PITT CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES FALL PROMOTIONS
PITTSBURGH (September 27, 2016) … The University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering announced three promotions in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering this fall.
Mark Magalotti, co-director of the Center for Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure and former senior lecturer, and John Sebastian, McKamish Director of Construction Management and former assistant professor, have been both promoted to professor of practice, non-tenure stream. Julie Vandenbossche, associate professor, will receive tenure.
Mark Magalotti
Mark Magalotti received his PhD, MS and BS in civil engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. He is registered as a professional engineer currently in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia and previously in Maryland. He is a member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Transportation Research Board, Transportation and Land Development Committee.
Magalotti is the co-director of the Center for Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure at Pitt, where he implements the Center’s vision to advance the state of sustainable transportation research through collaborative, multi-disciplinary efforts, education and dissemination of new technologies and knowledge. He is also the coordinator of the Graduate Program for Transportation. Magalotti has more than 30 years of experience in the management of transportation planning and traffic engineering projects. He was the founder and CEO of Trans Associates, a regional transportation consulting firm. In this role, he was a civil engineering consultant specializing in transportation planning and design.
John Sebastian
John Sebastian is the McKamish Director of Construction Management in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Pittsburgh. He oversees the Undergraduate and Graduate Construction Management Program, teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in construction management and coordinates the adjunct professors within the program and networking with industry to support and enhance the program.
Sebastian is the president of his own management consulting firm, Sebastian Consulting Solutions, LLC, which was founded based on his more than 35 years of experience in the construction industry from his work with Dick Corporation, a national general contractor, and DCK Worldwide, an international contractor and successor company to Dick Corporation. He served as a member of the firms’ Executive Management Team and its Board of Directors.
Sebastian is a LEED accredited professional and a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, holding a BS in Civil Engineering and an MBA.
Julie Vandenbossche
Julie M. Vandenbossche is a registered professional engineering and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Before accepting a position in academia, she worked with the Minnesota Department of Transportation in the Office of Materials and Road Research. While with the Minnesota Department of Transportation, she accepted a loan-staff position with the Transportation Research Board (TRB) within the National Academy of Science, where she worked with the Research for Improved Concrete Pavements TRB Committee in developing a national research plan for concrete and concrete pavements.
Her primary research interests are in the area of cementitious materials and the design, analysis and rehabilitation of concrete pavements. Most of her research pertains to the advanced characterization of materials and the coupling of experimental and computational modeling. She has secured more than $7 million in funded research and has more than 55 peer-reviewed publications, 60 technical reports and 53 invited presentations. Other published material includes an on-line procedure (went live in 2013 thanks to the help of Paul Kovach and his group) developed for the design of bonded concrete overlays of asphalt pavements. There have been more than 8,000 users representing 49 different countries in the past two years (data prior to that are not currently available due to changes in the server hosting the site). http://www.engineering.pitt.edu/Vandenbossche/BCOA-ME/
Vandenbossche’s research has led to three major awards. The first is the 2015 Marlin J. Knutson Award for Technical Achievement from the American Concrete Pavement Association. This prestigious award is presented annually to an individual or group who have made significant contributions to the development and implementation of innovative technical approaches in design or construction of concrete pavements. The second is the 2003 Transportation Research Board Fred Burggraf Award, which recognizes excellence in transportation research by researchers 35 years of age or younger. The third is the 2001 Bengt Friberg Award for Best Paper by a Young Author, presented at the 7th International Conference on Concrete Pavements, which is held every four years. Of the awards presented to Vandenbossche, she is extremely proud of the 2013 Professor of the Year, American Society of Civil Engineers Pittsburgh Section. Vandenbossche is very passionate about her teaching and therefore very grateful to be bestowed this honor.
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Contact: Paul Kovach