Throughout his journey to America and into academia, Pant never forgot the generous support he received from Pitt. This summer, he decided it was time to give back. Pant and his wife have launched the Prahlad and Bindu Pant Endowed Student Resource Fund in Civil Engineering, a $100,000 gift that will support Swanson School of Engineering students pursuing degrees in civil engineering.

Two suitcases

Growing up in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, Pant enjoyed math and science and had to decide which to pursue. “At that time,” he said, “if you wanted to go for higher education, you applied for a scholarship for engineering or medicine.” He chose the former.

After studying engineering at BIT Sindri, in India, Pant returned to Nepal and began working for the government, where he tried unsuccessfully to obtain a passport to go abroad. Undaunted, he worked on a USAID-funded project building highways in the mountains, which sent him to Pitt to study for a summer semester.

Before returning to Nepal, Pant’s professor invited him, his wife, and a few other students to his house for dinner. “As we were about to leave,” Pant recalled, “the professor asked if I wanted to continue studying at Pitt.”

Pant had obligations in Nepal but at the professor’s urging, he filled out a graduate school application and dropped it in the mail before he flew home.

“I had almost forgotten about that, and in March of 1976, I received a letter that I had been admitted to the master's program in the Department of Civil Engineering,” Pant said.

In late August that year, he and his wife flew back to Pittsburgh, this time to stay. “We came with only one suitcase each,” Pant said. “Then we were at the Pittsburgh airport and didn't know where to go, so we just called the cab and said, ‘Okay, take us to a hotel near the University.’”

The next day, Pant met with the professor and things fell into place. Apartments around the university were full, so they found one in Squirrel Hill. Classes started, and Pant was immersed in his studies.

“The academic part was challenging, and I had to work hard,” Pant said. He and his wife also had to adjust to the weather. The winter of 1976 – 1977 was famously cold, with the city setting a record of 33 consecutive days with temperatures below freezing. In Kathmandu, temperatures occasionally reach freezing, but most days are warm and sunny.

When Pittsburgh bus drivers went on strike in December, Pant recalled trudging through the snow to campus. “Luckily the strike only lasted a couple days.”

Despite the cold and the challenges of earning graduate degrees in a foreign country, Pant “loved it. I was also lucky. I was supported by the civil engineering department every semester that I was there.”

A dream realized

“Being a professor was my dream,” Pant said. “Coming to America, I wasn’t interested in any other thing.”

After earning his PhD, Pant applied for three teaching positions and received two offers. He chose the University of Cincinnati, where in 1980 he became the first Nepali engineering professor in America.

Suddenly, Pant found himself entering a classroom not as a student but as a professor. “I had no training in teaching. I said, ‘How am I going to teach these courses?’ It was a learning experience.” He learned quickly and for over 20 years conducted research and taught courses in transportation and traffic engineering.

In 2003, Pant retired as a professor emeritus and launched the startup company PDP Associates, a successful transportation research and traffic management company. After staying on at the University of Cincinnati until 2007 to support his last graduate students, he and his wife, in search of a warmer climate, moved to Atlanta.

The opportunity to give back

Pant recalled the two suitcases he and his wife brought to America. “That’s all we had, nothing else,” he said. “Now we had something and could give back to Nepal.”

In 2008, the couple launched the Prahlad & Bindu Pant Orphans Foundation (now called the Pant Family Foundation). Today, the foundation has expanded its scope to support other areas including orphaned children in Nepal.

Last month, the foundation and Pant himself introduced the Pant Family Endowed Student Resource Fund in Civil Engineering. The $100,000 gift will support education-related expenses for Pitt undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students in civil engineering, with a focus on those studying transportation engineering.

The fund will help make research, conferences, travel, and global experiences more accessible to more students. It seeks to create opportunities for students who, like Pant when he first came to America, need extra financial support to reach their dreams.

For Pant, the decision to support Pitt was easy. “Pitt helped me so much during my studies,” he said. “It was very straightforward. I had to give back something to help today’s students.”

A solution to help limit CSO involves capturing and repurposing stormwater, but cost concerns can deter implementation. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering are seeking to change that. Professors Vikas Khanna and Sarah Haig, with PhD student Ahteshamul Haq and Pitt alumnus SriGanesh V. Pennathur (BS EE ’26), have developed a decision-support framework that automatically identifies cost-effective, energy-efficient, and low-emission treatment systems for captured stormwater based on how the water will ultimately be used.

Their research “From runoff to circular resource: an integrated optimization framework for cost, energy, and GHG performance in urban stormwater systems” (DOI: 10.1038/s41545-026-00585-4) was published in the journal npj Clean Water. It provides planners with a valuable tool to help design viable, resilient, low-emission systems for water reuse, reducing the strain on single pipe networks and keeping untreated sewage out of local ecosystems.

"Cities like Pittsburgh face a legacy infrastructure problem, and it gets worse as storms in the region become more frequent and heavier," said Haq, first author of the paper. “Right now, that rain only adds load to the sewer. Captured and treated to the right level, it becomes a usable resource.”

Underpinning the team’s research is a “One Water” approach, which views all sources of water – whether from the tap, a nearby river, stormwater, or even the sewer – as parts of one interconnected urban water cycle. The approach explores the many ways different kinds of water can be used across an area.

“Stormwater doesn’t need to be treated to drinking-water standards to be a valuable resource,” said Haig, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “Instead, we can think about treating stormwater to be fit for its intended use. If the water is going to be used for irrigation, industrial processes, infrastructure, or surface-water recharge, we may not need the same level of treatment required for drinking water. Matching treatment to the end use could reduce the cost and energy required while still allowing us to put that water to beneficial uses."

To illuminate the varying costs of treating stormwater for each use, the team developed a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model built on a menu, or “superstructure,” of all plausible water treatment steps and how they can be wired together.

The menu integrates cost, energy, and life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data as it applies to various technologies used to treat water, such as coagulation, sedimentation, constructed wetlands, filtration, membranes, and disinfection. Whatever water use a planner might consider, the model solves separately for the lowest cost, the lowest energy use, and the lowest emissions.

While the team used Pittsburgh as its case study, the framework is built on published U.S. stormwater quality data and the water-quality standards for each end use, so other cities with aging combined sewer systems can apply it. Planners can incorporate local electricity prices, grid carbon intensity, and regulations to determine their unique situation. The model gives them a quantitative way to decide how to best use captured stormwater.

“We found that matching treatment intensity to the intended use can lower costs and avoid unnecessary treatment,” said Khanna, professor and interim chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “The goal is not to treat every gallon to the highest possible standard. It is to provide the appropriate treatment for how that water will be used.”

For drinking-water production, the researchers found that treating typical-strength stormwater could have lower treatment costs and greenhouse-gas emissions than seawater desalination. Even stormwater with relatively high pollutant concentrations remained competitive with other alternative water sources in the study’s treatment-only comparison.

The team’s research reveals how something that increasingly causes untreated sewage to spill into waterways can become an asset to a city. Instead of overwhelming old pipes, it can be used to make new concrete, recharge surface water, and cool industrial equipment.

As Haq said, “By decreasing flood damage and reducing costly pollution from overflows, cities can help offset the cost of building a stormwater reuse system.”

By showing how captured runoff can be treated for uses ranging from irrigation and concrete production to industrial supply and drinking water, the research reframes stormwater as more than an urban burden. With appropriate treatment and infrastructure, it could become part of a more circular and resilient water system.

For the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering’s American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter, the 2026 National Concrete Canoe Competition on Friday, June 26, was their first chance to compete at nationals, the result of years of fine tuning their mix and design, learning to row together, and most importantly, solving problems as a team.

Making concrete float

"Concrete is almost synonymous with civil engineering," said Mae Cook, president of Pitt’s ASCE student chapter. "Civil engineers essentially figure out how to use concrete in a variety of applications, and instead of buildings and roads, we're building a canoe."

Although the challenge has inspired ASCE student chapters since the 1960s, it wasn’t until 1988 that concrete canoe races were officially sanctioned. The event has become popular at the symposia, which feature challenges in bridge building, surveying, and problem solving. Today, the National Concrete Canoe Competition draws teams from around the world and across the country.

“It’s a commitment and a team effort,” said Cook. Pitt’s team splits responsibilities across mix design, construction, project management, aesthetics, and of course the actual rowing. Everyone comes together to lift the unwieldy boat.

Finding the right mix

Essential to a concrete canoe is finding the right mix of concrete. For Pitt’s team, that process is ever evolving. Over the years, they have compiled what Amelia Kuzneski (BS CEE ’26), last year’s mix co-lead, calls “a big messy Excel sheet” that has become a comprehensive calculator used to determine the mix.

“Improving upon our mixes from previous years, we were finally able to figure out the combination that got us here [nationals],” said Sanjna Goyal, the mix design captain this past year. “Our main goal was to decrease the density, which is why we added Poraver. I like to think of it as glass popcorn — it’s a super light material that helps fill space without adding weight. To help maintain strength, we still use Portland cement but also incorporate silica fume, fly ash, and Re-Act 4, which are sustainable cement replacements. Additionally, acrylic fibers help with holding our concrete together and further strengthen the mix.”

The team tests as many as 12 to 13 mixes, compressing and pulling apart concrete cylinders to gauge its strength. They test its slump, or how much it will droop before hardening.

Kuzneski, an environmental engineer, has applied her learning to help produce a mix with a smaller carbon footprint. “Concrete is not very sustainable, at least not the production process,” she said. “We try and do good to the environment. Half our boat is probably some form of recycled glass.”

Building a canoe

After the team settles on its mix, the construction leads organize the pour, utilizing a CNC company to cut a mold out of Styrofoam, which arrives in three pieces. Then comes the fun.

“Everyone comes in at 6:00 a.m., and we fit the pieces together and make sure everything is lined up. We line it with epoxy, so the concrete won’t stick,” said Kuzneski, this year’s construction co-captain along with Greg Herbst (BS CEE ’26). “Everyone gets to trowel, though we end up using our hands a lot.”

Between layers, the team adds mesh to reinforce the concrete and help the canoe keep its shape. For increased buoyancy, they fill caps in the fore and aft with foam and then apply more concrete. This year they added concrete ribs for increased strength. (Two years ago, the team dropped the canoe and had to duct-tape the stern to keep it together. They raced, but the boat capsized at the finish line.)

“This is the best one I’ve ever seen,” said Charles “Scooter" Hager, CEE Structures / Materials Technician at Pitt. He works in the Benedum Hall sub-basement and, as Cook said, “helps with literally everything we need, even teaching us how to row.”

The Andy War-Hull

Beyond questions of design and mix are the canoe’s name and its theme. At meetings, students share ideas, most with a nod to Pittsburgh, until one or two take hold. Last year, the team settled on the alliterative Monongahela Megalodon. Before that it was the Three Rivers Safari.

This year, they turned to one of Pittsburgh’s favorite sons: pop artist Andy Warhol. Punny names ensued, and the Andy War-Hull stuck. For artistic inspiration, team members took a guided tour of the Warhol Museum on Pittsburgh’s North Shore.

“After the canoe cured and we sanded it, the aesthetics team set to work, drawing designs in pencil before staining them into the concrete,” said Kayley Dorfman, an aesthetics co-lead and next year’s project management captain. “The team did everything by hand.”

The boat is adorned with pickles, Heinz condiments, a banana, Marilyn Monroe lips, Dippy the Dinosaur, a panther paw, and the Cathedral of Learning.

Rowing a concrete canoe

Constructing the canoe is a remarkable feat. Rowing in it isn’t particularly easy either. At 215 pounds and 17.5 feet long, the Andy War-Hull requires stamina and skill to weave through buoys in the slalom or to sprint 200 meters.

In previous years, the teams did little in the way of actual rowing practice. Experience was spotty, and the results weren’t always great.

Hager has set out to change that. He has a canoe and lives near the Ohio River. For the past 17 years, he has encouraged students to come and practice, and two years ago, they took him up on the offer. “That first practice, we just sent them out,” Hager said. “They got a lot of time on the water, just figuring out how to work together.”

This spring, their teamwork and the rowing practice paid off. At the 2026 ASCE Mid-Atlantic Student Symposium in Johnstown, PA, Pitt’s Concrete Canoe team placed first overall, earning them the trip to the nationals.

Nationals

This year’s ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships was held at Fairmont State University in Fairmont, West Virginia. Concrete Canoe teams from as far away as China, India, Quebec, Seattle, and San Diego brought their boats to nearby Tygart Lake State Park to compete.

Pitt’s team rented a Penske truck, and Miles Hartlage, next year’s construction co-lead, drove the Andy War-Hull two hours south, maneuvering the winding roads to the state park. He parked amid a long row of trailers typically used for race cars, many emblazoned with university logos.

While a niche college event, Concrete Canoe has its own flair. Teams wore matching shirts, one team even matching party hats. Pitt’s team, during the regional competition, dressed as their boat’s namesake, donning silver wigs.

Members of one team walked the banks of the lake banging drums. Another team hoisted a cowbell the size of a garbage can and clanged it (a three-person endeavor) whenever their canoe set out to the starting line. Teams twirled ratchet noise makers.

The canoes themselves are amazing, ornately stained, with designs that tell stories of its university, city, or state. A few boats even had cement figureheads – a pelican, for instance – on the bow.

There are five events: women’s and men’s slalom, women’s and men’s sprint, and co-ed sprint. Boats are timed individually. As the rowers navigated buoys or frantically dug their paddles into the water to go faster, teammates and fans on the shore cheered them on and chanted their school’s name. They waved university flags. Everyone was having fun.

Beyond racing and the fun, the students gained practical experience that will help them after they graduate. Each team must develop an extensive proposal submitted to judges, which outlines details such as the cement mix, the design, the construction, and the cost. At the competition, students must pitch their canoe, selling judges on its merit and fielding questions. The canoe itself is rigorously tested and judged.

“The idea is that we are designing a concrete canoe that will be manufactured on a wide scale,” Cook said. "The canoe is a working prototype and the presentation is a business pitch. The racing is more for fun.”

While Pitt’s team couldn’t repeat its regionals performance, for their first time at nationals, they held their own. Beyond the results, the team bonded, sharing snacks and stories, lifting members into and out of the Andy War-Hull, working together to navigate a complex slalom course. They met fellow engineers from far-off schools and talked with industry representatives eager to see what the students had created.

“I could not be more proud of them,” said Amir Alavi, the team’s faculty advisor and associate professor and B.P. America Faculty Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "It’s so rewarding to see how much heart the students put into this work. Concrete Canoe is not just about building and racing a canoe. It is about students learning to trust each other, solve problems together, and see that civil engineering is also about creativity, imagination, and teamwork,”

“Our department is close knit and supportive, and Concrete Canoe captures this spirit,” said Kate Volna (BS CEE ’26), project management captain this year. “Even though this was my last go round with Concrete Canoe, I’ll always be cheering them on.”

