Civil and Environmental Engineering Category
Baroud receives NSF Early CAREER Award to predict and inform community hazard response
Mar. 11, 2020—Hiba Baroud has received a 2020 NSF Faculty Early CAREER Development grant to boost community resilience and sustainability through a three-pronged project that starts with a better understanding of how people and infrastructures interact during hazards. The five-year, $500,000 grant, “Policy-Infrastructure-Community Interdependencies: The Next Frontiers in Dynamic Networks,” begins July 1, 2020. Baroud, assistant professor...
Record number of high school students compete in annual bridge challenge
Mar. 2, 2020—The sound of a small basswood bridge failing under a heavy load is more of a whimper than a bang. The snap is audible but subtle, and Jessica Baker listened intently for it dozens of times Saturday. Jessica, a junior at Blackman High School in Murfreesboro, was among a record number of Middle Tennessee students...
Bangladesh collaboration includes VUSE faculty, looks at lessons for rapid environmental change
Feb. 25, 2020—With a population of roughly 150 million people, the delta country of Bangladesh holds about half the population of the entire United States in an area the size of Louisiana, and exists under a near-constant risk of sea level rise and other dynamic climate changes. Now, as the world faces a future chock-full of increasing...
Five graduate students named Eisenhower Fellows
Jan. 21, 2020—Five engineering Ph.D. students have received prestigious Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowships and one of them was named the top Eisenhower Fellow in the U.S. The fellows were selected through a competitive process that included university panels and a national selection panel. The awards, up to $30,000 each, are made by the U.S. Department of...
Large-scale engineering projects wow fourth graders studying renewable energy
Dec. 20, 2019— “This trip made me want to be an engineer.” Best feedback ever from a youngster on a fieldtrip, according to staff leaders at Vanderbilt Engineering’s Laboratory for Systems Integrity and Reliability. Eight fourth graders from Nashville’s Akiva School recently toured the engineering school’s super-sized, high-bay lab in Metro Center, located along the Cumberland River...
Popular class makes a difference-for a young boy, a local company and Cheekwood
Dec. 12, 2019—Making things is cool. Making things that solve a problem, improve a life and make a difference is even better. Students in “How to Make (Almost) Anything” recently presented their final projects for clients with wildly diverse needs. Among them: A young boy with one leg eight inches shorter than the other needed a way...
Structural monitoring pioneer Douglas Adams named AAAS Fellow
Nov. 26, 2019—Douglas Adams, Daniel F. Flowers Professor, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for extraordinary research contributions in experimental nonlinear dynamic systems with societal impacts in the energy, national security and manufacturing sectors. AAAS also cited Adams, Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, for influential academic leadership....
Revamped civil engineering curriculum ignites students’ passions
Nov. 3, 2019—Nathan Miller, an engineering senior from Indianapolis, arrived at Vanderbilt in August 2016 thinking he would major in chemical engineering. Like all first-year students, he selected three eight-week modules that introduce different disciplines within engineering. He took chemical, civil and mechanical engineering. The first day of the civil engineering module—students were to design and 3D-print...