carolina Osorio. Assistant Professor Colette Heald’s expertise connects transportation (emission sources), biology/ hydrology (biosphere-atmosphere interactions) and fluid mechanics (atmospheric transport). “The atmosphere is a complex, ever-changing environment made up of gases and particles from diverse sources, from trash burning to tree pollen. This atmospheric soup is part of a delicate Earth system, and changes resulting from pollution or climate change affect people around the world. We are investigating fundamental questions about the chemical composition of the atmosphere and how it evolves,” she said. Her research interests include global atmospheric composition and interactions with the biosphere and climate system. She works at the intersection of modeling and observational analysis, with a strong emphasis on integrating the two using observations of the atmosphere Colleagues, former students and friends flocked to Cambridge last May for an afternoon symposium and dinner held to honor Professor Chiang C. Mei on the occasion of his retirement from teaching after 44 years. (from ground stations, aircraft and satellites) as well as global models of chemistry and climate. In 2005, Heald earned a Ph.D. from Harvard. Hamlin Jennings Adjunct Professor Hamlin Jennings, the new executive director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub, is widely recognized as a pre-eminent researcher and leader in the field of cement chemistry. “Even though concrete is the most widely used building material on Earth, and commands the attention of most CEE departments in the world, its complex and variable nanostructure, which controls most of its engineering properties, has remained largely illusive to modern science,” he said. Jennings developed the first fully quantitative model of the nanostructure of calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H), the major component of hydrated cement. This model formed a basis for quantitatively predicting the mechanical properties of the material and linking these properties to the design of new materials. In addition, this research laid the foundation for solving a century-old question about the mechanism that controls the rate of hydration (hardening) of cement. Jennings graduated from Brown University with a Ph.D. in 1975 and taught at Northwestern University before coming to MIT. Carolina Osorio Assistant Professor Carolina Osorio develops probabilistic techniques to address urban transportation problems, particularly to mitigate the energy and environmental impacts of congestion. Fields of interest include applied probability theory, simulation and simulation-based optimization. Her current research focuses on macroscopic traffic modeling, large-scale traffic management, energy-efficient transportation systems and simulation-based mobility management. She has developed a framework that enables the most detailed urban traffic simulators to efficiently address traffic management problems. She has also developed analytical models, simulation-based models and optimization methods to mitigate network congestion for health-care systems and biological networks. In 2010 she received a Ph.D. from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. n “The celebration at MIT … was a climax I will not forget,” said Mei, the Ford Professor of Engineering Emeritus. “It was truly exciting to meet many former students, some of whom for the first time after their graduation. It is not surprising that some are now leaders in academia.” Top: Chiang Mei. Above: Friends, including Professor Emeritus Peter Eagleson (left) and Professor Emeritus Rafael Bras (right), now provost of the Georgia Institute of Technology, gathered to toast Mei. Professor Ole Madsen (right), Chiang Mei’s first Ph.D. student, emceed the evening banquet. Standing beside him is Professor Andrew Whittle, head of CEE, who announced the establishment of the Chiang C. Mei Lecture in Applied Mechanics. Photos / Laura Wulf Notable students who attended the event included Cornell University Professor Philip Liu S.M. ’71, Ph.D. ’74, a leading expert on near-shore waves, particularly tsunamis; Dick Yue S.B. ’74, S.M. ’76, Sc.D. ’80, the Philip J. Solondz Professor of Engineering at MIT, who is renowned in the field of computational hydrodynamics; and MIT’s Donald and Martha Harleman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Ole Madsen Sc.D. ’70, who is a pioneer in sediment transport mechanics in coastal waters. Both Liu and Yue gave talks at the symposium, which Madsen helped plan. “Chiang Mei is a scholar’s scholar — dedicated, hardworking, setting an example just by who he is,” said Yue, one of Mei’s early Ph.D. students and co-author of “Theory and Applications of Ocean Surface Waves” (World Scientific Publishing Co., 2005) with Mei and Michael Stiassnie. “He taught me everything I knew, and has had a huge influence on my work since.” Internationally recognized for his research in wave and fluid mechanics as well as for the seminal work, “The Applied Dynamics of Ocean Surface Waves” (World Scientific Publishing Co., 1989), Mei mentored students from all over the world during his years at MIT — and scores of his protégées returned to Cambridge for the celebratory event at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge. The symposium featured nine lectures by colleagues from MIT and other universities on topics ranging from “Experiments on Wave Damping by Mud” to “The Fluid Mechanics of Marine Microbes.” The first session was chaired by Arthur Mynett, professor of hydraulic engineering at the UNESCOIHE Institute for Water Education in Delft, Netherlands; and the second by Rafael Bras, S.B. ’72, S.M. ’74, Sc.D. ’75, former head of MIT CEE and now provost of the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It was great to see that many MIT students and colleagues and friends from faraway places came to enjoy these lectures. I secretly wished I could be a graduate student again,” Mei said. About 50 people attended the talks on May 20, 2011, and more than 150 attended the black-tie banquet afterward, which was emceed by Madsen, Mei’s first doctoral student. “Of Chiang’s outstanding qualities as an educator, the one that I admire the most is his infinite patience when meeting one-on-one with a student,” Madsen said. “Chiang spends any length of time and any effort necessary to make 101 percent sure that the student completely understands.” Yue said the day was a great success. “Chiang is very reserved by nature, but he was clearly delighted. It was a very happy occasion.” In closing the evening festivities, Professor Andrew Whittle, head of CEE, announced the establishment of the Chiang C. Mei Lecture in Applied Mechanics, an annual lecture endowed by contributions from former students, colleagues and friends, which will bring leading academicians to MIT to share their research. “We thought this was the perfect way to recognize Chiang’s boundless intellectual curiosity and his excitement in pursuing new knowledge in applied mechanics,” Whittle said. To see the full list of speakers, visit http://cee.mit.edu/ events/chiang-mei-symposium. The first of the Chiang C. Mei Lectures will be given by Professor Julian Hunt of the University College London on Oct. 5. n 11 Alumni Profile News Briefs Environmental Research Council Proposes New Global Environment Initiative MIT’s Environmental Research Council (ERC), led by CEE Professor Dara Entekhabi, held a daylong forum Dec. 15 to outline research priorities and an implementation plan for the proposed MIT Global Environment Initiative, which would complement the MIT Energy Initiative. MIT President Susan Hockfield opened the forum, 12 and Provost Rafael Reif made a presentation and co-chaired the discussion panel at the end of the