Together, the recognitions reflect both the impact of Rizzo's research and his growing leadership in the structural health monitoring community. His research is paving the way for nondestructive inspection that could, when mature, allow inspectors to measure how much longitudinal force a track is carrying, information that it is important to prevent train derailments.

Structural Health Monitoring is an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes exceptional research advancing “the body of knowledge and its application in the discipline of structural health monitoring.” Rizzo’s appointment followed a competitive search, and he began serving as Managing Editor on July 1, 2026.

“Structural Health Monitoring is a tremendous source of cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research that is advancing our field,” said Rizzo, professor in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “As a past contributing author, it’s a great honor to serve as its managing editor and help amplify how researchers are improving structural monitoring research to ultimately protect public safety.”

Along with his appointment to Managing Editor, Rizzo, with first author Alireza Enshaeian (PhD ECE ’24); Matthew Belding (BS ECE ’19, PhD ECE ’25); and Shayan Baktash, a PhD student in civil engineering, received the 2026 Outstanding Paper Award from the American Society for Nondestructive Testing. The award recognizes individuals whose research and papers make important contributions in nondestructive testing. Their paper, “Vibration Nondestructive Testing of Continuous Welded Rails: A Finite Element Analysis,” (DOI: 10.1080/09349847.2024.2433483) was published in Research in Nondestructive Evaluation.

Rizzo and his team investigated railroad tracks that use continuously welded rails (CWR) instead of those joined by bolts and gaps. Although welded rails produce smoother rides and require less upkeep, they are more susceptible to temperature fluctuations that can make them unsafe. 

To improve how these rails are monitored, Rizzo and his team developed a “tap and listen approach,” in which they struck the CWR with an instrumented hammer, recorded the vibrations, and analyzed the frequencies of the vibrations. However, instead of recording vibrations across many sections of rail, they focused on a five-meter stretch and simulated scenarios at various temperatures. With this data, the team trained an AI model to predict stress conditions based on the vibration frequencies.

“We found that more than temperature, what affects the vibrations is how firmly the track is held down,” said Enshaeian. “We also discovered the limitations of using AI to predict extreme conditions, which would require significantly more data.”

“Our research shows the potential of generating synthetic data to train AI models at a time when collecting real-world data is incredibly slow and expensive,” Rizzo said. “We are excited to continue expanding the model beyond a limited rail profile.”

The stories below attest to that fact. While professors who remained in Pittsburgh may have felt the pull of their labs, graduate students, and service obligations, they still had the much-needed time and space that took them in new directions. Their experiences highlight that intention, planning, flexibility, and curiosity – not travel – are the essential ingredients to a productive, inspiring, even life-changing sabbatical.

“I needed the chance to take a deep dive.”

Ready to redirect his research, Daniel Cole, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Director of Pitt’s Cyber Energy Center, finally took a sabbatical 17 years after he started a Pitt.

“It was simply time,” Cole said. “Not enough people take sabbaticals.”

Cole partnered with the Idaho National Lab (INL), working closely with chief cybersecurity scientist Greg Shannon. With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, he spent a year exploring how formal methods, a mathematical approach used to test complex systems, could be applied to controls, safety, and security of critical infrastructure.

The partnership, which INL profiled, provided Cole an opportunity that he missed. “Too often as professors, we’re managing research. Now I could explore new ideas, try things, ask ‘what if,’ and write. I read a lot, learned new coding languages, and struggled in ways I never would have under normal day-to-day responsibilities.”

While Cole wishes he could have spent his sabbatical in Idaho, he was glad he took a full year. “The separation is valuable. Ideally, you go somewhere, have an experience, and bring it back to Pitt to make it better.”

He may have stayed home, but he still brought something important to Pitt, the Swanson School, and the Cyber Energy Center.

In addition to building connections with a national lab and its researchers, Cole said, “I brought back technologies and approaches related to rigorous digital engineering, which help ensure safety and security for critical infrastructure.”

“It’s easy to lose those connections.”

Julie Vandenbossche, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the department’s Associate Chair of Research, also stayed in Pittsburgh for her recent sabbatical. But this didn’t hinder her ability to connect with collaborators across the country and pursue new research. 

“Balancing teaching, service, and research makes it challenging to expand into new areas, search for new funding opportunities, and build the background and connections needed to move work forward,” said Vandenbossche, who researches concrete pavements and cementitious materials.

During her sabbatical, she explored cement chemistry, particularly in relation to low-carbon concrete. “I explored different materials being used, met with manufacturers that produce alternative materials, and became more familiar with the manufacturing process.”

Vandenbossche is building collaborations as well, connecting with researchers at the University of California Davis and with the National Road Research Alliance. She reconnected with collaborators here in Pittsburgh and visited peers around the country, with a side trip to Alaska.

Remaining in Pittsburgh was not without its drawbacks. She was pulled toward the University and obligations there in a way that distance might have helped limit. Yet the time for reflection proved invaluable. “From a research perspective, I thought about where I want to go over the next five years and how to move forward in that direction.”

“It extended well beyond four months.”

Aaron Batista, professor of bioengineering, waited 17 years before taking his first sabbatical, and when he did, he knew he would stay close to home.

“I have young children and a long-established lab, and leaving town was unrealistic,” said Batista, who researches neuroscience and neural engineering.

As for why he was ready for a sabbatical, Batista added, “I was starting to feel a little too narrowly focused on what I was doing in my own lab, and I wanted to get a sense for what else was happening around me.”

That changed last year after he observed a neurosurgical procedure conducted by his colleague Jorge Gonzalez-Martinez, in the School of Medicine Neurological Surgery.

“The first time I walked into an operating room, I was struck by how complex and coordinated everything was,” Batista said. “Neurosurgery is deeply collaborative.

“That first day clarified my sabbatical plan, and I began spending two days a week observing neurosurgeries. These experiences reshaped how I think about bioengineering and the role it can play in patient care.”

Batista began collaborating closely with Gonzalez-Martinez, exploring how engineering approaches could improve surgical procedures and expand treatments. “Our conversations went far beyond the operating room. We talked about better electrodes, faster procedures, and expanding the diseases a surgeon could treat.”

From the collaboration has come a National Institute of Health T32 grant that, if funded, will train engineers to work alongside clinicians during neurosurgical procedures and identify opportunities to expand treatment options and improve outcomes. The grant will expand the Department of Bioengineering’s scope with the new focus on neuroengineering and neuroscience.

“Sabbaticals don’t have to involve international travel or leaving campus entirely,” Batista said. “Mine was local, structured, and manageable, with minimal disruption to my lab and teaching responsibilities. The return on that investment was enormous: renewed energy, new collaborations, and a clearer sense of purpose.”

Like so many Pitt engineers who have taken sabbaticals, his experience reflects that it doesn’t matter how far one travels, but how significantly one is changed. Echoing many of his colleagues, Batista said, “Looking back now, this was one of the most meaningful periods of my career.”

Each spring at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Student Symposia, engineering students from across the country compete in events that capture the essence of civil engineering. They design and build bridges, survey land, solve problems, and create and race concrete canoes. They also have fun.

This year at the 2026 ASCE Mid-Atlantic Student Symposium, the University of Pittsburgh ASCE Student Chapter saw 55 of its members compete, its best participation to date, and the collective effort paid off. In a field of almost thirty university student chapters, Pitt placed first overall.  

The competition was held April 17-19, 2026, at the University of Pittsburgh Johnstown, in Johnstown, PA. The event fostered community across teams and universities and provided students with valuable opportunities to use their hands and apply their learning. 

"Our teams overcame so many obstacles and put in so much hard work this year,” said Mae Cook, a fourth-year civil engineering student and incoming president of Pitt’s ASCE student chapter. “The team captains took last year's judge's feedback and focused on improvement. They enhanced the teams' strengths while also optimizing the needed areas. Their passion for their work could be felt by everyone, which I think contributed to high participation and placement." 

Across events, the Pitt team shined:

• The Concrete Canoe team placed first overall, earning qualification for the national concrete canoe competition June 25 – 27 at Fairmont State University, West Virginia.
• The 3D Printed Bridge team placed first in presentation and design and second place overall.
• The Surveying team placed first in field tasks, third place in the Civil 3D map competition, and second place overall.
• In its first year with an entirely student-led team, Sustainable Solutions received strong feedback from judges on their work related to water cooling, energy use, and stormwater treatment.
• The Steel Bridge team achieved its best build time in more than six years, successfully passed load testing, and improved in all but one category relative to previous years.

“Over the last couple of years, Pitt’s Concrete Canoe has always been one to watch,” said Kate Volna, who graduated this spring with her degree in civil engineering and who served as Project Management Captain for the team. “I love watching the progression and feeling relief once the boat finally gets placed in the water. We design, pour, construct, stain, seal, and transport this boat in just a couple months.”

In a nod to Pittsburgh, the team named their new boat the Andy War-Hull. During competition, they dressed up like the famous artist to cheer on the rowers as they sprinted or competed in the slalom event.

In addition to placing first overall, the team tied for first place in the technical proposal and first in presentation and the men’s sprint and slalom. The team placed second in display and in women’s slalom, and third in women’s sprint.

“Last year, watching the nationals made us extra ambitious, and it’s truly amazing to see how we’ve achieved them,” said Volna. “I am extremely grateful for all our faculty, staff, mentors, and especially alumni who still check in on our team. They are our biggest support and help us succeed.”

On land, the 3D Printed Bridge team had its best showing yet in the symposium’s newest event. “Our team spends the year designing a bridge, creating it in SolidWorks, and then printing it with a 3D printer,” said Chase Ferraro, who is beginning his fourth year in civil engineering and served as the team’s co-captain. The bridge must hold 70 pounds.

Ferraro added, “One of our goals was to improve our presentation skills as a team, and I feel we met that after receiving the best presentation award.

Like its 3D-printed counterpart, the Steel Bridge team also gained momentum this year. Instead of designing and printing a bridge, the competition involves developing a 20-foot model of a bridge capable of holding 2,500 pounds. The team builds the pieces and assembles them at the competition on deadline.

“This year is the second year in a row where we qualified in the competition,” said Jobi Cook, who graduated this spring with a degree in civil engineering. “These last two years, we have improved our build time to meet the 45-minute hard deadline with a build time of 43 minutes last year and 32 minutes this year.”

For Cook, who has completed two internships with a general contractor and has worked as a heavy equipment mechanic, the opportunity to use his hands to design, fabricate, and construct a bridge has been hugely rewarding.

This year’s competition also saw the return of a Pitt Sustainable Solutions team, which hadn’t competed for three years. Sustainable Solutions engages students to solve a real-world problem through the lens of sustainability. Teams develop a proposal and a poster and present their solution.

“We wanted to bring a sustainability-focused team to Pitt and give other students interested in sustainability a chance to find a place within ASCE,” said Rose Genco, a fourth-year civil engineering student and co-captain of the team.

“The challenge this year was to design a sustainable data center,” Genco added. “As this was our first year competing as a team, we did not expect to place well, but we achieved seventh out of fourteen teams!”

Beyond restarting the team and exceeding their expectations, the team built community. “My favorite part about participating in the competition was how close we all became,” Genco said. “We bonded throughout the year and even more at the competition.”

“This achievement would be impossible without the extraordinary efforts of our students and mentors,” said Vikas Khanna, professor and interim chair of civil and environmental engineering. “The outstanding leadership, commitment, and countless hours of work from our student leaders made this success possible.” 

The student leaders hope that the momentum from this year’s success will continue to generate more interest in Pitt’s ASCE student chapter and expand the community that it fuels. As Ferraro said, “ASCE has provided me with so many new friendships and opportunities. The competition teams are an easy way to meet new people and get involved in your major and future career path.”

The team has built an interactive virtual twin that blends blueprints and models with sensor data and sustainability analyses. As a counterpart to the physical building, it lets researchers and facility staff “walk” through a 3D version of the building, click on rooms and systems, and see color overlays, pop‑ups, and alerts that reveal in real time where energy use, indoor air quality, or materials require attention.

This research, “Digital Twins for Sustainable Buildings: From Framework to Strategy Guidelines and Application” (DOI: 10.1016/j.enbuild.2026.117332), provides a novel framework combining digital twin technology with sustainability assessment.

“With this framework, we are moving beyond static snapshots, making steps toward a dynamic record of a building’s environmental footprint, from the materials in its structure to the air its occupants breathe,” said Federica Geremicca, a postdoctoral researcher in civil and environmental engineering at the Swanson School and first author of the paper.       

An ideal case study

When it was built in 2009 as a hub of sustainable innovation on Pitt’s Oakland campus, the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI), a LEED Gold building, was equipped with sensors that monitor everything from energy consumption to air quality to Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) flows. The sensing technology and the centralized Building Automation System (BAS) that controls it provide researchers and building managers with data that can help guide sustainable decision making.

“We’re collecting all this important data, but it hasn’t always been easy for researchers to access and can be siloed and inconsistent,” said Melissa Bilec, George M. and Eva M. Bevier Endowed Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering and co-director of the MCSI. “We set out to develop a digital twin of the Mascaro Center that would transform how the data is processed and visualized, so we could better see how the building is functioning.”

The research began in the fall of 2023, after the team received a $735,872 National Science Foundation grant to develop new tools to enable climate adaptivity in vertical infrastructure.

A living model

Essential to developing a digital twin is the Building Information Model (BIM): a detailed 3D model, or blueprint, of how a structure is built. In buildings, this static BIM provides the backbone of the digital twin. The team connected the BIM to the BAS, which gathers measurements like temperature, humidity, ventilation, and indoor air quality. It also integrated sustainability methods: Material Flow Analysis (MFA), which tracks what materials go into, stay within, and leave a building over time; and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which estimates environmental impacts across the building life span.

Underpinning the research is the concept of urban metabolism (UM), or the flow of resources through a city. UM represents a city as a living thing, and just as a healthy metabolism is important in humans, so it is with a city or a single structure within it.

Built in Unreal Engine, an immersive 3D visualization platform, the interface of the digital twin offers a third‑person walkthrough of the Mascaro Center. “Instead of reviewing static dashboards, you can walk around the virtual Mascaro Center and click on components in rooms. You can see heat-map overlays that highlight material-intensive components and find out how systems are performing, and when something needs attention,” said Geremicca.

Developing the new framework posed unique challenges. “We encountered gaps in the data and inconsistent labeling and units in the Building Automation System,” said John Brigham, professor of civil and environmental engineering. “There were privacy constraints that complicated validation and automation.”  

The team also had to adapt the modeling detail. “The Mascaro Center has unique shapes and slanting walls, and though it may sound counterintuitive, we had to scale back the level of detail to more effectively integrate the energy analysis software,” Bilec said. The team learned that the visual twin and the analytical twin benefited from different levels of detail.                                                                                             .

They also gained valuable insight into the building itself. The model showed how the floors and columns carried most of the building’s material “weight,” and how the replacements that occur over the life of the building can have a significant environmental impact.

“Moving forward, we’ll continue to explore ways to improve how the data is collected and integrated into the digital twin,” said Alessandro Fascetti, Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering Department at the University of Central Florida. “We’re excited to take what we’ve learned and expand the framework to buildings around the Mascaro Center.”

“From its inception, the Mascaro Center was designed to embody sustainability in how it was built and how it’s used,” said Bilec. “The digital twin helps fulfill that vision by turning all this data into a visually interesting interface that fuels better decision making. This research lays the groundwork for smarter, more sustainable operations and more advanced automation. Importantly, this work was inspired by and in honor of Jack Mascaro, MCSI’s namesake and founder, who guides us every day to be on the cutting edge of technology, innovation, and sustainability.”

Engineering failures can be devastating, but they’re also instructive. In a new episode of the YouTube series Why Stuff Fails, University of Pittsburgh civil engineering professor Kent Harries joins British TV producer and director Tom Gorham to examine why Pittsburgh’s Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed and what it teaches us about design, inspection, and maintenance.

Gorham first “stumbled into” engineering disasters in 1999 while working on a program about physical geography. He was documenting the Tangiwai disaster, a 1950s volcanic eruption in New Zealand that triggered a dam collapse and mudslide, toppling a rail bridge just as a passenger train crossed it. 

After that, no matter the project he was working on, disasters followed - the Concorde crashed, the Challenger exploded, the Champlain Tower fell - and soon he was trying to make sense of them in shows like Massive Engineering Mistakes or the TV movie Flight 370 – The Missing Link.

Last year, with fellow producer Julian Watson, Gorham launched Why Stuff Fails to give engineering its due, inviting subject matter experts to analyze how and why failures happen. Since then, he’s produced six episodes, each 20–30 minutes, exploring events including the Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse and the sinkhole that opened beneath the National Corvette Museum in Ohio, swallowing eight vintage Corvettes.

“I’d been producing a show that covered four stories in 44 minutes, and the engineering tended to get short shrift,” Gorham said. Although he studied biology in college, he became increasingly interested in how bridges, buildings, and machines work, and how they can unravel.

For the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, Gorham turned to Harries, PhD, FASCE, FACI, FIIFC, P.Eng at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, who has spent his career in forensic engineering. Harries has investigated structural collapses in many capacities and is regularly consulted by reporters, lawyers, and government officials.

After the Lake View Drive Bridge collapsed onto Interstate 70 in Washington County on December 27, 2005, Harries helped test the remaining girders and identify the source of the failure. He has provided forensic investigation about the Lowe’s Motor Speedway pedestrian bridge collapse following a NASCAR event in May 2000 and has consulted in multiple capacities on the I‑35W Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007. This summer, he will be conducting a review survey of glass‑fiber composite bridge decks in the Pittsburgh region.

Harries knows Pittsburgh’s aging infrastructure well, including the Fern Hollow Bridge, which fell into a Frick Park ravine on a cold, snowy morning on January 28, 2022, injuring ten people. He first spoke with Gorham about the collapse that same year, before the official report was released, for Massive Engineering Mistakes. He welcomed the chance to revisit the story in more detail for Why Stuff Fails.

“I appreciate this effort to explain the science and engineering in a responsible manner,” Harries said. In the episode, he explores the bridge’s history, unique design, and failure sequence, and why it’s vital to get both the engineering and the maintenance right.

“These stories underscore how hard engineering can be and how important it is to do it right,” Gorham said. “We tend to take the built world, the built environment, for granted. But I hope that people will appreciate the engineering behind everyday structures and the vital importance of keeping them safe.”

“It’s worth it,” Harries added about this kind of reporting. “You know, it’s worth doing a good job.”

Watch the episode: Miracle in Fern Hollow! The Pittsburgh Bridge Collapse.

A member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Chemical Society, and the Women’s Chemists Committee, Dolata will graduate from the Swanson School of Engineering next December with an honors degree in chemical engineering.

Dolata has served as an undergraduate teaching assistant in chemical engineering and has conducted research into sodium alginate films with Susan Fullerton, associate professor of chemical engineering and Bicentennial Board of Visitors Faculty Fellow and Vice Chair of Education. She has completed a co-op with the Hershey Company as a process engineer, and she interned at Thermo Fisher Scientific. The co-president and co-founder of Pitt’s Hooks and Books, a club that celebrates reading and fiber arts, she also runs a small baking business, Crumbs of Perfection. In 2024, Dolata received the $10,000 Future of Chemistry Scholarship for Women through the Chemours Women’s Network.

This year’s finalists also include:

• Katie McGuire, a mechanical engineering student who will graduate this spring.

• Garret Phipps, a civil engineering student who will also graduate this spring.

As finalists, McGuire and Phipps will receive a $500 cash prize and a $2,500 Dean’s Fellowship to pursue graduate studies. 

“The George Washington finalists are remarkable students and individuals,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Cailey, Katie, and Garret have made lasting contributions to the Swanson School and the larger Pitt community, and all three are highly deserving of this recognition.”

Each year, the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania awards the George Washington Prize to recognize the incredible work of engineering students in Western Pennsylvania and to encourage them to pursue graduate degrees.  

Meet the finalists. 

Held on March 19 at the O’Hara Student Center Ballroom, the forum was organized by the Swanson School’s Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) consortium and the Center for Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure (CSTI), in cooperation with the Pittsburgh chapters of the American Society of Highway Engineers (ASHE) and Women in Transportation (WTS). Now in its 15^th year, the event connected academic and transportation leaders to share ideas and solve problems.

Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation Mike Carroll delivered the keynote address, “Future Transportation Outlook,” exploring opportunities and challenges in advancing transportation infrastructure statewide. Carroll’s visit to Pitt was his third in the last four years, twice to attend the Transportation Forum and once for the IRISE Annual Meeting. His engagement with the University highlights the strong partnership between PennDOT and the Swanson School.

This year’s forum drew participation from across Pennsylvania, including 112 attendees from private-sector engineering firms, 40 from public-sector organizations, and 20 from academia. Throughout the day, attendees explored how cutting‑edge research, tools, and approaches can create safer, more resilient, and more sustainable transportation systems.

Faculty and graduate students from the Swanson School presented on topics such as “High-Performance and Light-Weight Metamaterial Concrete” and “Structural Optimization of Bridge Decks Against Corrosion,” complemented by a student poster session highlighting emerging research. The forum also brought together leaders from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission for a joint panel discussion, creating space for open dialogue around shared challenges, active projects, and collaborative approaches to advancing transportation innovation.

“As this forum enters its fifteenth year, the growing engagement and the energy around innovative research reflects Pittsburgh’s increasing role as a regional and national leader in transportation,” said Joseph Szczur, research faculty member in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of IRISE and CSTI. “I’m excited to see how the exchange of ideas at the forum manifests into real-world solutions.”

Now a premier regional event for civil engineers, public agencies, and academic partners, the Transportation Forum represents the Swanson School’s commitment to bridging research and practice to improve the region and the state.

“The Design Expo represents the kind of sustained partnership that defines engineering at Pitt,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Our industry partners bring real challenges into the classroom and work alongside our students and faculty throughout the semester, and the projects on display this year are the result of that ongoing collaboration. Bridging the work of our students with the priorities of our partners creates a collective impact that extends well beyond a single course, and we are grateful to the companies, agencies, and alumni who continue to invest in our students this way.”

An integral aspect of the Design Expo is mentoring and collaboration across faculty and disciplines. Pitt alumni, faculty, and industry volunteers judged the event, engaging with the teams and sharing ideas and experience. Faculty and other Pitt schools, as well as government agencies, nonprofits, and industry partners, sponsored teams and provided valuable insight while students developed their projects.

Visit Flickr for the Expo Photo Album.

Best Overall Project 
E-Z CVC: Improving Ultrasound-Guided Central Line Placement 
Tristyn Auth, Alexis DiNapoli, Colin Henchy, Tyler Johnston, Abrahim Kashkoush, Phillip Lavrenyuk, and Trin Murphy

Above from left: Abrahim Kashkoush, Tyler Johnston, Alexis DiNapoli, Phillip Lavrenyuk

People’s Choice Award
Landslide
Drew Cembrinski, Miles Fancher, Ella Lowry, Matthew Macey, and Caroline Vidic
 

DEPARTMENT AWARDS
Bioengineering (Advisor: Mark Gartner)
1st Place E-Z CVC: Improving Ultrasound-Guided Central Line Placement
Tristyn Auth, Alexis DiNapoli, Colin Henchy, Tyler Johnston, Abrahim Kashkoush, Phillip Lavrenyuk, and Trin Murphy

2nd Place Streamlining Transabdominal Ultrasound-Guided Oocyte Extraction Process
Sydney Barber, Ashlyn Odenwald, Ishan Patel, Arshia Shams, Colby Shores, and Lyric Zimmermann

3rd Place (tie) Attachable Motorized Walker Tray Adapted for Independent Kitchen Use
Harrison Burd, Meredith Geno, Gavin Paulhamus, Norah Stivala, Rebecca Swartz, and Danielle Zambetti

3rd Place (tie) Retractable Electrocardiogram Lead Organizer for Streamlining Patient Care
Akshay Balaji, Mya Fulton, Grace Hercik, John Lorence, Soham Mandal, Audrey Transue, and Ella Wolok

Civil and Environmental Engineering (Advisor: Ogul Doygun)
1st Place Culvert Flood Resilience
Liam Byrne, Hannah Charlton, Alexandra Romanchik, and Benamin Ruggles

2nd Place AV Shuttle
Zachary Bobro, Adam Holden, Noah Im, Andrew Jeannot, and Clark Mccord

3rd Place Raw Water Intake
Vaughn Cilea, Campbell Jefferson, Amelia Kuzneski, Cassidy Laffey, Trinity Munsisoumang, and Sean Snyder

Electrical and Computer Engineering (Advisors: Mohamed Bayoumy, Gavin Zhou, and YuAnn Li)
1st Place Haptic Hazard Belt
Ravyn Brown, Rory Cooke, and Aiden Shaffer

2nd Place Pill Buddy
Camila Iglesias, Rachel Krauss, Alexi Mascara, and Connor Paladino

3rd Place Neuromuscular Motion Control Assessment and Rehabilitation (NEMO)
Aidan Beecher, Josh Brositz, Mal Mostafa, and Sebastian Shaffer

Industrial Engineering (Advisor: Scott Streiner)
1st Place (tie) FedEx Intelligent Trailer Path Generation
Anisha Aggarwal, Henry Hoeg, Jason Peters, Pat Simmons, and Siyi Zeng

1st Place (tie) Capacity and Lean Manufacturing Assessment for New Aerospace Program Demand
Logan Biu, Camille Kakoyan, Grant Paladino, Alyssa Stauffer, and Samuel Walsh-Cooke

2nd Place UPMC Oncology Patient Capacity Analysis
Andrea Adamski, Camren Corbett, Ava Hartman, Alexis Hong, and Yuankai Zhang

3rd Place (tie) Assembly Consolidation and Flexible Labor Plan
Braelyn Brozik, Lauren Coffman, Alex Czerkawski, Bryan Landsberg, and Eliza Marcy

3rd Place (tie) Production Area Footprint Optimization
Liam Coughlin, Bradley Gavigan, Blu Trush, Junshan Xie, and Tiffany Zheng

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (Advisor: David Schmidt)
1st Place Replicate Air Flow through Air-Cooled Machines using Wind Tunnels
Luke Braverman, Joshua Hamilton, Jeffery Kogan, Kyleigh Motley, and Jonathan Zhang

2nd Place Remote Hydraulic Tension Assembly - B
Alex Fritch, Joshua Marco, Rachel Sollie, and Evan Turner

3rd Place Laundry Folding Robot - B
Liam Gray, Greg Kenning, Thomas Kisiel, Andrew Leech, Michael Lukasik, Bri Schroll Wood, Ben Slaw, and Aidan Sullivan

Product Realization (Advisor: Eric Winter)
1st Place (tie) Automated Tool Management
Purita Ameyaw, Leilani Cruz, Samiya Henry, and R.J. Zik

1st Place (tie) Canales Cleaning Device
Charlie Greco, Ethan Hancock, Keshav Mukherjee, and Sean Savidge

1st Place (tie) Stand-Alone Pet Health Monitor
Emme Blanchard, Emma Geis, and Isaiah Jefferson

1st Place (tie) Technology-Enabled Cane
Ore Adeleye, Kylie Gardner, Yalin Liu, and Daniel McPeek

“The GRFP is a highly competitive award, and we are extremely proud of our winners and honorable mentions this year,” said Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering at Pitt. “This funding will provide critical financial support for these students to expand their research that benefits all of us.”

The NSF also recognized two members of the Swanson School community with honorable mentions: Jack Hall, a graduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Sead Nikšić (BS ECE ’23). Four alumni, Dalia Fantini (BS BIOE '23), Kelly Larson (BS IE ‘18), Frederick Laudati (BS ECE '25), and Paul Walter (BE MEMS ’20) also received fellowships this year. 

This year’s Swanson School awardees are:

Casey Cargill

Cargill is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering, where she specializes in the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (TERM) track. Advised by Jonathan Vande Geest in the Soft Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory, Cargill’s research focuses on addressing vision loss caused by conditions such as age-related macular degeneration.

Cargill collaborates with vision scientists and clinicians to develop patient-specific, 3D bioengineered models of the eye’s vascular system. By replicating the complex blood vessel networks and fluid dynamics within the eye, her work seeks to better understand how vascular disruptions contribute to blindness and to support the development of more personalized therapeutic strategies. Cargill is also a member of the Graduate Women in Engineering Network, the Black Graduate Student Alliance, and the Graduate Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) chapter. 

“My Jamaican heritage instilled in me, ‘Labor for learning before you grow old; for learning is better than silver or gold. Silver and gold will vanish away, but a good education will never decay.’ Cargill said. This fellowship supports my research as well as my personal values, allowing me to keep investing in academic growth and using it to benefit others.”

Sophia Freemyer

Freemyer is a senior undergraduate student in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering pursuing a minor in geology and a certificate in public communication of science and technology through the Frederick Honors College. Freemyer began research in Sarah Haig’s INHALE Lab, followed by a summer internship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory through the Department of Energy’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship program, where she worked on a materials science crystallization project. Freemyer later served as an ORISE Fellow at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). 

“My research interests are centered around critical mineral extraction from unconventional sources, specifically waste streams such as acid mine drainage, coal refuse, and produced water from oil production.” Freemyer said. “This area of research not only strengthens our domestic supply of these important materials but also utilizes streams that would end up as pollution in our environment.”

Freemyer is also an active member of the Pitt Band, where she served as a squad leader during her sophomore and junior years and as piccolo section leader her senior year. She also held leadership roles within the Varsity Marching Band Council and Kappa Kappa Psi, the national honorary band fraternity, and is a member of the Society of Women Engineers and Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. After graduation, Freemyer’s NSF fellowship will fund her PhD studies at Columbia University's Earth and Environmental Engineering Department in the lab of Ngai Yin Yip. 

“I am beyond excited to win this award.” Freemyer said. “Having my application accepted is extremely validating for my future goals of becoming a researcher, with expert reviewers agreeing that I have enough promise as a future scientist to fund my graduate studies.”