day. The forum included presentations about the ERC report by Entekhabi, who is also director of Parsons Lab, and Professor Sallie (Penny) Chisholm, another member of the ERC. CEE Professors Eric Alm and Philip Gschwend gave two of the four faculty spotlight presentations: Alm on his research in horizontal gene transfer and Gschwend on benign-bydesign chemical and materials production. Alumni Profile after the forum. “In addition to the research within specialty disciplines and within departmental structures, MIT is evolving to include major research initiatives on problems that don’t fit any one department, but whose solutions lie at the integration of basic science, technology and social research. So far these initiatives include cancer and energy. The ERC report argues the same should be done for environmental research.” n To read a news story about the forum and find links to the report, visit http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/ 2011/global-environmentalinitiative-1219.html. Veronica Cedillos Project Manager, GeoHazards International S.B. 2005 (Course 1C) Veronica Cedillos, who works for the nonprofit organization GeoHazards International (GHI) based in Palo Alto, Calif., was named one of the “2010 New Faces of Engineering” by the National Engineers Week Foundation in recognition of her work overseeing the design and implementation of GHI’s tsunami preparedness project in Indonesia. Previously, she worked for Gilsanz Murray Steficek, a structural engineering firm in New York City. In addition to her degree from MIT, she holds an M.S. in structural engineering from Stanford University. An accomplished violinist, Cedillos is currently on a sabbatical from GHI, traveling in South America and giving free concerts. 13 Veronica Cedillos Photo / Vanessa Cedillos “There has been an interesting evolution in how research is conducted at MIT,” Entekhabi said What do you do for GeoHazards International? Hip-Hop Superstar GZA Visits Chisholm Lab to Learn About Ocean Science Music superstar GZA, a founding member of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, was in Cambridge last December to give a talk at the Harvard Black Men’s Forum. He chose to spend a few days visiting labs at MIT and Harvard, including that of CEE’s Professor Sallie (Penny) Chisholm. GZA, whose real name is Gary Grice, is also known in rap circles as “The Genius” for his interest in science and his penchant for including scientific facts in his highly praised lyrics. During his Dec. 1 visit to the Chisholm Lab, the two talked about Chisholm’s research on the cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus, the most abundant photosynthetic organism on Earth. “We really enjoyed showing GZA around, learning about his creative process, and sharing our enthusiasm about ocean microbes,” said Chisholm. Read a news story about the visit at http://b.globe.com/uxZa8m and watch a video at http://bit.ly/xvJilc. n Penny Chisholm and GZA study EcoSpheres, contained, selfsustaining environments. Photos © Sophia Chang Cedillos: Unsafe construction is a widespread problem in many earthquake-prone regions in the world; therefore, education for local engineers and construction workers is a crucial part of this work — fixing one building at a time would take too long. The idea is not just to make one building safe, but also to train local builders and engineers to design and construct safe structures, and to spread this knowledge. In Peru, we conducted trainings on earthquake safety, and discussed the consequences of an adobe structure collapsing and what could happen to children if they were inside an unsafe school. We then used the school as an example of how to strengthen an adobe structure. What were you doing in Peru? What prompted your interest in earthquake risk reduction? That project focused on improving school earthquake safety. We conducted a pilot project in the rural community of Chocos, which included trainings on safe construction and retrofitting a school as an example of safe construction. Peru is a very seismically active country and many of its buildings are made of adobe, which is very brittle and heavy, and can be extremely dangerous during an earthquake. Building out of other materials is difficult since money and access to materials is a challenge for these poor, remote communities. Our focus was therefore to promote the use of reinforcement techniques that reduce the risk of collapse of adobe structures during earthquakes. We partnered with Peru’s Catholic University (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú), which has conducted research on adobe reinforcement techniques for the past 30 years. Cedillos: I Cedillos: Left: Chisholm gave GZA a tour of her lab during his Dec. 1 visit. Above: GZA, holding a tube containing ocean water and about a billion cells of the cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus, poses with members of the Chisholm Lab. This project promoted the use of geomesh, a plastic mesh that is usually used for geotechnical purposes, which is applied on all walls of the structure and tied into the foundation and a ring beam — a continuous beam that is constructed along the top of the walls — to ensure that the walls do not collapse. GHI works to reduce loss of life and suffering due to geological hazards — particularly earthquakes — in the world’s most vulnerable communities. At GHI, I’ve focused on two projects, one in Peru and one in Padang, Indonesia, a city with one of the highest tsunami risks in the world. Padang is a flat, dense city of nearly a million people concentrated along the coast, making it nearly impossible to evacuate residents safely. The project focused on developing tsunami evacuation solutions for the city, with an emphasis on the use of vertical evacuation structures — which can be any type of structure, including earthen mounds, towers or reinforced concrete buildings that are designed to withstand both the earthquake and tsunami forces and to rise above the expected tsunami level. Vertical evacuation structures are a fairly new concept and have not been implemented in many locations. Many exist in Japan, but it was not until the 2011 Japanese tsunami that they were first used in an actual tsunami event. This was a great learning experience for us, since there were many examples of vertical evacuation structures that survived and helped save people’s lives, while others were overtopped. There is a strong push in many places in the world, including the U.S. Pacific Northwest, to conduct more research on these structures. Cedillos: Is education part of the job? Did MIT CEE prepare you for this job? Cedillos: Absolutely. It’s been a crucial part of the building blocks to the work I do today. It was at MIT that I first heard of structural engineering being applied to help developing countries, which really sparked my interest. always wanted to somehow combine my interest in engineering with humanitarian work. I considered many options, including the Peace Corps. However, I had trouble finding a job that also included structural engineering work. I got involved in earthquake risk reduction work after my first year at Stanford. I had a summer internship investigating the earthquakeresistant features of traditional architecture in the foothills of the Himalayas, a highly seismic area with very vulnerable and unsafe construction. The idea was to study traditional earthquake-resistant construction features to help promote safer building. After three months, I found I had become passionate about this type of work and wanted to make a career of it. n Student Profile Faculty Profile Student Profile Faculty Profile Scott Landers Heidi Nepf Senior Environmental Engineering Science (1E) Professor in CEE, Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow Raised on a farm in the small town of Cooper, Texas, Scott Landers will earn his MIT degree in just three years thanks to junior college course credits. Secretary of the Triathlon Club and a build-day coordinator for MIT Habitat for Humanity, he recently won scholarships from the Rhode Island Consulting Engineers and the New England Water Environment Association. He is a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and was the fraternity’s community service chairman in 2011 when it won the Service Cup from MIT’s Public Service Center. This January, he completed a four-week externship with ExxonMobil’s Environmental Service. 