Aragya Goyal

Goyal is a senior undergraduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, focusing on autonomous systems. His research centers on field robotics, with a particular interest in underwater and space exploration technologies. Since his freshman year, Goyal has collaborated with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University under the guidance of Howie Choset and David Wettergreen, contributing to projects such as the underwater snake robot “HUMRS” and the “Zoë 2” rover, which investigates passive steering mechanisms for planetary exploration. Looking ahead, he is interested in advancing multi-robot collaboration in complex field environments, including coordinated swarms of autonomous underwater vehicles.

Goyal has also been actively involved in the Robotics and Automation Society, where he has developed both technical and professional skills while contributing to a strong engineering community. Goyal applied for the NSF GRFP with the goal of strengthening his research proposal on multi-robot coordination, initially viewing the process as a learning opportunity. With guidance from mentor Geordan Gutow and strong recommendations from his research advisors, however, he successfully refined his application and was awarded the fellowship. This award removes a significant financial barrier to pursuing graduate studies, enabling him to focus fully on advancing robotics research.

“I feel extremely excited and grateful to have been granted this opportunity. My parents and I moved to the United States in 2013 and became citizens in 2021. It was likely one of the best opportunities for my family and had allowed me to apply for this fellowship and receive it.” Goyal said. “Not only that, but my decision to come to Pitt has been equally valuable, and I am glad I made that decision as it provided me with a hub and network of highly technical people who are always ready to help and teach you. The Pitt ECE faculty is excellent, and my peers are brilliant, and it is because of the community surrounding me that I was able to win this award.”

Ritesh Shrivastav

Shrivastav is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering, on the neural engineering track under the mentorship of Helen Schwerdt. In the Schwerdt lab, his work centers on developing minimally invasive tools to measure dopamine in the human brain with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Shrivastav's research aims to elucidate how pathological dopamine fluctuations in the brain manifest as motor dysfunction in Parkinson’s patients. According to Shrivastav, this is essential foundational science for the future development of adaptive treatment technologies that could be personalized to each patient’s unique brain state. 

“Post-graduation, I would love to continue to build upon my research by developing treatments for Parkinson’s disease such as using dopamine as a biomarker for adaptive deep brain stimulation." Shrivastav said. "In the long term, I hope to translate this work into a startup focused on bringing these technologies from the lab to the clinic. This fellowship would provide critical support for the validation research that I will conduct during my PhD, laying a foundation for future commercialization and real-world impact.”

Vanshika Singh

Vanshika Singh is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering pursuing the neural engineering track. They conduct their research in the B.I.O.N.I.C. Lab under the mentorship of Takashi (TK) Kozai. 

Singh’s research explores how non-neuronal cells in the brain, specifically microglia, contribute to inflammation and metabolic stress across neurological disease states. Their recent work has focused on how microglial calcium dynamics change in response to electrode-induced injury, and I’m interested in extending this work to explore how these signaling changes manifest in the context of Alzheimer’s disease. Singh is also interested in investigating ultrasound as a neuromodulatory tool, particularly its mechanistic targets and how it may influence microglial activity and calcium signaling.

Beyond the lab, Singh is actively engaged in mentorship and scholarly service, spending the past two summers mentoring high school students through the Hillman Academy and recently as a reviewer for Ingenium, an undergraduate research journal at the Swanson School of Engineering. Singh also presented their research on microglial responses to electrode insertion injury at the Society for Neuroscience Conference 2025.

“It is an incredible honor to be an NSF GRFP Fellow.” Singh said. “The three years of support will give me the freedom to pursue curiosity-driven research and take intellectual risks that might otherwise be difficult. Beyond funding, this fellowship marks a meaningful milestone in my path toward a career in academic research."

“Bamboo is an incredibly strong, abundant material that can serve as a sustainable alternative in building structures,” said Harries, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering. “It’s also fascinating. Every time you look at it, you see something new.”

Harries recently co-authored the first structural engineering manual for bamboo, which offers detailed guidance and commentary to the 2021 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) bamboo standards for which he also led the writing team. His work is advancing a path to safer, more affordable, and sustainable construction while inspiring a new generation of engineers.

From aspiring architect to structural engineer

Growing up in Canada, Harries didn’t have a bamboo-themed LEGO set because they didn’t exist. He enjoyed playing with LEGO all the same and with Meccano construction sets; both fueled his desire to design and create. So did his parents. “They’d hand me paper and encourage me to design my ideal cabin,” Harries recalled. He’d set to work developing intricate plans, and, as he said, “It went from there.”

Harries earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in Engineering and Applied Mechanics at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

“I’m a true failed architect,” he said. “All through elementary school, through high school, I was going into architecture. In university, I started in architecture and realized that what I thought was architecture was structural engineering.”

Discovering bamboo’s promise

For much of his career, Harries has researched wood, steel, and concrete. He is an expert in the use of materials and in structures like the bridges and buildings they are used to create. He has written international building codes and standards and authored countless papers exploring their use, and he is often sought out for his expertise by journalists around the globe.

In 2006, however, Harries recruited Bhavna Sharma (CEE PhD ’10) to Pitt. Now an associate professor at the University of Southern California and a leader in engineered bamboo research, Sharma joined the Swanson School as a PhD student to study bamboo structures in India and their ability to withstand earthquakes.

The two would later edit a book about nonconventional and vernacular construction materials. For Harries, the research set in motion what has turned Pitt into an international hub of bamboo research.

Pursuing something “unfundable”

“I had a plan to do something that I perceived as being ‘unfundable,’” Harries said of his research into bamboo. Unexpectedly, his plan took root.

In 2014, he received US Department of State funding to organize three international bamboo symposia, in Winnipeg, Pittsburgh, and Jakarta, which would foster a growing community to advance bamboo research. At the Pittsburgh symposium in 2016, researchers made the case for bamboo in the Pittsburgh Declaration.

In 2016, Harries received a $300,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to investigate and model bamboo with researchers in Puerto Rico.

In 2025, he welcomed Italian researcher Luisa Molari, from the University of Bologna, to spend a semester at Pitt on a Fulbright grant. The two collaborated to model bamboo and standardize how it is tested.

Toward stronger, clearer codes and standards

Although bamboo has been used as a building material for thousands of years, only recently have researchers developed international standards. In 2000, Dutch researcher Jules Janssen’s "Designing and Building with Bamboo" was published, and the first technical standards were adopted by the ISO in 2004.

“It’s important to get those first standards, the ‘version zero,’ published. They provide the jumping-off point to begin developing stronger ones,” Harries said.

With longtime collaborator David Trujillo, an assistant professor of humanitarian engineering at the University of Warwick in England, Harries did just that. The two revised the test method and design standards for bamboo, which were published by ISO in 2019 and 2021, respectively.

While working on them, Harries applied another of his research areas: understanding and mitigating complexity in building codes and standards. “Codes are hugely important,” he said, “but if builders can’t understand them, they start to lose their efficacy.”

Harries used these bamboo standards as a case study to investigate the importance of producing clearer, more concise specifications. The research led him to revise his own work.

In addition to revising the standards, Harries and Trujillo, along with engineers Sebastian Kaminski and Luis Felipe Lopez, set to work developing the first structural engineering manual for bamboo, which was first published in November of 2025. The four experts, all members of the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR), provide detailed information about bamboo and guidance for building with it.

“The manual explains where these revised standards come from and how they can be used,” Harries said. “It also provides a roadmap for the next iteration of the standards.”

Rhizomes

Bamboo, which belongs to the grass family, is rhizomic, spreading underground and popping up new shoots. Anyone who has grown bamboo in their backyard, or who has lived next door to someone who has, knows this well. And just as bamboo will spread, Harries’ research has grown and created opportunities for his students.

“There have been about 40 Pitt undergraduate students who have traveled abroad for bamboo-related research projects,” Harries said. “There have been multiple PhDs, and I’ve even had high school students work on bamboo research.”

The projects have built community worldwide, improved international bamboo standards, and created first-of-its-kind guidance. They have shed new light on a sustainable material that has been an essential building block in many countries for centuries.

On January 1, 2025, LEGO launched its first bamboo kit. The set, with its many curved pieces, hardly captures the kind of LEGO Harries grew up with. Yet the existence of such a set speaks to bamboo’s current cultural cachet, one that Harries is excited to help spread.

In the overall rankings, the Swanson School moved up one spot to #42 among all engineering programs and held steady at #24 among public universities and #21 among members of the American Association of Universities. The most notable gain was in electrical engineering, which jumped nine places to #52 overall and rose from #36 to #28 among publics. Computer engineering also improved significantly, climbing four spots to #46 (#24 among publics). Industrial engineering held its position at #24 overall while improving to #16 among publics and #13 among AAU institutions.

“Our continued upward movement reflects the sustained commitment of our faculty, students, and staff,” said Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “As we approach our 180th year of engineering at Pitt, ranking among the top 25 public engineering schools speaks to our deep history and an exciting future.”

The rankings reflect a period of sustained growth for the Swanson School. Research expenditures reached a record $63.5 million, and researchers earned 41 patents - 38% of all patents issued to the University of Pittsburgh that year. The school also welcomed its largest first-year class, enrolling approximately 780 students.

Additional highlights include biomedical engineering at #29 overall (#13 publics), mechanical engineering at #54 (#30 publics), and materials engineering at #50 (#31 publics).

Learn more about graduate and professional studies at the Swanson School.

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Photo: Third-year ECE PhD graduate student researcher Sabrina Helbig in the Swanson School Makerspace. (Tom Altany)

If the sabbatical happens to be abroad, the complexity only increases. How will it be funded? Is it realistic to uproot a family for months, or an entire year? What about language barriers?

Suddenly, an amazing opportunity of taking a semester or an entire year to recharge, uncover new research, rekindle collaborations, conduct new experiments, write, and learn can feel like a burden. 

Yet for those who do take a sabbatical, the experience is deeply rewarding if not life changing. While overseas sabbaticals are complicated, they offer a unique opportunity to forge lasting relationships, engage across cultures, and reimagine one’s research and teaching.

“You might say I’m resistant to change.” 

Harvey Borovetz, Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering, worked at Pitt for 38 years before he took a sabbatical. But when he did, it created connections that continue to flourish to this day and provide unique opportunities for students at Pitt and at Braude College of Engineering in Karmiel, Israel.

In November 2013, after stepping down as department chair, Borovetz and his wife traveled to Israel and visited the college. The following semester, he took a four-month sabbatical and lived in Karmiel, where he taught a course and developed professional relationships that have endured through a global pandemic and the Israel-Hamas War.

For five years after that first visit, Borovetz returned each year to teach. Since Covid and the war, he’s continued annually teaching remotely. Students in the Swanson School have visited Braude for a summer research experience, and their students have come to Pitt, likewise for a research experience. The exchanges are rooted in the trust and familiarity built during his sabbatical.

“For me, the people and relationships matter most,” said Borovetz. “The sabbatical didn’t advance my research per se, but I’ve grown so much as a teacher. Most of my students in Israel speak English as their second language. They’ve served in the military before attending college, and they come to class with a different set of experiences than students I teach at Pitt.

“I’ve had the opportunity to live like a citizen there,” he added. “I’ve been invited into the homes of families whose students I teach and faculty colleagues who I’ve met and have become good friends with over the years. And the relationship between Pitt and Braude continues today because of these strong connections.”

“It’s easy not to do this,” Borovetz said, “but it’s an amazing experience.”

“It jump-started my work”

Like Borovetz, Bopaya Bidanda, Ernest Roth Professor of Industrial Engineering, had never taken a sabbatical. Between chairing the department, teaching, researching, and traveling abroad to forge transdisciplinary collaborations, the time never seemed right.

In the early 2020s, Bidanda was researching “frugal engineering,” an approach rooted in innovation under constrained resources, and wanted to see it in action. For Bidanda, that meant returning to his old home.

In 2023, he applied for and received a Fulbright-Nehru Award to conduct research and promote industrial engineering excellence in Mumbai, India.

“I spent four months there building networks,” said Bidanda. “I organized a PhD colloquium with about 85 students and faculty from across India and assembled a group of scholars from around the world to help new faculty and PhD students develop global research networks.”

“Working in India involves navigating cultural dynamics alongside research. There are incredibly innovative aspects as well as bureaucratic ones,” he added. “Even though I grew up in India, returning to work there after many years was an adjustment. I felt like I was rediscovering an entirely new India.”

This impact of the sabbatical continues to ripple outward, for faculty and students in India, and for Bidanda. The colloquium was so successful that the Fulbright Commission of Sri Lanka has invited him to conduct a similar program in 2026, extending the work he started while in Mumbai.

“There isn’t just one ‘right’ way.”

When Lance Davidson, William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering, began studying epithelial tissues in frogs, he needed new computational models. A colleague overseas, in the Dutch town of Leiden, had developed a model for plant epithelia, and an opportunity to collaborate set in motion a long-overdue sabbatical.

With funding from the Dutch Research Council, Davidson spent January through May 2019 at Leiden University, the oldest surviving university in the Netherlands, embedding himself in a lab of computational biologists.

“I stayed in a house across a canal from one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world,” Davidson said. “I biked everywhere, brought my bike on trains, and connected with colleagues across Europe.”

Davidson participated in PhD committees, exams, and mentoring, gaining a unique window into science and education in the Netherlands. “The Dutch approach differs from ours, but the quality is outstanding,” he said. “It reinforced the idea that there isn’t just one ‘right’ way to train students or conduct research.”

The experience was not without challenges. Davidson’s wife couldn’t join him, and he still ran his lab at Pitt, still advised his PhD students. “It was difficult, and the time difference made for many late nights.”

Yet the experience fueled new research and resulted in a publication with his Dutch collaborator. Today, Davidson is beginning to plan his next sabbatical.

“It was great to have them here.”

From August to December 2025, Nathan Youngblood, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, lived in Heidelberg, Germany, with his wife and two sons. At Heidelberg University, he collaborated with renowned physicist Wolfram Pernice and researchers from across Europe to advance work in optical computing, an emerging field that uses light to process information faster and more efficiently.

“Advancing this technology requires collaboration across disciplines,” Youngblood said. “Many of my European collaborators work in physics, electronics, or materials science. Being able to connect in person, visit their labs, and meet their collaborators was invaluable.”

Bringing his family overseas was logistically challenging, but meaningful. “It was great to have them here,” he said. His sons, ages four and six, learned some German, and the family traveled throughout Europe.

At the same time, fully disconnecting proved difficult. Youngblood continued to direct his Youngblood Photonics Lab at Pitt and advise his large research group. “I wish I had unplugged a bit more,” he said. “Maintaining contact from overseas took up a lot of time.”

“The plan was to start writing a book.”

Aleksandar Stevanovic, associate professor of civil engineering, taught for 18 years before he took a sabbatical. “I never felt it was the right time,” he said. “I was always too busy.”

Last year, Stevanovic, a traffic engineer who researches ways to improve traffic in urban environments, developed a plan to visit colleagues and lay the groundwork for writing a book. His sabbatical was set. But then he received two awards: a Fulbright to spend ten months at the University of Montenegro and a visiting professor scholarship to visit the Technical University of Munich, in Germany.

Instead of planning a book, Stevanovic flew to Podgorica, Montenegro, a city with about 50 traffic signals total, where he has collaborated with faculty and city officials, delivered lectures, and helped the university develop its traffic engineering studies. He’s also been analyzing the city’s infrastructure and traffic to help improve it. 

In Germany, he has collaborated with researchers and his own PhD students to explore the future of transportation in a vastly different context.

While much busier than he’d anticipated, the experience has been hugely illuminating. “I’m bringing a new perspective to these places,” Stevanovic said, “but I’m also learning things that will be useful for my future research. It’s going to trickle down to my students.”

“We called it Disneyland for academics.”

Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and the John A. Swanson Chair of Engineering, traveled to Oxford University in 2001 at the encouragement of a scientist she knew there. Although Balazs didn’t know her that well at the time, the decision would alter the trajectory of her research. 

For Balazs, Oxford was a magical place. Each day at 11:00 a.m., the entire department congregated for teatime. “You were always talking to someone interesting,” Balazs said. “There was just a level of intensity and joy about knowledge.”

During her first sabbatical in England, she brought a postdoctoral researcher. The two would stay in the lab late into the evening. “We were working hard and we’d stop and get kebabs on the way home.”

Balazs investigates polymetric materials and how they interact on surfaces. From her collaborator at Oxford, physicist Julia Yeomans, she learned a new technique that has been invaluable.

“It's called the lattice Boltzmann method, which is used for numerically solving the Navier-Stokes equation. We extended it so that it interacts with soft materials, so you can get the interaction between a soft material and a flowing fluid,” Balazs said. “It's a backbone of what we do today.”

Seven years later, this time with her husband, a computer scientist, she returned. “I think for both of us,” Balazs said, “it changed our lives.”

Beyond the research and opportunities to meet scholars so passionate about their work, she formed a lasting connection. “I made a new friend there, who’s a friend for life, and who gave me a goddaughter.

“Those two years at Oxford were some of the best years of my life,” Balazs added. “They were life changing.”

“Despite the daunting logistics, everything worked out.”

John Keith, associate professor and RK Mellon Faculty Fellow in Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, had been, as he described, “an old-school computational chemist.” Although researchers were increasingly incorporating machine learning into the field, he remained cautiously skeptical.

In 2019, having just received tenure, and with two young sons and a third child on the way, Keith faced a complicated puzzle: funding a sabbatical in Luxembourg with his family for an entire year. In the end, he managed to get the pieces to fit.

Keith joined the research group of Alexandre Tkatchenko at the University of Luxembourg, moving his family abroad just months before Covid upended daily life worldwide. In an unexpected twist, the family even appeared on House Hunters International.

“I joined a top research group,” Keith said. “They had reconciled rigorous computational chemistry with machine learning in a way I respected. It was serious, high-quality science, and I built a strong network there.”

The work culminated in a paper in Chemical Reviews, with Keith as first author.

“I returned supercharged with ideas,” Keith said. “The sabbatical was pivotal. It gave me a foundation for future collaborations, ready to fully embrace machine learning in my research.”

Navigating funding, schooling, housing, and a global pandemic in a foreign country was daunting, but for Keith, like his Pitt colleagues who also ventured overseas on their sabbaticals, the payoff was profound.

“It is a great honor to celebrate Tony and his important contributions to the field and to Pitt," said Michele Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering. "Throughout his impressive 38 years at Boeing, Tony has held numerous positions across the company, including leading the V-22 Osprey, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, and the P-8A Poseidon programs.”

“Over the years, Tony’s Pitt pride has never faded, and he recalls fondly his third year at Pitt, in 1976, when the Panthers won the NCAA Football National Championship," Manuel added. "A  member of Pitt's 1787 Society, Tony was recognized in 2011 as the Distinguished Alumnus for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering."

About Anthony Parasida

Tony Parasida, BSCE ’78, retired from The Boeing Company in 2016 after a 38-year career marked by ever-increasing leadership roles in engineering, program management, and general management. As a composites expert, Tony worked on military helicopter programs early in his career, including on the RAH-66 Comanche and the V-22 Osprey. Through his experience guiding a team of engineers, Tony took on more management responsibilities such as leading the V-22 Osprey, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, and the P-8A Poseidon programs.

Tony also served in general management roles such as Vice President and General Manager of Military Surveillance programs and as President of Global Services and Support, a $15 billion business. Tony completed his career at The Boeing Company as Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resource and Administration Officer.

Tony holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Engineering Management from Drexel University. In 2011, Tony was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering. Recognizing the importance of leaving a lasting legacy, he is a member of the 1787 Society at the University of Pittsburgh and the Spires Society at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.

Tony and his wife, Mariann, have two grown children, both proud graduates of Gonzaga with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting.

“Chuck began his Pitt journey at Pitt Titusville, which didn’t have a computer that ran Fortran programs. Chuck and his classmates would type code into their punchcards and then drive ten miles to Oil City to access a computer,” said Vikas Khanna, Professor and Interim Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “When errors occurred, they had to drive back and forth until everything was correct. The experience instilled in Chuck a commitment to getting it right the first time, which has defined his career.”

“I am grateful to Chuck for his involvement with our IRISE Consortium — the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering research consortium," Khanna added. "When we approached him in 2018, he eagerly signed on and has remained active ever since, helping us solve problems and advance infrastructure in our region.”

About Charles Niederriter 

Charles Niederriter (BSCE ’82) is Chief Operating Officer at Golden Triangle Construction Company. Over the past 40 years at Golden Triangle, he has had the opportunity to help grow a small family-owned heavy / civil construction company from 30 employees to over 350 today, with revenues of over $150M per year. Prior to his role as COO, Niederriter served as Vice President of Construction, General Superintendent, Project Manager, and Project Engineer. Niederriter’s work includes many interstate highway and bridge construction projects in Western Pennsylvania. He has also been involved with almost every airfield reconstruction project at Pittsburgh International Airport over the past 20 years, including the complete replacement of Runway 14/32. Throughout his years completing design and build projects across this region, Niederriter credits his time studying engineering at Pitt as a key to their success.

In 2018, Niederiter was approached by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department in the Swanson School of Engineering to help establish the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) research consortium. He eagerly signed on to the consortium and has remained active ever since. Niederriter shared, “IRISE provides a novel approach for solving infrastructure problems and for promoting innovation by capitalizing on the knowledge and ingenuity of private industry, academia, and owners’ representatives as a team.”

In addition to his contributions to IRISE, Niederriter has served as president of the Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania (2010 – 2011) and of the Associated Pennsylvania Contractors (2019 – 2021). He was also the chairman of the American Concrete Pavement Association Pennsylvania Chapter (2012 – 2017) and of its national chapter (2018).

Niederriter and his wife, Kerry, live in Renfrew, PA. They have three grown children: Evelyn, Andrew, and Mary Kate.

Since 1880, the ESWP has championed engineering excellence throughout Western Pennsylvania. Dedicated to promoting, developing, and supporting engineers and industries around the region, the organization established the Metcalf Award in 1963 to celebrate William Metcalf, a 19^th-century engineer and draftsman at the Fort Pitt Foundry and an expert in steel production who helped transform the Pittsburgh region. 

For Szczur, the award is a great honor, one that he traces back to his childhood. “When I was growing up in Geistown, Pennsylvania, a stretch of Route 219 [a four-lane highway that ran near the borough] was being built. My dad liked to take our family on drives to look at the construction,” Szczur said. “I was fascinated by it all, by the massive earth movers and other machinery.”

At the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Szczur earned his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering Technology in 1984. After graduating, he took a job with PennDOT, in District 10, which comprises Jefferson, Clarion, Butler, Armstrong, and Indiana counties.

“In District 10, I was a highway designer, a highway design squad leader, a permit engineer, a traffic engineer, a maintenance program engineer, and the Assistant District Executive of Design and Construction,” Szczur said.

Working at PennDOT was a dream come true. Szczur never lost his fascination with road construction and traffic engineering, and now he was helping lead projects and innovate how roads are designed. He got to collaborate with the very individuals who, as a boy, he watched moving the earth and pouring concrete. “It was important to talk to the people responsible for the actual construction.”

In 2004, Szczur was appointed District Executive to District 12, which makes up Westmoreland, Washington, Greene, and Fayette counties. He thought it would be a short stint but stayed there until retiring in 2020.

“During my time with PennDOT, I had the fortune to work on so many different projects and collaborate with so many great people across nine counties,” said Szczur, who in 2014 was recognized by the Swanson School as a Distinguished Alumnus. 

“Joe Szczur's career of public service exemplifies what every engineer should strive to achieve,” said Mark Magalotti, research professor of civil and environmental engineering. “He has used his skills in design, construction, maintenance, and research of transportation infrastructure to advance our region's vitality and future. Anyone who has had the privilege of working with him knows that he has done this through his incredible technical and management skills.”

After retiring from PennDOT, Szczur was recruited to the Swanson School as a research faculty member. The same year he retired, he began what he calls his second career. 

Szczur’s years of practical experience and insight have been a tremendous resource for faculty and students alike. So has his ability to collaborate with regional stakeholders. Szczur directs Pitt’s Center for Sustainable Transportation and the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) consortium, two organizations that work with agencies and partners to innovate and develop sustainable roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure.

“Joe is a recognized leader in transportation innovation,” said Julie Vandenbossche, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the department’s Associate Chair of Research. “After spearheading many forward-thinking, award-winning initiatives at PennDOT, we were fortunate to have Joe join us as the director of IRISE. His leadership has been instrumental in uniting the public sector, private industry, and academia to develop and deploy technology that enhances the resilience and durability of our transportation infrastructure.”

“Joe has been an invaluable addition to our department, the Swanson School, and the Pitt community,” said Vikas Khanna, professor and interim department chair of civil and environmental engineering. “The impact he has had on our region and our program here at Pitt cannot be overstated. His work embodies the innovation and dedication that the Metcalf Award celebrates.”

“Joe is a valued colleague and friend,” added Daniel Cessna, President of CDR Maguire Engineering. “He has always set a high standard and pushed his team and industry to strive for great things. This is a fitting honor for Joe’s significant contributions to the transportation industry in Pennsylvania.”

ESWP will honor Szczur and other remarkable engineers and engineering projects at its annual award banquet on March 19, 2026, at the Westin Hotel in Pittsburgh.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined receiving this award. It’s humbling to be named among all these incredible recipients,” Szczur said. “You know, 60 years ago, I’m playing road construction with Tonka trucks in a patch of dirt by my parents’ backyard. Who knew?”

Joe credits his wonderful wife, Lisa, his three adult children and their spouses, and his four grandchildren for helping to shape his life and career, following in his parents’ footsteps that family is the foundation to life.

Two University of Pittsburgh engineers are tackling this challenge to provide a nationwide infrastructure solution. Lev Khazanovich and Julie Vandenbossche secured a highly competitive $600,000, three-year grant from the National Academies' National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) to pinpoint the root causes of longitudinal cracking and create predictive models for integration into design software.

The project, “Development of Longitudinal Cracking Models for Concrete Pavements,” will improve how engineers and planners across the country design roads and predict their performance.

“For thousands of years, all great civilizations have built great roads, and the U.S. interstate system is an engineering miracle,” said Khazanovich, the Anthony Gill Chair Professor in the Swanson School of Engineering Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and principal investigator for this project. “However, political, budgetary, and labor constraints affect how roads are designed and how long they last.”

“Roads are designed to perform for a pre-determined period of time,” said Vandenbossche, professor of civil engineering, Associate Chair of Research, and co-principal investigator. “When they fail too soon or last too long, it skews the lifecycle cost analysis used for selecting the most cost-effective design. An accurate prediction of the performance life is imperative for these lifecycle cost analyses to be accurate.”

An overlooked road failure

Longitudinal cracking occurs on jointed plain concrete pavements (JPCP) that are commonly used on roads and interstates. These cracks can form from poor construction, weather, and heavy loads.

To improve how roads are built and to better predict their lifespans, engineers have developed mechanistic-empirical design models, which incorporate principles based on physics and engineering as well as vast amounts of data collected during testing and observation. Although these models have evolved to meet 21^st-century demands and reduce environmental impact, the current version of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) pavement mechanistic-empirical design (PMED) software does not account for longitudinal cracking in the design of original concrete pavements.

“On the modeling side, there has been a greater focus on more prevalent failure modes,” said Vandenbossche, “but in focusing on some modes and neglecting others, longitudinal cracking has become more common.”

Expanding the model

To improve the model and design software, which is used nationwide, Khazanovich and Vandenbossche will conduct a thorough analysis to identify the causes of longitudinal cracking. In addition to reviewing the existing literature, models, documentation, and databases, they will survey transportation officials from across the country and will also identify and research stretches of road experiencing longitudinal cracking.

From their findings, the team will develop and test mechanistic-empirical models that predict this persistent failure mode. These models will be compatible with the PMED software so they can be easily implemented into it, improving a tool vital to road engineering.  

“This project builds off our previous work to improve how pavements are designed, so that we can develop safer, more efficient roads,” said Khazanovich. “We’re honored to receive this competitive award from the National Academies of Science.”

“Billions of dollars are invested in our roads,” said Vandenbossche, “and this research will provide a better tool to achieve the best investment. It’s a great opportunity for the U.S. to account for this neglected failure mode and to advance a national design procedure.”

Lei Fang, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has received a three-year, $372,882 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, his third in three years, to use data analysis and machine learning to reveal subtle behaviors in turbulence that today’s models miss.

The project “CDS&E: Uncovering Self-Competition and Weak Asymmetry in Turbulence through Data-Enabled Diagnostics and Learning,” will help strengthen large-eddy simulation (LES), a widely used approach for modeling turbulence in engineering and the geosciences.

“Although Kolmogorov proposed his foundational theory of turbulence [K41] in 1941, and numerous refinements have been introduced over the past century, our understanding of turbulence remains rudimentary,” said Fang, the principal investigator. “With advances in machine learning and data mining, we can develop algorithms and graphical neural networks that uncover the physics and build better models.”

Inside the chaos: hidden patterns

Fang’s project focuses on two defining features of turbulent flows: self-competition and weak asymmetry. In self-competition, advection, the very mechanism responsible for transferring energy between eddies of different sizes, acts to dampen that same transfer process.

A useful analogy is a crowded highway. When traffic flows smoothly, motion is efficiently transmitted downstream. But as vehicles begin accelerating, braking, and weaving too aggressively, their very efforts to move forward generate congestion that slows everyone down. The mechanism that enables transport ultimately undermines it.

In turbulence, advection behaves in a similar way: when it becomes sufficiently strong, it disrupts the coherent pathways needed for sustained energy transfer across scales. The flow, in effect, competes with itself.