14 Internationally known for her work on the effects of vegetation on water flow, Heidi Nepf leads the Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanics Lab at MIT. Her research focuses on how physical mechanisms affect the transport and fate of contaminants, nutrients and sediment in surface water systems. Named a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow in 2001 for her “outstanding contributions to undergraduate education,” Nepf regularly guides undergraduates in fieldwork, notably helping lead the 2011 Traveling Research Environmental eXperiences in Hawaii and the 2006 research trip to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. 15 Heidi Nepf Photo © Angela Rowlings Scott Landers Photo © Angela Rowlings and have fine-grain soil. These areas have been really mismanaged through overgrazing and various other practices. There’s also an invasive species of plant there (fountain grass) that’s really flammable, and will burn down to bare topsoil. When it rains, the sediments run into channels and creeks and finally into the ocean. But they aren’t heavy enough to settle out, so instead they cloud the water. The coral can’t get enough sunlight and die. We were working with the U.S. Geological Survey to map specific hot spots to help them focus their remediation efforts. What inspired your research into how water moves around plants? Landers: My first exposure to CEE was MIT’s Freshman PreOrientation Program, where I met Steve Rudolph, the technical advisor for the major. We were building these little wooden bridges, and it was cool because he went through all these power tools and I was the only one in the group that had used them. (On the farm, it’s trial by fire — you can’t call a mechanic 30 miles away, you’ve got to do it yourself.) Then I joined the Steel Bridge Team and got some more hands-on experience. I had been planning to major in math or physics, but then I realized that sitting and reading papers is not my cup of tea. So I narrowed my focus to mechanical engineering or environmental engineering. I joined environmental engineering because I had made so many good connections. And I appreciate that it’s a small major. Having that really close interaction with professors and being able to know members of my class were big factors in my decision. What do you plan to do after graduation? Does planting vegetation prevent erosion? You are a triathlete, you volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, you were on the award-winning Steel Bridge Team, and you joined the department’s Traveling Research Environmental eXperiences (TREX) trip to Hawaii in January 2011. What was your most inspiring extracurricular experience? What about the farm? How did a self-described “Texas farm boy” end up at MIT? Landers: My family has been in the farming business in the same place for about 150 years, that’s six generations. One of the most important elements of farming in Texas is getting enough rain, and I was always fascinated by the flow of water — watching water form into streams and the streams into rivers. Then, in seventh grade I watched “Good Will Hunting”, which is set at MIT, and I thought, “That’s where people go who are smart and like math.” Why did you choose to major in environmental engineering? Landers: I’ve learned so much from everything I’ve done, but TREX was most unique for me. I was out in the field doing hands-on research, getting dirty and rolling up my sleeves — that’s what I think engineering is. We were looking at erosion and sedimentation from “hot spots” — areas that have been stripped of vegetation Landers: I’ve accepted a full-time position as a water resource engineer with GeoSyntec Consultants in Houston, Texas. I’ve worked with them during the semester part-time on a project focused on remote microsensing technology — using modern technology to bring civil and environmental engineering into the 21st century. What we’re doing is taking new cloud-computing technology to set up remote sensors so that you could, for example, go to a site and set up a system that will automatically sample the river water every hour or half-hour and record data. Just set up an Ethernet connection for it to upload the data and you can monitor the site in real time from wherever you are. I’ve also applied to graduate school at Rice University. It’s a professional master’s in environmental analysis and decision-making, designed for working professionals who want to further their education. Landers: Right now I’m not going to be farming, but my long-term goal is to take my education and bring that all back to the farm, where we raise beef cattle, soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton and specialty crops. There are a lot things we can do to optimize the efficiency of farming. I definitely want to keep the farm in my name and raise kids in the country with the freedom to explore. If I’d been raised in a more confined space, I wouldn’t have had the ability to be this creative — or have the independence to build things. n Nepf: I fell in love with fluid mechanics because it’s very visual. I love the way water moves. I find it beautiful. I got into studying vegetation because I realized there were a lot of interesting hydrodynamics questions not being addressed. I began by looking at how the presence of aquatic vegetation, for example seagrasses, changes mean flow and turbulence, and how these changes in turn affect nutrient uptake and sediment resuspension. Nepf: Not necessarily. Because it creates a lot of drag, people usually think of vegetation as reducing the flow speed, and lower flow speeds would tend to reduce erosion. However, if flow is diverted away from a region of vegetation, the flow speed must increase outside the vegetation, which can increase erosion at the vegetation boundary. The potential for higher erosion at the edge of a vegetated region can control how that region evolves spatially. Why is your work important to the restoration of damaged waterways and coastal zones? Nepf: Over the years, people have removed vegetation from waterways and coastal zones to stop flooding, to allow navigation and to allow land development. But then people realized the benefits that vegetation provides — improving water quality, cycling nutrients, providing storm surge protection and providing habitats for economically important finfish and shellfish. Understanding this has led to a lot of restoration efforts along coastlines and channels. However, the restorations are mostly designed empirically or by trial and error. The restoration managers didn’t have evidence about what would work best, so they would just go out and plant seeds, and maybe those seeds would survive. I hope that I can provide a better understanding of the interactions between vegetation, waves and currents, and landscape evolution, which can be used to design more robust restoration strategies. For example, we are considering how densely to plant the vegetation. Is it better to put out an even distribution that is sparsely planted, or plant a few dense pockets and hope they will grow and expand to cover the whole bed? We use a laboratory