Weak asymmetry refers to a slight imbalance in how energy transfers across scales. The mental image is that large swirls often break into smaller ones, but smaller swirls can also merge into larger structures. While the process occurs simultaneously, one direction will be slightly stronger than the other. Though a weak asymmetry, the difference is important.  

“Current modeling fails to sufficiently capture what may seem counterintuitive within turbulent flows,” said Fang. “They don’t clearly identify where, when, or why self-competition and weak asymmetry arise, which limits our understanding.”

To bridge that gap, Fang will analyze high-resolution simulations from the Johns Hopkins Turbulence Database alongside controlled experiments from his own lab. He will use machine learning to develop new diagnostics that uncover these patterns. He will create predictive models to advance how simulation accounts for the physical constraints within flows.

Beyond improving simulation in weather forecasting, climate modeling, and engineering design, the project will increase understanding of fluid mechanics and create a framework that helps researchers in other fields involving complex, multiscale dynamics.

The detailed design manual draws on the expertise of four international authors from academia and industry. They are all members of the INBAR Bamboo Construction Task Force (BCTF), one of the leading international bodies on the structural uses of bamboo:

• Dr David Trujillo CEng, Assistant Professor in Humanitarian Engineering, School of Engineering at the University of Warwick;
• Kent Harries PhD, FASCE, FACI, FIIFC, PEng, Professor of Structural Engineering and Mechanics, University of Pittsburgh;
• Sebastian Kaminski CEng, an IStructE Fellow and a structural engineer from consulting firm Arup;
• and Engr. Luis Felipe Lopez CEng, General Manager of the Base Bahay Foundation Inc. (BASE), which is a guide sponsor with the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR).

Manual for the design of bamboo structures to ISO 22156:2021 aims to help structural engineers and other architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professionals understand how this prolific bio-based material can be used safely, with the ISO standard and the manual limited to two-storeys because of fire concerns.

Lead author Dr David Trujillio, University of Warwick says: “This manual marks a significant milestone for the safe use of bamboo for permanent structures. Most structural design codes are developed in higher-income countries to address their own needs. Only later are they adopted or adapted by lower and middle-income countries – but the starting point is never the needs of those regions.

Professor Kent Harries, University of Pittsburgh adds: “There are some 1,600 known species of bamboo. Structurally, it has remarkable mechanical properties. It has also become a very promising bio-based resource, with growing credentials as a sustainable construction material. Nonetheless, this is hugely dependent on designing and building safe and durable structures. Our detailed manual helps to achieve this.”

Sebastian Kaminski, Arup explains: “Bamboo has great potential to contribute to a low-carbon construction sector. Bamboo engineering is a very young field compared to mainstream materials and its unique possibilities are increasingly recognised and supported by growing research and innovation. Our manual is structured to support the design engineer along the journey, from sourcing bamboo to detailed design.”

Luis Felipe Lopez, Base Bahay highlights: “The construction industry contributes nearly 40% of carbon emissions globally, and bamboo, a regenerative and durable material, is redefining how we build our structures. From being an alternative to a reliable building material, bamboo is now gaining global recognition, and the need for a comprehensive framework is essential to support design engineers and ensure the safe and proper use of bamboo in the built environment, maximising its full potential and environmental advantages.

Kewei Liu, Coordinator of the INBAR Global Bamboo Construction Programme, mentions: “The publication of this guide is of great significance in promoting the application of the current ISO 22156:2021 standard, which has been the most widely accepted international bamboo standard since the 2000s. The authors have made a remarkable contribution to the global use of bamboo construction.”

Bamboo is native to all continents apart from Antarctica and Europe, although numerous species successfully thrive across Europe. Its lifecycle makes it an attractive resource in the context of tackling the global climate emergency, as like trees it fixes carbon in its leaves, stem, roots and surrounding soil. Bamboo’s harvest does not disturb the stored carbon in the soil.

Alongside the four leading authors, the manual was also reviewed by eleven expert reviewers. It has ten chapters covering a wide range of topics including the bamboo supply chain; bamboo project management; grading and mechanical characteristics of bamboo; analysis of bamboo structures; seismic and wind hazard design using bamboo; element and connection design; durability; bamboo structural shear walls; and worked examples of bamboo’s structural use in real-life examples.

Dr David Trujillo, University of Warwick concludes: “The guide is published in the wake of the tragic Hong Kong tower block fires. We share condolences for all those impacted, and await the outcome of investigations as we cannot comment until all the facts are in. However general risk management principles advocate a risk assessment and consideration of use of flame-retardant materials on high rise and closely spaced buildings, along with fire detection and suppression.

“Importantly, and given the wide use of bamboo, this guide sets out provisions for its safe use, including for fire, covering permanent buildings and not scaffolding. Our aim is for this to be a must-use resource for the structural engineer already working with bamboo or considering its use. We also hope it will be a trusted resource for colleagues across the built environment globally, whether in industry or academia.”

“The Design Expo is a unique opportunity for our students to gain real-world experience solving industry problems,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Students are learning important skills that extend beyond developing their technical abilities. They’re working as a team and thinking creatively. They’re using their hands and innovating. I’m grateful for everyone—from faculty and staff to industry partners and volunteer judges, and of course our students—who make this amazing event happen.”

An integral aspect of the Design Expo is mentoring and collaboration across faculty and disciplines. Pitt alumni, faculty, and industry volunteers judged the event, engaging with the teams and sharing ideas and experience. Faculty and other Pitt schools as well government agencies, nonprofits, and industry sponsored teams as well, providing valuable insight while students developed their projects.

Winners below. Visit Flickr for the Expo Photo Album.

Best Overall Project
GaN Motor Controller 
Fredrick Laudati, Connor Watson, and Joseph Zaradzki

People’s Choice Award
Adaptive Assist Robotic Joint 
Elizabeth Novikova, Julia Koma, and Jillian Zitcovich

DEPARTMENT AWARDS

Bioengineering

1^st Place E-Z CVC: Improving Ultrasound-Guided Central Line Placement
Tristyn Auth, Alexis DiNapoli, Colin Henchy Tyler Johnston, Abrahim Kashkoush, Phillip Lavrenyuk, and Trin Murphy

2^nd Place High Frequency Oscillatory Ventilation Chest Wiggle Detection Device
Isabella Hsia, Isabelle Lisi, Connor Rees, and Jaiden Steele

3^rd Place Streamlining Transabdominal Ultrasound-Guided Oocyte Extraction Process
Sydney Barber, Ashlyn Odenwald, Ishan Patel, Arshia Shams, Colby Shores, Astrid Yerardi, and Lyric Zimmermann

Civil and Environmental Engineering

1^st Place (tie)
Oakdale Pump Station
Anna Abelev, Owen Gaskill, Patrick Lovenguth, and David Nisula

Clearwell Replacement
Marie Flinchbaugh, Lily Leh, Jack Schlegel, and Julianna Sergi

2^nd Place ALCOSAN Primary Sedimentation Basin
Quincey Kilbridge, Julia Resch, and Sameer Ul Haque M Sayed

Electrical and Computer Engineering

1^st Place GaN Motor Controller
Fredrick Laudati, Connor Watson, and Joseph Zaradzki

2^nd Place VR Tremor Assessment System During MRgFUS
Colton Tamburri, Aidan Uher, and Noble Woodall

3^rd Place Paint the Canvas
Connor Marsh, William Muckelroy, Connor Murray, and Greg Soltys

Industrial Engineering

1^st Place Enhancing Productivity with 5S Solutions for Tooling and Calibration Management
Alison Bergkoetter, Christos Mavrogeorgis, Maiah Ruby, and Rylee Shaffer

2^nd Place Steel Coil Transfer Optimization Using SIMIO
Jake Johnson, Alison Ngau, Morgan Powers, and Henry Veltum

3^rd Place Project Centargo: Enhancing Bayer’s Injector Line Production for Optimum Efficiency 
Cameron Case, Tara Nguyen, Ethan Snyder, and Jason Wiedmann

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

1^st Place Remote Control Vehicle for Use in Contaminated Environments
Sebastian Carre Jordan, Jacob Korus, Caelin Langton, Angus Nicholson, and John Profozich

2^nd Place Advanced Head and Neck Support System for Patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DoC)
Owen Bishop, Jared Kartschoke, Aishani Ramoju, Randy Saintjean, and Rachel Thomas

3^rd Place Functional Requirements for Thermal Fatigue and Additive Manufacturing
Tanay Agrawal, Ethan Kinyon, Dylan Noker, and Gabriel Warriner

Medical Product Prototyping

1^st Place Perfect Pessary
Francesca Chioda, Karla Frank, Kyla Frenja, Angelina Pribozie, and Jace Statam

2^nd Place MicroTymp
Saif Abbas, Mateen Atassi, Bharath Ramineni, and Peter Wood

Product Realization 

1^st Place Canales Cleaning Device
Josh Lee, Mike Lee, Kyla Frenja, Adam Price, and Sophia Roa

Through the Plus3 Transfer Plus Program, students explore the intersections of engineering, technology, and society in the Czech Republic. Thanks to renewed scholarship support from the Maiorana Trust of the Nationality Rooms & Intercultural Exchange Programs, 15 scholarships, each worth up to $3,500, will be available for 2026 participants in the two-week, three-credit program. 

“Even though we design our programs to be as cost-effective as possible, airfare and travel costs can still be barriers,” said Alicia Olalde, director of Global Experiences and Engagement at the Swanson School. “Having dedicated scholarship funding for this program helps us ensure that more of our students have access to global learning opportunities.”

The program immerses students in the engineering, cultural, and historical context of Prague, and highlights industrial ties between the Czech Republic and Pittsburgh. Led by Mary Besterfield-Sacre, senior associate dean for academic affairs and director of the Engineering Education Research Center, the program features a mix of company and university visits along with cultural excursions, including stops at the Bohemian Innovation Center, automobile manufacturer Škoda, historic sites such as Terezín and Kutná Hora, and visits to silver mines, cathedrals, power plants, and more. 

“Sometimes you can’t see how engineering impacts societies unless you’re looking at it from a perspective that’s not usual to you.” Besterfield-Sacre said. “When you’re born and raised in Pennsylvania, you can get used to certain things, but when you look at engineering as an outsider, you can pick up on insights you might have missed before, which is fundamentally why we bring these students abroad.” 

14 Swanson School students were awarded Nationality Room scholarships from the Maiorana Foundation for the summer 2025 program. For third-year bioengineering student Amaris Mbuagbaw, who traveled to Prague with the program last summer, the experience deepened her understanding of global research and collaboration. Even with visits to the International Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry and learning about cancer research in the Czech Republic, Mbuagbaw found that one of the strengths of the program was its interdisciplinary nature. 

“Initially, I thought I would learn more about bioengineering, but my final paper was actually more focused on civil and environmental engineering.” Mbuagbaw said. “Going on this trip, you can really think outside the box and invest your time into learning different things that are technically not in your field of study.” 

Unlike other SSOE Plus3 programs for first-year students, this program is open to SSOE sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and priority acceptance is given to students who have transferred into the school. Scholarship applications are open until December 1, 2025, and the complete program application is due January 28th, 2026. 

“I think being a responsible engineer today means developing a global perspective,” Olalde said. “Engineering solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all—the right answer in Pittsburgh may look very different in West Virginia, South Africa, or the Czech Republic. You have to design with context in mind, and there’s no better way to learn that than through experiential opportunities like Plus3.

Don’t have a passport? The Swanson School’s Global Experiences and Engagement Office is offering a passport raffle to support first-time U.S. passport applicants, funded through generous alumni donations. Eligible students must be U.S. citizens who have never held a passport and are graduating after 2027. Winners will receive reimbursement of application and execution fees (up to $165) upon submitting proof of application by January 31, 2026. The raffle closes on Wednesday, November 19 at midnight, with winners announced the following day. Apply now!

Bilec, who co-directs the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and serves as Special Assistant to the Provost for Sustainability, previously held the title of George M. and Eva M. Bevier Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on sustainability and how the built environment and healthcare can help solve climate change.

"Professor Bilec’s research and leadership continue to redefine how we think about sustainability in the built environment,” said Vikas Khanna, professor and interim chair of civil and environmental engineering. “As the Bevier Endowed Chair, she will further advance innovations that connect people, planet, and infrastructure—helping position Pitt as a leader in sustainable engineering solutions for the future.”

“I am so honored to receive this distinguished appointment,” said Bilec. “I am grateful for Chancellor Gabel’s recognition and for all the support from my colleagues across the Swanson School and Pitt. I am excited to continue advancing the important work of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and helping prepare the next generation of engineers to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world.”                   

The Bevier Estate at Pitt funds the endowed chair position in honor of George M. Bevier (BS 1913), who served in World War I in the Department of Military Aeronautics and whose contributions in geology and seismology helped advance industries. Bevier received an honorary Doctor of Science in 1937 from Pitt, and the Swanson School named its library in his honor and recognized Bevier as a Distinguished Alumnus in 1964.

“I am elated that Melissa is receiving this well-deserved honor,” said Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “Her scholarship, commitment to our faculty, staff, and students, and leadership through the Mascaro Center continue to make a tremendous difference to the Pitt community and beyond.”

The transdisciplinary project, “Wireless Metamaterial Interbody Cage for Real-Time Assessment of Lumbar Spinal Fusion In Vivo,” could make spinal fusion recovery safer by allowing doctors to track progress remotely and intervene before complications arise.

Each year, as many as a million Americans undergo spinal fusion surgery, which uses a metal cage and a bone graft to fuse two spinal vertebrae, with screws and brackets holding these bones in place.

“After implanting the hardware, we monitor it using X-rays and symptoms presented by the patient,” said Agarwal, co-principal investigator and associate professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery School of Medicine with a secondary appointment in the Department of Bioengineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering. “This means patients have to make in-person visits and subject themselves to radiation.”

Since doctors and patients cannot easily monitor the spine as it heals, it’s not a connected health care experience, explained Agarwal, who also directs Minimally Invasive Spine and Robotic Surgery at UPMC.

While implantable wireless devices that monitor medical procedures are becoming more common and could help allay these issues, the devices require batteries and an electronic component to transmit signals, making them impermanent.

Alavi, principal investigator and an associate professor and B.P. America Faculty Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, turned to an unexpected place to find a better solution: technology he helped develop to monitor bridge infrastructure.

As a PhD student, Alavi created sensors that produce their own power and send signals indicating changes in the physical properties of bridges. These sensors alert officials to structural weaknesses before more serious damage develops. Alavi thought that the technology could be adapted to work in a patient’s spine.

“No batteries, no antennas, no electronics in vivo—no worries!” said Alavi, who also directs the Intelligent Structures and Architected Materials Research and Testing (ISMART) Lab. “By blending metamaterial design with nano-energy harvesting, we create fully battery-free, electronics-free implants that power themselves through contact electrification. They adapt to each patient and wirelessly transmit signals like a mini router inside the body.”