water channel and model plants with plastics that are similar in buoyancy and rigidity to real bladed plants. We measure changes in the mean and turbulent flow around patches of vegetation of different sizes and different stem density, and we study how the changes in flow influence the deposition and erosion of sediment within and around the patch. We have also conducted experiments at the Outdoor StreamLab in Minnesota, planting vegetation on the point bar of a meandering channel, and studying how this changes the flow and the evolution of the channel shape. What role does sediment play in river systems? Nepf: Sediment transport or, more specifically, the spatial pattern of erosion and deposition, influences the evolution of a channel or coastal region. I am interested in how vegetation impacts this process, for example, how channels evolve or co-evolve with vegetation — the end goal being to understand river restoration a little better. For centuries people have studied how sediment moves through channels, and there are well-developed models to predict sediment transport in open channels, without vegetation — but I think that none of those models apply when vegetation is present, because the turbulent field and near bed flow structure is totally different when vegetation is present. My research will provide a new set of models for predicting sediment transport in regions with vegetation. Very long term, I hope that my work feeds into such questions as, “How do you grow a coastal marsh?” If you feed a marsh with flow diverted from a large river with some sediment load in it, where is the flow going to go? Where will the sediment end up? Marshes often have a network of channels that carry most of the water flow, so it isn’t obvious how much sediment will actually settle into the vegetated regions of the marsh, promoting marsh stability, and how much will simply be carried straight through the marsh in the channels. n Student News Faculty and Staff News Faculty and Staff News 16 In an interview published in the Engineering News Record in January, Adjunct Professor Hamlin Jennings, executive director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSH), explains that developing an understanding of the microstructure of concrete is yielding new ways to manipulate the material. George Macomber Professor Franz-Josef Ulm is also quoted, saying one goal of CSH research is to “unleash the innovation potential of sustainable development.” The story is related to a report CSH released at its Aug. 11 Industry Day: “Pavement Life Cycle.” Read the article at http://bit.ly/zg01PN. Bacardi Stockholm Water Foundations Professor Dara Entekhabi was named the Robert E. Horton Lecturer in Hydrology by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) for his “innovative and insightful contributions in hydroclimatology and its role in regional and global climate, and for pioneering achievements in the remote sensing of the hydrosphere.” Entekhabi delivered the Horton Lecture Jan. 25 at the AMS annual meeting. Student News Pedro Reis, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor in CEE and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was one of 60 engineers under the age of 45 selected to attend the U.S. National Academy of Engineering’s Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering symposium, held June 6 to 8 in Osaka. Associate Professors Roman Stocker and John Ochsendorf (CEE and architecture) were among 85 researchers invited to the U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium, held last September in California. The National Public Radio (NPR) program “Morning Edition” featured Professor Pedro Reis in late December talking about the work of a French physicist who used tree branches to explain Leonardo’s rule. NPR also posted Reis’s own video describing why book pages make a clapping sound when they flap in the wind. Listen to the interview at http://n.pr/yYNHrK. MIT and the East Japan Railway Company celebrated the 20th anniversary of the East Japan Railway Company Professorship Oct. 13 with a reception at the MIT Faculty Club. Joseph M. Sussman, the JR East Professor in CEE and the Engineering Systems Division (ESD), has held the chair since its establishment in 1991. Sussman is currently ESD’s interim director. When President Sebastián Piñera of Chile visited campus Sept. 23 to meet with MIT President Susan Hockfield, tour the Media Lab and address Chilean students in the Boston area, CEE Professor Eduardo Kausel was there to welcome him. Kausel, a native of Chile, knew Piñera when the president was a student at Harvard in the 1970s. Professor Markus Buehler received the Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award from the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) on Nov. 11. Professor Ares Rosakis of Caltech (left) presented the award. Buehler and former MIT postdoctoral associate Raffaella Paparcone also received the 2011 Alfred Noble Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers for their paper, “Failure of Alzheimer’s Aß(1-40) Amyloid Nanofibrils Under Compressive Loading,” published in the journal JOM in 2010. In January, the Society of Engineering Science awarded Buehler the Young Investigator Medal. And in April, the Materials Research Society will present him with the Outstanding Young Investigator Award, recognizing his “innovative and creative” interdisciplinary research in materials science. Last fall, Buehler was named co-director of the Computation for Design and Optimization graduate program, the educational arm of MIT’s Center for Computational Engineering, and he joined the editorial board of the London-based Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Photo / Courtesy ASME The work of Professor Jerry Connor and Simon Laflamme Ph.D. ’11, who is now on the faculty at Iowa State University, is the topic of a story in the October issue of Scientific American. Read “Instant Health Checks for Buildings and Bridges: Sensors Can Detect Damage that May Be Invisible to the Naked Eye” at http://bit.ly/r3gqUD. was named the top civil and structural engineering school in the world by QS World University Rankings last summer. QS rated MIT No. 3 in earth and marine sciences and No. 4 in environmental sciences. The rankings, published by Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd., examined programs at 200 universities. n MIT Environmental Engineering Science majors Scott Landers (see page 14) and Tiffany Cheng, both seniors, were awarded scholarships from the nonprofit organization Rhode Island Consulting Engineers. In a summer internship with a collaborative program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, Cheng created a remote-sensing toolkit for state and local agencies to use in analyzing air quality during and after uncontrollable events such as wildfires and volcanic eruptions. An image from a December 2011 Nature paper authored by graduate students Chris Smillie, Mark Smith and Jonathan Friedman, postdoctoral associate Otto Cordero, alumnus Lawrence David Ph.D. ’11 and Karl Van Tassel Career Development Associate Professor Eric Alm appears in a Wired News article as one of 10 outstanding research graphics. “The graphic ... represents the first attempt to measure gene flow between bacteria around the world, as organized by ecological niche and with an eye towards antibiotic resistance — something that’s flowing out of farms at alarming rates,” wrote Brandon Keim in Wired. Read the Wired article at http://bit.ly/s3awR7 An image by doctoral candidate Mack Durham won an award in the Gallery of Fluid Motion at the American Physical Society (APS) Division on Fluid Dynamics meeting in Baltimore in November. Durham’s fluid mechanics’ image, “Division by Fluid Incision: Biofilm Patch Development in Porous Media” will be displayed at the annual APS meeting in March and appear in the September issue of Physics of Fluids. Durham works with Professor Roman Stocker. Doctoral student Hamed Alemohammad — who works with Professors Dara Entekhabi and Dennis McLaughlin to combine different types of satellite-derived rainfall data in order to improve the accuracy of rainstorm estimation models — has been selected as one of two student representatives serving on the Student blogs in 2012 include M.Eng. students working to find ways of controlling bacterial pollution in a reservoir (LIS Solutions); M.Eng. students working on small-scale drinking water and sanitation systems (Ghana-4S); M.S.T. student Kevin Muhs at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting; and undergraduates who spent two weeks in Hawaii studying the active volcano Kilauea as part of TREX. http://cee.mit.edu/news/blogs Global Environmental Change Focus Group of the American Geophysical Union. 17 An image by graduate student Birendra Jha was selected to appear on “Back Scatter,” the back cover of Physics Today, in the January 2012 issue. The image, which also appeared last fall in Wired-UK and Discover magazine, illustrates the mixing of two fluids of different viscosities by “viscous fingering.” A similar image by Jha also has been selected to appear in the “Kaleidoscope” section of an upcoming issue of Physical Review E. A paper on the research associated with the image by Professor Ruben Juanes, postdoctoral associate Luis CuetoFelgueroso and graduate students Jha and Michael Szulczewski appeared in a May issue of Physical Review Letters. was named the 2012 Marshall Sherfield Fellow by the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. Malek, a doctoral candidate working with Professor John Ochsendorf, will conduct research at the University of Bath on the mechanics of grid shells. She presented her research on the mechanics of grid shells at the IABSE-IASS (International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering– International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures) Symposium in London last September. Samar Malek Doctoral candidate Sergio Herrero was awarded the 2011 Dr. Mikio Shoji Award for Innovation in Information Technology, named for a longtime corporate supporter of CEE research who flew in from Tokyo to present the award in September. During the ceremony in the Spofford Room, CEE department head Professor Andrew Whittle presented a plaque commemorating the occasion to Shoji. Also present were Professor John Williams, Herrero’s research advisor; Professor Jerry Connor; and Professor Emeritus Bob Logcher. An essay by M.S.T. student Dianne Kamfonik was one of 13 selected for publication in the Jan. 6 issue of Science in the “NextGenVoices” section. Science solicited essays to the question, “How will the practice of science change in your lifetime?” and then printed the 13 top submissions in their entirety. n Alumni News Alumni News Jim Symons S.M. ’55, Sc.D. ’57 (Course 11) taught in MIT Sanitary Engineering until it closed in 1962. “I then worked in a federal research laboratory in Cincinnati for 20 years, finally spending the last 15 years of my career teaching in the CEE department at the University of Houston,” he said. “After I retired in 1997, my wife and I have taken 29 trips (photos at http://dr-water.us/symonslinks/Links.html). We’ve never had a bad trip, and usually our most recent trip seems to be our favorite. Having lived through the Cold War, it still gives me chills to have actually been in the Kremlin, the ‘center of evil.’” In this picture of him at work in the 1950s, he points out that there is a big jug of reagent with a permanently inserted pipette (bottom left). “All of the students used the same pipettes for years. Between that and the misuse of solvents, it’s a wonder all of us aren’t dead of cancer (yet).” Photo / Courtesy Jim Symons Like CEE on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/mitcee Alumni News 18 It is with great sorrow that we report the death of Professor Emeritus Robert and professors of its era. It was a tragedy to dissolve the program,” wrote Sterling Brisbin ’50, S.M. ’51 (Course 11). ’49, Sc.D. ’51, on Feb. 12, 2012. An obituary can be read online at http://cee.mit.edu/news/ releases/2012/robert-whitman-obit. “Just after MIT, I worked with the military and eventually retired after 22 years,” wrote Warren Oldaker S.M. ’53 (Course 11). “Then I put in about 22 years with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, retired as a quality control engineer and won the Federal Silver Medal for my work with pollution control. My wife of 58 years passed away in 2008. Keeping busy with water color painting and coin collecting helps me be mentally alert.” V. Whitman S.M. Ross McKinney S.M. ’49, Sc.D. ’51 (Course 11) is writing a personal history of the former Sanitary Engineering Department. If you have anything to contribute or would like a copy, please contact him at [email protected] or at 750 Weaver Dairy Road, Apt. 248, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514. As the CEO of the South American Waterways System megaproject, Mariano Ospina Hernandez ’49 recently visited the St. Petersburg canals in Russia. “The South American project includes a series of river corridors similar to those already functioning in advanced countries in Europe, Asia and North America,” he explained, where cargo can be efficiently transported by barge from the Brazilian-Bolivian border south to Buenos Aires on the Atlantic coast. “The trip to St. Petersburg allowed me to photograph, film and study that great Russian waterway to advance in the design of our South American project.” “Course 11 was a fantastic department and a wonderful graduate program. It produced the most and the best sanitary engineers “I am still actively teaching and conducting research. That is my hobby,” wrote Perry McCarty S.M. ’57, Sc.D. ’59 (Course 11). He is the Silas H. Palmer professor emeritus of environmental engineering at Stanford’s CEE Department. For many years Alan Cassell S.M. ’58 (Course 11) taught and carried out research at Clarkson College of Technology (now Clarkson University). He moved to the University of Vermont to teach civil engineering and water resources, and studied nonpoint source runoff and nutrient cycling in watersheds. “I found my journey to be interesting, challenging, rewarding and lots of fun,” he said. Now retired, “I have an enormous vegetable garden and a host of flower gardens, and I have nearly completed a voluminous family genealogy. My wife and I like to travel around New England and Quebec province to learn about local histories and their unique cultures.” Clemente Pereda S.M. ’55 (Course 11) recently got in touch with current faculty and fellow alumni for a water quality project in Lake Valencia, Venezuela. To minimize flooding as the lake rises, authorities pump out excess water to a reservoir that supplies drinking water to nearby cities. However, “the water is heavily contaminated with domestic waste or sewerage, and particularly with heavy metals “I worked for Greeley and Hanson coming from the industry that in Chicago until 1961,” wrote Pete Haake S.M. ’59 (Course 11). “At a borders the lake,” he reported. conference in late 1960, Professor Pereda is interested in removing Perry McCarty asked me when I heavy metals at a specific flow rate. would come back to MIT to work (For more information, contact on my doctor’s degree. When I said him at clementepereda@hotmail. spontaneously, ‘If I ever go back com.) He is also reviving the MIT for a doctor’s degree, it will be in Club of Venezuela in hopes of medicine,’ I was as shocked as he promoting the exchange of ideas was. My wife Cathy asked if I really and technical