Using new, human-developed composites known as metamaterials, Alavi’s team has created structures consisting of different sized unit cells. By interweaving conductive and non-conductive materials, they can optimize these structures to harvest energy and transmit signals when pressure is applied to them.

From bridges to the back

In 2023, Alavi and Agarwal began a seemingly unlikely collaboration that integrated this technology in medical implants. The promise of their research is outlined in the Materials Today article “Wireless electronic-free mechanical metamaterial implants.”

“We’re creating cages for spinal fusion surgery that, like human cells, have a natural, built-in intelligence,” said Alavi.

These cages are set between two vertebrae and provide stability while also monitoring the healing process.

“If the spine is healing, the bone starts carrying more of the load and the implant’s self-generated signal naturally drops,” Alavi noted. “Right after surgery, the signal is stronger because the vertebral endplates press harder on the cage, so it generates more energy.”

The signals are received through an electrode on the patient’s back and transmitted to the cloud, where the signals can be interpreted in real time, allowing for medical intervention before more serious damage occurs.

Alavi also turned to generative AI to generate metamaterial designs unique to each patient’s spine, dramatically accelerating the process.

“We can scan the patient’s spine and then design and print the cage to fit perfectly. There are different types of porous, patient-specific cages in the market, but ours is a metamaterial system with full control over stiffness and, more importantly, the ability to generate its own power, which we use not only for monitoring but are now working to apply for electrical stimulation as well.”

Alavi and Agarwal have tested the cages in vitro, and the technology works. With NIH support, the team will conduct in vivo testing using animal models. “If it works,” said Agarwal, “then the next step is human testing.”

He added, “By blending the clinical and the bench expertise, we have a better chance of translating the science into patient use, improving safety and outcomes while creating more connected health care.”

This past spring, after teaching his last class as an associate professor, Casson retired. With his wife and their Airstream travel trailer, he hit the road, heading north into Canada. But his many years at Pitt have left an indelible mark on him, and Casson plans to continue promoting an engineering education.

The way my brain works

Engineering always came naturally to Casson. His father was a civil engineer in New Port Richey, Florida, where Casson grew up.

“Working for my father’s company, I did some surveying and knew I would be an engineer,” he said. “It’s just the way my brain works, whether I’m organizing a closet, planning a trip, or researching wastewater removal.” 

Casson earned his BE in Civil Engineering and his MS in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from Vanderbilt University. At the University of Texas at Austin, he received his PhD in Civil Engineering.   

What happened next was serendipity. Chuck Sorber, associate dean at the University of Texas at Austin College of Engineering, was headed to Pitt to serve as Dean of the School of Engineering. He recruited Casson to join him.

Casson has never regretted the decision to follow Sorber to Pittsburgh. As he said, “It’s been great to influence young engineers and to teach them and do something so worthwhile.”

Making an impact

“What I especially liked about being at Pitt was the opportunity to work with Dr. Karl Lewis,” Casson said. “Karl developed the IMPACT program [now EXCEL], helping underrepresented students come to Pitt and succeed.

“Karl was also a civil engineer, and working with him on the program he started was one of the most important things I could do in my small part. I could help students. That tradition and history of caring for people is what kept me at Pitt.”

Among many advisor roles, Casson served as Graduate and Undergraduate Coordinator for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “The best part of that job,” he said, “was helping students graduate and achieve their career goals.”

Casson’s approach to teaching and advising has inspired countless students, like Isaiah Spencer, who earned his BS, MS, and PhD in civil and environmental engineering at Pitt and who is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Water and the Environment.

“Dr. Casson was (and still is) a mentor to me, all the way from my start at Pitt through my PhD studies. He is one of the reasons I became absolutely fascinated with water disinfection,” said Spencer.

“What struck me about Dr. Casson was the time he spent holistically mentoring me and providing opportunities to develop and enhance the skills needed to succeed in the field,” he added. “I will always be grateful for him, and I look forward to doing my part in carrying the torch of disinfection and water treatment forward.”

A dinosaur of disinfection

“My research has been at the interface of biology, microbiology, and processes,” said Casson. “If I had to cast myself in one light, it would be as a disinfection person. In fact, at a conference, a student once joked that I was ‘one of the dinosaurs of disinfection.’”

Soon after coming to Pitt, Casson conducted research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) into the survivability of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in wastewater. For another NSF-funded project, he researched the presence of Ebola in wastewater and different techniques of disinfecting it.

In 2008, Casson received a secondary appointment in Pitt’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in the Graduate School of Public Health. 

He was recognized as a Water Hero for his extensive work on the Disinfection Committee at the Water Environment Federation, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting public health, water quality, and the environment. 

“If you do enough work for the Disinfection Committee, you get a golden toilet seat. I put mine up in the back of my office,” Casson noted. “It confused some students.”

The Yellow Submarine

The Cassons’ daughter is a doctor of audiology in Indiana, and their son a TOPGUN pilot for the U.S. Navy. In 2022, their son was stationed in California. To visit their children and grandchildren, the Cassons bought an Airstream travel trailer, named it the Yellow Submarine, and hit the road. 

Since 2022, they have crossed America twice. This summer, to kick off retirement, the Cassons set out again, into Canada, visiting places like Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Casson’s wife, Susan, documents their travels in her Yellow Submarine Adventures blog.

“I’m in retirement transition now,” Casson said. “I hope to get back to fishing and golfing.”

But he also plans to keep promoting an engineering education. “I’m an ABET commissioner, a team chair, and a program evaluator, so I get to visit other schools and engage with their programs,” Casson said. “It keeps me professionally active and allows me to give back to the profession.” 

For Casson, it’s all about giving back and helping students excel. As he said, “That’s the goal of teaching, empowering others to achieve more than you achieved.”

Yet for all their potential to punch above their weight and even alter currents, these tiny swimmers and the dynamics of their movement have been largely overlooked in ocean and climate modeling. Lei Fang, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, is helping to change that.  

Fang has received a $325,089 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, his second in just over a year, to investigate the mechanics of swarms of small swimmers and their ability to generate kinetic energy. The grant, “Aggregation Scale Eddy Generation During Collective Active Particle Migration: Spectral Energy Flux, Mechanisms, and Impact on Mixing Efficiency,” seeks to improve predictions of ocean behavior and increase understanding of marine and atmospheric dynamics. 

“Animals in the ocean contain a lot of energy that can mix up nutrients and move colder water to the surface,” said Fang. “Based on observational data, if only one percent of their chemical energy is converted to kinetic energy, it creates a force comparable to wind or ocean currents.”

It’s easy to see how larger fish generate energy. However, the organisms that many of these fish feed on, like some plankton or krill, which can be between one millimeter and one centimeter in size, are too small to seemingly make a difference.

“While a few small swimmers alone can’t generate enough energy, a ball of them moving together could produce a group-scale eddy of up to a few meters. They could potentially create as much mixing as larger animals.”

For organisms that have a diurnal cycle, moving from the bottom of the ocean to the surface each day, a swarm that produces group-scale eddies could affect ocean temperatures by bringing colder water and nutrients closer to the surface.

“If some animals can mix up the ocean while others can’t, that changes the global climate model,” said Fang. “And the extent to which animals large and small can mix up nutrients and alter currents affects these models. Understanding how small swimmers generate energy and how that energy fluxes, or flows, allows us to improve climate modeling.”

Fang, who recently rewired the energy pathways of turbulence, will analyze the energy flux that swarms of small swimmers can produce. At the three-dimensional scale like in the ocean or the atmosphere, energy generically fluxes from large eddies to smaller ones until the energy dissipates. However, Fang has validated a novel framework that challenges long-held predictions about flow structures.

He will continue to research flow structures while investigating the mechanics and the mixing efficiency of small swimmers at the 3D scale. He will conduct tests of these organisms in a vertical migration tank using multi-camera stereo imaging to image a location and reconstruct the 3D velocity fields around them. He will then use a filter space technique to identify the direction that energy fluxes.

While helping improve long-term ocean forecasting models and shedding new light on systems with interactions involving many bodies and fluid structures, the research could potentially have far-reaching effects in areas as varied as aerodynamics and wastewater treatment.   

And it might just give little swimmers their due for doing their part in stirring up nutrients and altering ocean currents.

This forward transfer of energy in three-dimensional bodies such as oceans or the air has been a foundational theory for decades, but that is changing. The University of Pittsburgh Professor Lei Fang and his PhD student Xinyu Si, with Filippo De Lillo and Guido Boffetta from the University of Turin, have challenged the assumption. Using a geometric framework, they have shown, via experiments and simulations, that energy flux direction is in fact mutable.

Their research, which can have far-reaching effects in fields such as medicine, coastal waterway management, and climate modeling, is detailed in the article “Manipulating the direction of turbulent energy flux via tensor geometry in a two-dimensional flow” (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adv0956), published in Science Advances.

Challenging a long-held assumption

“Since 1941, with Andrey Kolmogorov’s research, energy flux has been predicted. In 3D flows like in bodies of water, energy moves from larger to smaller scales. For 2D flows, which occur in thin layers of water, that flux is reversed, from smaller to larger,” said Fang, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering.

“To understand this abstract concept at different scales,” Fang added, “I recast the energy flux process into a mechanical process based on Navier-Stokes equations. And since this is a mechanical process, I could try to reverse it by changing the geometry between displacement and force.”

Fang developed a geometric framework using tensors (objects mathematicians use to explore, for example, the direction of stress and deformation, which create turbulence). He found that depending on how the tensors aligned, they could flux energy in different ways depending on how the forces come into contact.

“We showed that we could produce turbulent flows that either exhibit forward or inverse energy flux,” Fang said. “Our framework extends to the 3D scale as well.”

In previous research, Fang showed how tiny swimmers can disrupt strong ocean flows. Now, by focusing on the background flow and its interaction with other forces, like a group of tiny swimmers, he found that if correctly aligned, they can flux energy in different ways depending on how the forces come into contact.

Fang and Si validated their framework using a thin-layer, electromagnetically driven flow apparatus. In a tank with shallow water depth, they generated a horizontal magnetic field that drives a 2D flow. To perturb the flow, they used a rod array. In a thin layer of electrolytes, tracer particles produced images of the flow’s movement.

Harnessing energy flux

“Through this theoretical framework, we found that we can use small physical boundaries up to ten meters to perturb ocean transport barriers that spans kilometers,” said Fang. “It is possible to change the direction of the energy flux, which can improve how wastewater or other contaminants along a coastline are dispersed.”

Beyond coastal transport barrier management, the research can be used in medicine. “In microfluidic flows of less than one millimeter, where the viscosity of a liquid makes mixing difficult because there is little to no turbulence,” added Fang, “we could align the forces and displacement to generate weak ‘low Reynolds number turbulence,’ which could speed up mixing of agents.” 

The research also has the potential to advance how scientists model ocean currents and temperatures in a changing climate.

“While it’s hypothetical at this point, the research could improve climate modeling,” said Fang. “As climate change alters wind patterns and ocean flows, wind stress and currents could change the direction of energy flux. Understanding the forces that create this change can lead to more accurate models.”

Through a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Award, Molari, an associate professor of structural mechanics, has been on the Pitt campus collaborating with Harries, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The researchers are sharing extensive experience and insight to advance and standardize a material that can help provide sustainable, affordable housing worldwide. 

Shared interest in the potential of bamboo

“There are a billion people on the planet in informal housing, and as many as a quarter of a billion to a billion people who will likely be displaced due to rising sea levels in the next ten to fifty years,” said Harries.

“On island nations that can’t produce their own concrete, or in places like India, where deforestation has led to a ban on timber construction,” he added, “bamboo could be a potential homegrown opportunity to supplement the construction.”

Phyllostachys edulis (moso) and Guadua angustifolia, bamboo varieties with thicker culms (or stalks), are especially well suited for construction and indeed have been used as such for thousands of years.

“There’s a large fiber content at the outside of the skin, which is high in silica, making it robust and hard to cut through,” Harries said. “Nature got it right. You couldn’t do better.”

These strong bamboo varieties grow fast and can be harvested within three to five years. They also effectively sequester carbon dioxide, helping reduce greenhouse gasses.

“It’s very optimized,” said Molari of the plant she has been studying for the past seven years. She focuses on a different species of Phyllostachys, which grows in Italy and has a smaller diameter than its subtropical counterparts.

In addition to her many articles about the plant, including about its promise in Europe, Molari has helped write the Italian standards on bamboo. 

Harries’ interest in bamboo dates to 2006, when he recruited Bhavna Sharma (CEE PhD ’10) to the Swanson School’s PhD program. Sharma, a professor at USC’s School of Architecture and a leader in engineered bamboo and seismic research, wanted to study the performance of bamboo structures in Northeast India. 

In 2016, Harries received a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant to research bamboo’s potential as a building material in Puerto Rico. He has also written and helped revise the international standards for determining the physical and mechanical properties of bamboo culms.

Harries has made the case for bamboo right here in Pittsburgh and has written extensively about it, including the 2025 article “Adoption of full-culm bamboo as a structural material” (DOI: 10.1038/s44296-025-00050-2).

A transatlantic collaboration comes to Pittsburgh

Molari and Harries were invited to attend the July 2023 International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems, and Structures (RILEM) conference in Rio de Janeiro and began a collaboration that has crossed time zones and continents.

“We’re both structural engineers with a materials science focus, applying fundamental mechanics to a neat product,” Harries said. “We know it works, but we need to translate it to something the engineering community can hang its hat on.”

Together, they helped form a RILEM Technical Committee to improve bamboo characterization and to promote the common language for its research and standardization.

In December 2024, their paper “Mechanical characterisation of bamboo for construction: the state-of-practice and future prospects” (DOI: 10.21809/rilemtechlett.2023.188) was published in RILEM Technical Letters. They assess the current state of bamboo standardization and methods for testing it. They also chart the RILEM Technical Committee’s path forward.

The energy around their collaborative work and shared interests inspired Molari to reach out to Harries and then apply for the Fulbright Visiting Scholar. The award, which recognizes the unique power of collaboration across cultures, was founded in 1946 by the U.S. Congress in the aftermath of World War II.

Molari received the Fulbright and at the end of May, with her family, flew to Pittsburgh, where they are staying with a host family through September. While her children use Snapchat to organize soccer matches with kids in the neighborhood, Molari collaborates with Harries. 

“We’re modeling the behavior of beams made from multiple bamboo culms,” said Molari. “In Italy, with the thinner bamboo, we need to bundle culms to make them stronger. It’s important to show what’s possible.”

In addition to modeling the full-culm bamboo, Harries and Molari are developing a RILEM report and working to improve test methods, an effort that will, as Harries noted, “impact the next version of the ISO [International Organization for Standardization] standards. There is real impact in collaborations like this one.”

Harries added, “By appreciating the engineering cultures in different countries, learning about the different codes… and engaging across academic cultures, we can see our work more clearly.”

Beyond modeling and writing about bamboo, Harries and Molari are building more connections. They are collaborating with Virginia Technical University on a project that could lead to research opportunities for students in Ecuador.