information. Pereda’s wanted to go to medical school, and long career in Venezuela and the I realized that yes, I did. That was United States started with work the beginning of my 50-year career for an Exxon subsidiary, followed by jobs at a cement factory and then a paper company. Course Key At the same time, he ran a Course 1A — civil and environmental engineering (unspecified) Course 1C — civil engineering private sanitary engineering Course 1E — environmental engineering science company with the late Hugo Course 9B — general engineering until 1957 Viana S.M. ’55. Course 11 — sanitary engineering until 1962 Course 17 — building engineering and construction until 1956 (so far) in medicine. I did my work in orthopedics and especially spine surgery, and have been at the University of Rochester since 1965. In 1998 I retired from the demanding surgical schedule but still do some independent medical examinations. I like engineering themes but now most problems I see are biomechanics, related to how forces during automobile or construction accidents affect the human body.” With decades of experience in reducing waterborne diseases through engineering, Bill Jobin ’59, S.M. ’61 advocated adding ecological and engineering approaches to the current fight against malaria in Africa when he gave the Pardee Center Distinguished Lecture at Boston University in December. He described the design and operational features of dams, irrigation and drainage systems, and suggested the careful selection of crops to provide more affordable and sustainable ways to suppress malaria transmission in Africa. “I was enrolled at Tech in August 1954 when I was called to active duty in the Air Force as a sanitary and industrial hygiene engineer at Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico,” wrote Ray Daniels S.M. ’59 (Course 11). “I returned in September 1957 and enrolled in Nuclear Engineering courses while doing my research on fixating highlevel radioactive waste in glassy fusions in the Sanitary Engineering Lab in the basement of Building 1. As a result of my interest in nuclear activities I devoted my professional career to building environmental safeguards and protecting public health.” (Course 11) remembers taking classes under Professors Rolf Eliassen, Perry McCarty, James Symons and Melvin Furst. “Furst taught a class in air pollution during the 1961 spring term. At the time I thought I would rarely use the material in his course. Little did I know that I would serve as the Region IV air pollution control engineer in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the director of the Kansas Bureau of Air Pollution and Radiation Control, and as an air quality engineer for the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District. At present I’m retired and enjoying the pleasant climate in Southern California.” Dave Romano S.M. ’61 Although Jim Burry S.M. ’62 (Course 11) studied at MIT from 1955 to 1956, he wrote, “I procrastinated in completing my thesis until notice came that the course would not be continued. Briefly, my career consisted of consulting engineering, teaching environmental engineering at Ryerson University (Toronto), and serving as a corporate director. I took early retirement in 1991 and moved to a working farm east of Toronto where we still happily live. It has the advantages of great views from Juan Hermosilla ’57 recently dropped by campus to check out his spot on the Zesiger Center’s display of 150 years of MIT athletic prowess. MIT’s all-time top squash player, he finished second in the country at the National Intercollegiate Squash Racquets Association Individual Championship in 1956. Photo / Debbie Levey every window, two professional farmers to look after the land and an easy commute to the city.” Maneer Tewfik Sc.D. ’66 stopped by CEE headquarters in July. He had been a visiting professor at MIT from 1980-81, working with Jose Roesset Sc.D. ’64. For many years Tewfik taught at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia, serving as chair of the CE department for some time. He now has a consulting firm in Egypt, called Egy-Tech Group. Over the years he has become interested in the conservation of Egypt’s ancient buildings, dealing with problems such as rising groundwater and swelling soil that cause cracks in buildings. Following graduation, R. Hal Moorman ’71 moved to Houston and worked for a civil engineering consulting firm and a commercial contractor. “None of it seemed to fit,” he recalled. “After an epiphany over a 50-gallon barrel of burning construction trash, I decided to apply to law school. I have now been practicing law in Brenham, Texas, since 1976 and love what I do. I have been married to the same wonderful woman since 1974. continued on page 20 19 Alumni News Alumni News continued from page 19 I am grateful to MIT for my education and the opportunities the MIT degree afforded me.” 20 The Canadian Geotechnical Society selected Steven Vick ’72, S.M. ’73, an independent consultant in Colorado, for the fall 2011 Cross Canada Lecture Tour, in which he presented 13 lectures in 13 days in 12 cities from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia. Topics included geotechnical risk and public policy, the consequences of tailings dam failures and the science of judgment. between Georgia Tech and MIT are many, which has made the transition easy,” he said. “Engineering is the powerhouse at Georgia Tech — for years it has rated in the top five nationally, with all engineering programs in the top five or 10. This past year has been rewarding and exciting. New construction and upgrades continue and the campus looks great. My wife, Pat, and I now live in a condo 40 stories up in midtown Atlanta. We have become fans of college women’s basketball and, yes, we go to football games all the time.” has been named head of the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University of Nebraska, where he is also professor of biological systems engineering. He began the new appointment in February after completing his term as chair of the independent World Bank Inspection Panel. Roberto Lenton S.M. ’73, Ph.D. ’73 In January 2012, Patrick Kim ’87 became vice president of research and development at Benteler Automotive, in Paderborn, Germany; he will focus on innovation for automotive structure, chassis and exhaust systems. “It’s a long way from constructed facilities, but basically still materials and mechanics, with an increasing portion of electronics,” he reported. “This follows a nearly six-year tenure of heading materials engineering for the Renault Group in France. The most fun part was building up and coordinating teams in the overseas development centers in Korea, Romania, Brazil, India and Russia, and developing cooperative R&D relations with other companies. The attached picture shows me proudly sporting an MIT sweatshirt on a French beach. It turns out MIT is one of the few very highly esteemed schools in the French work environment.” Photo / Estelle Kim In September 2010, Rafael Bras ’72, S.M. ’74, Sc.D. ’75 became provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “The similarities in organization and culture In 2011, Janet Johnston ’76, S.M. ’79, S.M. ’88 sold a science fiction novelette to Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. She also recently designed and sewed costumes and choreographed a nine-person act for the formal masquerade competition at a World Science Fiction Convention masquerade. She reported, “It was a pretty big deal, and we won for workmanship and also best in show. It was a northern ‘return of the sun god’ fantasy, starting with a yeti on stage beckoning to our entourage.” John Trowbridge S.M. ’79, Sc.D. ’83 was an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Delaware for four years, then moved to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in 1987. Starting as assistant scientist, he worked his way up and is now halfway through a four-year term as chair of the Department of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering. “We have research programs in fluid dynamics, undersea vehicles and acoustics, as well as providing engineering support to the scientific staff at WHOI for seagoing measurements. The quantitative education that I received at MIT has served me well at WHOI,” he wrote. A professor of environmental chemistry at Yale, Gabe Benoit S.M. ’85, Ph.D. ’88 conducts research on water quality in fresh and estuarine systems. “My work has morphed toward urban ecology as well — applying classical ecosystem thinking to urban areas, not just parks and green spaces,” he said. Andy Jessup S.M. ’88, Ph.D. ’90, an oceanographer in the Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington, develops infrared remote sensing techniques for research in environmental fluid mechanics ranging from air-sea interaction to river turbulence. In 2000, he helped form the Air-Sea Interaction and Remote Sensing Department, and is now chair. Jeanie Ward-Waller M.Eng. ’05 (right) organized a February to April bicycle trip covering 5,500 miles from Key West to San Francisco. The goal of the trip, according to her blog on the Ride America for Safe Routes website (http://www. rideforsaferoutes.com), is to “promote the critical need for bike- and pedestrianfriendly streets in the sustainable communities of the future through public events in the 30 cities along our route.” The trip will also raise money for two nonprofits working for bike-friendly communities. Ward-Waller, who was employed as a structural engineer in Boston from 2005-09, also has a master’s degree in engineering for sustainable development from the University of Cambridge. She’s currently teaching environmental education for the Mountain Institute and hopes to secure funding (and 501c3 status) for Ride America for Safe Routes so that she can continue her bike advocacy work. Photo / Steve Waller a team of analysts at Navigant that conducts technical and economic analysis to establish standards at the highest levels technologically feasibly and economically justified. We are currently busy revising standards for products including electrical distribution transformers and residential clothes washers. The 12 product standards we expect to help establish over the next two years will save consumers billions of dollars annually in energy costs,” he wrote. has more than 15 years of experience in environmental science and engineering, with special emphasis on groundwater hydrology and chemical fate and transport in the environment. Specific areas of expertise include groundwater modeling, statistical analysis, risk-based site assessment and remediation, exposure analysis and human health risk assessment. He has prepared evaluations of the risk from vapor intrusion into indoor air at numerous sites, including preparing expert reports and giving deposition testimony as an expert witness, and has developed regional groundwater flow and transport models to evaluate remedial alternatives and to estimate clean-up times. Chris Stubbs S.M. ’96, Ph.D. ’00 After working in consulting and for a nonprofit in Cambridge, Mass., Mindy Roberts S.M. ’92 and her husband, Jim Gawel Ph.D. ’97, moved to Tacoma, Wash., in 1999. He is a professor at the University of Washington (UW) and she joined the Washington State Department of Ecology, the agency responsible for identifying and cleaning up water quality problems. She wrote, “My work involves managing modeling and monitoring projects in Puget Sound and its watershed. I also teach stream ecology at the UW Tacoma environmental science program.” For the last 16 years, Mike Rivest S.M. ’95 has been involved in developing federal energy efficiency regulations for consumer products and industrial equipment. “I lead first worked on climate change as a summer intern at the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, and then spent a year at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program. After receiving a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard, he moved back to Washington to work at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), then returned to Boston in 2011 to join RAND. “I focus on issues related to health-care workforce, primary care and health-care costs. At the CBO, I was a lead developer of the model used to analyze the health reform bill that was eventually passed. I think the new exchanges are designed pretty well from an economist’s point of view, and the mandate, subsidies and other incentives will really help to insure most of the remaining uninsured in the country.” to be closer to extended family and to work for a small software company. Recently, he moved back to Cambridge and is now director of project services at Harvard University Information Technology. “I managed to end up in jobs which have very little to do with my undergrad degree (chemistry) or my S.M. in environmental policy, but it’s all been interesting and worked out nevertheless,” he wrote. He and his wife also own Diaper Lab in Somerville, Mass., which sells cloth diapers and infant accessories. David Auerbach S.M. ’96 is vice president for environmental and external affairs for Omya Americas, a multinational mineral processor. He leads sustainability initiatives ranging from increasing efficiency internally to establishing productive relationships between Omya and its external stakeholders. Previously, he served as managing director of CLF Ventures, the nonprofit strategy consulting arm of the Conservation Law Foundation. He also taught graduate environmental policy courses at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Jim Hamilton S.M. ’96 James Lin S.M. ’96 is a principal of program management at Kaiser Permanente, currently focusing on implementing a health claim processing system and ICD-10 (disease classification) compliance. Previously he worked on the kp.org website and online medical records. Kurt Sjoblom Ph.D. ’00 gave the opening night talk, “Coupling State-ofthe-Art Testing Methods: Constant Rate of Strain Consolidation and Stress Path Triaxial Testing,” at the Delaware Valley Geo-Institute dinner meeting in September 2011. At Drexel University he conducts research in geotechnical engineering and teaches various geotechnical classes. In addition, his business, Seaflower Consulting Services, advises engineering firms on soil testing and geotechnical investigations. was a product manager for Harvard before relocating to Spokane, Wash., and Douglas submitted a thoughtful essay about their commitment Ryan Frazier S.M. ’96 Amy Watson ’02, S.M. ’04 Figueiredo continued on page 22 21 Gifts to CEE Alumni News continued from page 21 to green living to win the grand prize — an all-inclusive summer wedding — in the 2011 Clay Hill Farm Green Wedding Giveaway. Their wedding took place on June 10; the video is posted at http:// www.greenweddinggiveaway.com. 22 “I am an engineering manager in Black & Veatch’s Indianapolis, Ind., office,” wrote Heather Cheslek M.Eng. ’03. “I recently completed my year as president of the Indiana Water Environment Association, where I focused on increasing training for wastewater and water operators, [which increased] young professionals’ involvement in the organization.” She said she also helped the organization collaborate with the Indiana Section of the American Water Works Association to host a joint seminar. For her thesis, Vanja Klepac-Ceraj Ph.D. ’04 explored the diversity and structure of marine microbial communities. She said, “I continue this exploration today, but in different environments. During my postdoctoral training I developed a project addressing the impact of the respiratory tract bacterial community on pulmonary lung decline in children with cystic fibrosis (CF). These infections result in progressive pulmonary damage and eventual death. My current research at the Forsyth Institute in Cambridge explores microbial communities associated with the human body. I look at the interplay between community composition and the dynamics of oral microbiota and the progression of several diseases, including CF lung disease and periodontitis in adults, as well as the development of metabolic diseases such as Type II diabetes in children.” Environmental engineer Katherine moved to Madison, Wis., to work for RMT Inc., which was purchased by TRC Companies last June. She handles soil and groundwater remediation projects across the country, and conducts laboratory research on new capping technologies. Recently, she passed Vater SB ’07, M.Eng. ’08 her professional engineer exam. “I can’t believe my five-year MIT reunion is approaching,” she wrote. Even as she worked on an M.Phil. in development studies at Oxford, Rhodes scholar Alia Whitney-Johnson ’08 continued to be deeply involved with Emerge (http://www.emergeglobal.org), an organization she founded at a shelter for abused girls in Sri Lanka. As the girls learn to make jewelry that is sold around the world, they also acquire vital training in business, leadership and life skills. Whitney-Johnson now lives in Montreal as one of 14 international participants in the Sauvé Scholars program, where she receives support to further develop Emerge. Last October she returned to MIT for her first meeting of the MIT Corporation as a recent classes member. “I felt energized just walking down the Infinite Corridor. What an amazing community we have, and I feel so grateful to have been privileged enough to go to school at MIT,” she wrote. n ALUMNI DEATHS Deaths in 2012 Samuel Roller ’53, on Aug. 18 Robert Hagopian ’47, on Dec. 10 Wilson H. Tang ’66, S.M. ’67, on Jan. 5 Joseph Passonneau S.M. ’49, on Aug. 22 Deaths in 2010 Robert V. Whitman S.M. ’49, Sc.D. ’51, on Feb. 12 Vincent Lo Cicerro ’55 (Course 9B), on Aug. 26 Joseph M. Olsen ’68, S.M. ’74, Ph.D. ’78, on April 17 Deaths in 2011 Edward Holt Jr. ’45, S.M. ’47, on Aug. 28 Martin Antman ’40, on May 10 Harald Henriksen ’57, on Jan. 10 Benjamin Plowgian ’48 (Course 9B), on Sept. 6 Rev. A. Charles MacDonald S.M. ’59, on Oct. 14 John Chalas ’49, on Feb. 18 James Barnes ’51 (Course 9B), on Sept. 9 C. Jerould Carpenter ’54, on April 14 Milton Neuman ’52, on Sept. 18 David Moore ’49 (Course 17), S.M. ’50 (Economics), on Nov. 11 Gerald Tlapa ’62, S.M. ’64, on May 6 Joseph Penzien Sc.D. ’50, on Sept. 19 Gideon P.R. von Willich S.M. ’55, Sc.D. ’57, on Nov. 27 Terje Backe ’56, on May 8 Walter Knowles S.M. ’56, on Sept. 25 William Faison S.M. ’57 (Course 11), on Dec. 15 Arthur Prentiss III ’59, on May 10 Col. A.C. Costanzo S.M. ’56, on Oct. 5 Deaths in 2009 Col. Norman Pehrson S.M. ’48, on June 23 Gerald McDermott S.M. ’58, on Oct. 5 Franklin Y.K. Sunn S.M., S.E. ’52 (Course 11), on June 28 Finbarr Bruen Ph.D. ’79, on June 25 Harold Conger ’33, on Oct. 9 William Breurer ’53 (Course 9B), on Oct. 31 Kenneth Weiner S.M. ’57, on June 26 John Cord ’50, S.M. ’52, on Oct. 17 Deaths in 2008 Jay Mullen ’47 (Course 9B), on July 15 Alan Collins ’49, on Oct. 23 Theodore Thal ’48, on Aug. 12 Kenneth Eberhard ’47, on Aug. 14 John Holmfeld ’58, on Oct. 27 Eleanor (Hayes) Livengood ’43 (Course 17), on Sept. 8 George Siebern ’51, on Aug. 16 Philip Macht ’48 (Course 17), on Nov. 14 Frank Yett ’40 (Course 9B), on Aug. 16 Charles “Hank” Spaulding ’51, on Nov. 24 Deaths in 2006 Grant Barratt ’55, on July 19 Thank You For Your Gifts We wish to express sincere gratitude to the people who made gifts of $100 or more to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in Calendar Year 2011. Your gifts help make the department’s work possible. Edward E. Adams Andreas E. Aeppli Nestor A. Agbayani William B. Akers Luis F. Alarcon Kathryn A. Alsegaf Nicolas Andreadis Kathryn Patricia V. Angeles Demosthenes C. Angelides Joseph Antebi Alan M. Appleford Dante D. Archangeli Diana B. Archangeli Roger E. Arndt Javier Artola Thomas H. Asselin Eng Sew Aw Robert C. Ayres Debera A. Backhus Katsunori Banno Mark P. Batho Carl A. Bauer Berghold Bayer Jared L. Black Leslie J. Blythe Marco D. Boscardin John L. Bowman Edward C. Brainard Rafael L. Bras Douglas A. Briggs Stephen S. Britten Dominique N. Brocard Thomas W. Brockenbrough Kaye L. Brubaker Robert W. Bruhn Michael S. Bruno Theodore B. Burger Richard H. Burns Guy D. Busa William F. Callahan Alberto B. Calvo Mehmet E. Camlibel Joseph H. Cattell Horace B. Chalstrom Eng-Soon Chan Joanne Chan Wen-Cheng Chang Stephen M. Chapman Virat Chatdarong Min-Tze Cheng Takafumi Chiba Vincent H. Chu Joseph M. Cibor Niki L. Cibor Jared L. Cohon Richard A. Conway Cortis K. Cooper Chad W. Cox Hector J. 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Leytham Yile Li Linda Liang Samson S. Liao Jeen-Shang Lin Ko-Fei Liu Philip L. Liu Yuming Liu Norman W. Llewellyn Edmond Y. Lo Robert D. Logcher Gary A. Lovesky Donavan M. Lowtan Ulrich Luscher Brian G. Lustbader David G. Lutz N. J. Machnik Thomas S. Maddock William L. Maini William A. Marr Fariborz Maseeh Kenneth R. Maser Gregory P. Matthews James R. McCarren Mark R. McCord Ross E. McKinney Andrew F. McKown Deryk Meherik Deborah Mei Joseph J. Mergel Mark A. Miller Alexander Milton Sangyoon Min Neal B. Mitchell Timothy Moe Glenn E. Moglen Rachna Mohanka Fabio M. Mondini Juan C. Monzon Ernest T. Morales Christina J Murlo Nicola M. Murlo Ronald E. Nece Lance A. Neumann Roseanna M. Neupauer Richard A. Newcome John N. Newman Chiu-On Ng Eric M. Nichols Arndt W. Nicklisch Manfred F. Nussbaumer Martin M. Nussbaumer Harold W. Olsen Molly R. Palmer Diana K. Pape Mark B. Pape Allan M. Paull David F. Peralta David A. Peters Eric F. Peyrard Roberto Pietroforte Richard R. Pikul Desiree L. Plata Gary A. Platt Saik-Choon Poh Darryl Pomicter E. D. Poor-Reynolds William F. Quinn Fredric Raichlen Jorge A. Ramirez Matthew D. Reynolds Joseph J. Rixner William J. Roberds Myron S. Rosenberg Pierce E. Rowe Carolyn G. Rubin-Barg James F. Ruff Kasumu O. Salawu Lawrence P. Sanford Ramahi B. Sarma Rupavtarm Martin A. Schlenker Robert P. Schreiber Miriam G. Schulman Karnik M. Seferian Christopher Segura Lisa G. Seifert Michael A. Semeraro Masakazu Shibata Tomoya Shibayama Paul F. Shiers Neil S. Shifrin Francisco Silva-Tulla Richard M. Simon Scott B. Smith Richard M. Soberman Charles K. Sollitt Walter Steiner Saturnino Suarez Reynoso John H. Suhrbier Sean D. Sweat Ling Tang Lavette C. Teague Allan C. Tedrow Serge Avi Tesciuba William A. Thomas Robert E. Thurber John A. Tice John M. Ting Albert Q. Tom Gabriel R. Toro Paul J. Trudeau Lina Tsang Kazuyoshi Uehara Dario Valencia-Restrepo Erik H. Vanmarcke Miguel A. Vescovacci Luis E. Vidal Liceaga Vitoon Vivatrat Theodore von Rosenvinge James P. Walker Andrew J. Walsh Jingfeng Wang John D. Wang Shun Wang Lyndon Welch Yang Wen Arthur G. Wheler David E. White Stanley M. White Robert V. Whitman Andrew J. Whittle John L. Wilson Kenneth W. Wilson Nigel H. Wilson John P. Wolf Duncan W. Wood Ray L. Wooten Shian-Chee Wu Hou-Gion T. Wuu Warren M. Yamamoto David Yang Qi Yang Chee-Kuen Yip Daniel A. Zarrilli Guoping Zhang Jeffrey S. Zickus For information on making gifts to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, please contact Patricia Dixon, administrative officer, at 617.253.2335, or go to the CEE giving section of the MIT Alumni Association website, http://tinyurl.com/giftstoMITCEE. For information on making Planned Gifts, please contact Judith V. Sager, director of the Office of Gift Planning, at 617.253.6463 or [email protected]. 23
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