With Molari’s family, the two researchers traveled to Blacksburg to visit the Virginia Tech campus and meet with colleagues who share their interest in bamboo. “To kick off projects and establish relationships,” said Harries, “in a post-Covid world, nothing beats personal interaction”

“When you can meet someone in person, it changes how you approach your research,” Molari said. “It makes things easier.” 

Save the date: Luisa Molari will present her research “Structural Potential of Bamboo: Challenges and Opportunities” on Friday, September 19,  at 10:00 - 10:50 a.m. in 319 Benedum Hall.

Curtis majored in environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, but he is equally fascinated with languages, especially Japanese, which he began studying in high school. “It’s so different, linguistically, from English, and I took as many Japanese courses at Pitt as my schedule allowed,” Curtis said.

Although he received the George Washington Prize and graduated from the Swanson School of Engineering in 2024 with a 3.98 grade point average, Curtis had no intentions of attending graduate school. An internship and the possibility of studying abroad helped change that, and Curtis recently received a prestigious Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) Scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in Sustainability Sciences at the University of Tokyo. In the fall, he will immerse himself in Japanese culture and research how to ensure disaster management plans benefit all people involved.

They seemed the happiest

In 2019, when Curtis toured colleges and universities, he was always careful to talk to the engineering students and ask about their impressions of the program. While these students spoke well of their respective schools, he sensed something unique at Pitt. As he said, “The students here genuinely seemed the happiest.”

Curtis enrolled and weathered the Covid year online. When classes resumed in person, he thrived. He earned straight As and became active in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) IDEA committee, an organization that builds community so all students and faculty can excel.

As Curtis developed as an engineer and as an active member of the Swanson School, he didn’t lose his love of language. During his sophomore year, he interviewed with Pitt’s Japanese department and began studying the language at the third-year level.

During his final year, Curtis completed his senior design project that focused on improving energy efficiency in older and historic Pittsburgh homes by replacing appliances and sealing openings. The project would provide a perfect jumping off point after earning his degree.

Envisioning a more sustainable future for all

After graduating from Pitt, Curtis interned at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), a nonprofit research organization working for a cleaner, more sustainable future. He drafted a document on fleet electrification—exploring the logistics, benefits, and other considerations of transitioning fleets of vehicles to electric.   

Curtis also drafted a paper on transportation project prioritization. When officials propose projects like upgrading a highway, repairing a bridge, or creating a new road, they assess the need, which can determine which projects are funded.

“For projects like these,” Curtis said, “there should be a scale or a matrix to prioritize the projects. Traditionally, the considerations have focused on safety and economic impact; however, some states are incorporating new ones, such as carbon emissions and equity.”  

Curtis explored how different states are incorporating these new factors and outlined best practices in project prioritization. And he grew increasingly interested in the ways organizations and governments determine how projects are funded—and how that affects marginalized communities.

For the opportunity to work with the ACEEE, Curtis in large part credits Pitt. “I was grateful because beyond the research skills I had gained, my senior design project and my involvement with the CEE IDEA committee aligned perfectly with the work I would do at the ACEEE,” he said.

Graduate school is elsewhere

Before working with ACEEE, Curtis had heard little about the methods for prioritizing projects and how important decisions are made—or about how United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are implemented.

“Up until that point,” he said, “I had a hard time imagining that equity, if it was even discussed at all, could have a point value.” The process and the ways different states or countries approach it—and how those decisions affect different people—fascinated him.

While Curtis hadn’t planned to attend graduate school, if he did, he knew that it would be abroad. “I would want to immerse myself in a different culture and gain insight from living and working somewhere else,” he said.

Inspired by his experiences at ACEEE, his continued study of the Japanese language, and his interest in Japanese perspectives on the environment and sustainability, he formed a plan. But Curtis needed to find a way to pay for a graduate education overseas.

Since 1954, through its competitive MEXT scholarship program, the Japanese government has helped more than 100,000 students from around the world realize their dream of studying at a university in Japan. Curtis discovered the scholarship and applied. He also applied to the University of Tokyo’s Sustainability Sciences program and was accepted.

This month, he received final confirmation of the MEXT scholarship, which will cover tuition and provide a stipend for living expenses. In the fall, he will begin his master’s work in a country that has long inspired him.

Curtis will research equity in natural disaster management. He will explore how governments and organizations in different countries plan for prevention, evacuation, and post-disaster efforts, and how those plans affect marginalized communities.

“I want to learn how they’re incorporating equity so that low-income and other marginalized communities are not left behind—and how management programs can ensure all people receive the support they need,” Curtis said.

This project and the opportunity to engage with people from around the world to work for a more sustainable, equitable future reflects Curtis’ belief in the purpose of engineering—to serve humanity. It speaks to the spirit with which he approached his time at Pitt, one of endless curiosity and a desire to uplift those around him.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. As catalysts, some enzymes in microorganisms can effectively degrade toxic contaminants, but it can be a slow process that leaves behind intermediates—materials that themselves can be toxic.

Meng Wang, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award of $550,000 to develop a nanostructure cocktail of enzymes that will more efficiently break down toxic materials without producing dangerous intermediates. His project, “Advancing Biodegradation Through Protein Nanocompartment-Based Cargo Encapsulation for Organic Contaminant Removal,” seeks to dramatically improve biodegradation while advancing biomanufacturing.

“As an undergraduate student, I began researching how fungi and other microorganisms can degrade contaminants,” said Wang. “It is a promising tool that is sustainable and can be less expensive than traditional methods of cleaning toxic sites.”

Microbes like Phanerochaete chrysosporium and Dehalococcoides contain enzymes that can help break down pollutants such as pesticides, industrial solvents, or spilled oil.

“The problem is that to effectively break down harmful substances, it takes multiple enzymes—it’s not a single reaction,” Wang said. “However, some enzymes won’t cooperate, and they slow the process. And while breaking down toxic substances, some enzymes can create harmful intermediates.” 

Cages and cocktails

As a graduate student and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Wang began studying unique nanostructures called protein nanocompartments. “They are like cages that can form on their own, and we applied these cages to encapsulate enzymes, enhancing their stability and robustness,” said Wang.

Since coming to Pitt in 2020, Wang has been seeking to harness protein cage encapsulation to address the limitations of biodegradation and make the process more efficient and safer. “I want to use protein cages to combine and regulate multiple enzymes, creating a kind of ‘nano-reactor,’ where the intermediates can transfer more efficiently from one enzyme to the next,” said Wang. “This will help expedite the biodegradation process and reduce the buildup of potentially harmful intermediates. My aim is to find the best cocktail of enzymes and assemble it with precision, which requires developing new methods to control and fine-tune enzyme encapsulation within protein cages.”

To achieve this, Wang uses affinity tags, which are smaller proteins attached, like tails, to larger ones. By designing and testing affinity tags with varying molecular properties, Wang will investigate how these properties affect enzyme encapsulation efficiency. This knowledge will guide controlled enzyme encapsulation through tag engineering and help optimize the cocktail to create an efficient cascade breaking down parts of the contaminant. 

Given that these nanostructures are imperceptible to the human eye, to test his work Wang uses dynamic light scattering (DLS), a technique that involves shooting a laser into a sample and analyzing the pattern of scattered light, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which involves a beam of electrons illuminating a structure. “With DLS and TEM, we can determine if we have assembled the cage,” said Wang.

He also uses Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography (FPLC), a technique that separates molecules by their size, showing large ones earlier and smaller ones later. “FPLC allows us to confirm whether enzymes are encapsulated within the cages and to separate the encapsulated enzymes from the unencapsulated ones,” he noted.

For this project, Wang will focus on developing bioagents that can more efficiently break down the compound 1,2,3-trichloropropane, which belongs to a large group of persistent contaminants found at polluted sites around the country. He will analyze how enzyme cocktails interact with this pollutant and work to fully convert it to non-toxic products.

Beyond its overarching aim of enabling more efficient biodegradation and thus improving the tools to clean dangerous polluted sites, Wang hopes this research will advance biomanufacturing by revealing new ways to precisely control enzyme encapsulation in protein cages. The research could enable scientists to adapt mixtures of enzymes for breaking down different toxic substances more easily and potentially apply the technology to biofuel production, resource recovery, and more.  

“I am so grateful for this support from the National Science Foundation,” said Wang. “I am also grateful for the support from my colleagues and collaborators here at Pitt, and from my mentors and advisors at other institutions. It’s an honor to have the opportunity to advance this important research that I began exploring as an undergraduate, and I’m excited about the possibility of creating more efficient biodegradation.”

Climate can vary across large areas of land, but it can also vary within much smaller areas like farms. A new study by researchers at Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh examined whether these microclimates — the climate of a very small or restricted area — affect pollination by both wild and managed bees and resulting wild blueberry yields.

The study — available online now and scheduled to publish in the October issue of the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment — took place on a 170 acre wild blueberry field in Maine.

Researchers discovered that both wild bees and honey bees found the most densely blooming areas of the fields and concentrated their foraging in these areas. Wild bees also tended to forage on plots that were warmer than average.

The researchers also found that even though managed honey bees were abundant at the site, there was no evidence of fewer wild bees near the honey bee hive locations or in the fields that had the highest honey bee foraging. 

Heather Grab, assistant professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences and lead author on the paper, said the findings could be used to help inform precision agriculture approaches to help conservation efforts.

“For example, precision agricultural management approaches often suggest removing low performing sites from production, perhaps to the benefit of increasing areas for biodiversity conservation,” she said. “Remote sensing techniques could measure flower density patterns across the field and identify low blooming regions may be a promising method for selecting candidate areas to convert to conservation habitats.”

As pollinators decline worldwide, a lot of research has been dedicated to finding out why, with factors such as climate change and availability of floral resources and nesting habitats identified as contributors, according to Grab. The researchers said that while these factors are important at a broad scale, finer scale variations in these factors can also drive pollinator distributions in smaller microclimates, like within farms.

While prior studies have shown that factors like habitat cover in the surrounding landscape and weather patterns can be important for predicting pollinator activity, diversity and health, Grab said a large amount of variability still remains to be explained. 

“Much of that variation could be explained by fine spatial and temporal variation in temperature and humidity across the day and across different microclimates within a given area, which is what we sought to explore in this study,” she said.

Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, said the project was a collaboration between the Penn State Center for Pollinator Research, University of Pittsburgh and Wyman’s — one of the largest wild blueberry producers in the United States and the largest brand of frozen fruit in the U.S. The two groups have worked together for many years to support pollinators and pollination services in agricultural fields. 

“Our collaborators at Wyman’s noted that some parts of their fields consistently produced fewer berries, but there was no obvious reason,” she said. “We decided to tackle this mystery by developing new strategies for monitoring and modeling crop yield, pollinator activity and environmental variation, in collaboration with Vikas Khanna’s group at University of Pittsburgh.”

Khanna, professor at the University of Pittsburgh, noted one of the strengths of the study was how tightly knit the collaboration was between all three institutions.

“The impact of climate change on farming systems and agricultural productivity involves complex dynamics,” he said. “Tackling these issues demands interdisciplinary strategies that integrate knowledge from diverse fields, as demonstrated by this research team.”

Undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh deployed temperature and humidity sensors across the 170-acre commercial wild blueberry field — which was divided into 120 sites that were one-by-one meters in size — and measured the progression of flower blooms as well as the number and diversity of blueberry pollinators. 

“We were able to leverage this data to build a model of the microclimates throughout the farm — including both temperature and humidity — that tracked environmental changes every 10 minutes across the entire field throughout the bloom period,” Grab said. “We also had data on the location and number of honey bee hives and the fruit set and yield of blueberries at 100 plots across the field.”

The researchers found that across the site, variations in the landscape resulted in microclimates with differences of as much as 10 degrees Celsius and 29% relative humidity. Both managed honey bees and wild bees had overlapping foraging areas and habits, with both favoring warmer microclimates although wild bees foraged earlier in the day and during a wider range of conditions.

They also found that flower density, which was greater in spots with a warmer microclimate, was the primary driver of both wild bee and honey bee foraging, as well as blueberry yields.

“Because warmer areas of the field also had more flowers and higher yields, changes to the climate that increase microclimate variability may contribute to increased yield variability within fields,” Grab said.

In the future, additional studies could explore whether these patterns vary across different, broader regions and in different years, the researchers said.

Garrett Sisk, University of Pittsburgh; Anaís Ostroski, University of Pittsburgh; Travis Dillard, Jasper Wyman & Son; Bruce Hall, Jasper Wyman & Son; Sarah Goslee, U.S. Department of Agriculture; and Vikas Khanna, University of Pittsburgh, also co-authored the paper.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hatch Appropriations under Project #PEN04716 and Accession #1020527 helped support this research.

Since joining Pitt in 2010, Khanna has served as the Associate Chair of Graduate Studies for CEE, led multiple faculty search committees, served on several Swanson School committees, and held leadership positions in subdivisions of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Since 2017, he has been an Editor for Resources, Conservation and Recycling, a leading journal in the field of sustainable engineering.

His research expertise focuses on sustainability and modeling and assessing the impacts of emerging environmental and chemical technologies, and he is actively engaged with the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering from The Ohio State University, where he was also a National Academy of Sciences Graduate Fellow. Vikas has been featured in media outlets including NSF Research News, NPR, and Inside Climate News.

For their project this past semester, Chemaitilly (mechanical engineering) and Ufer (chemical engineering), with fellow students Siva Surulivel (civil engineering graduate student) and Fiorente Pampena (urban planning), entered the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Solar District Cup. The competition challenged 81 interdisciplinary teams across six divisions to design a solar project from scratch. In its first year competing, the Pitt team placed first in its division and were runners-up for the entire competition.

So you want to be a solar developer

“To earn a Sustainability Certificate at Pitt, students must successfully complete ENGR 1907,” said Tony Kerzmann, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. “At the beginning of the semester, we group students by interest and assign them a project. This spring, one of those projects was the Solar District Cup.”

NREL’s Solar District Cup is an annual competition that provides college students with hands-on experience developing solar infrastructure. Teams create a comprehensive plan to introduce solar power to an actual site.

For Pitt and 13 other teams in the MidAtlantic region, that site was the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa. Teams were tasked with developing a system that would power most of the hospital while respecting the community and environment. 

To create a development plan, conceptual design, distribution approach, and financial analysis, the Pitt team had to research zoning laws, solar ordinances, permitting, and National Electric Code regulations. They had to learn new software and conduct soil, topography, and even a hail-risk analysis.

“Most students don’t get these experiences in class,” said Chemaitilly.

“None of us had too much experience on the financial side,” said Ufer. “I had to do a lot of research about tax credits and depreciation—I had to model net present value and break-even time.”

As they worked all semester, Pitt’s team developed a 90-page executive summary with reports and images, along with a presentation.

“The team was fantastic,” said Kerzmann. “From an educational perspective, there’s no way I could teach a class where they would ever learn this much.”

Thinking big, and creatively

Essential to successful deployment of solar is community engagement—keeping people involved in the solar array. That idea guided Pitt’s team.

“They did a great job incorporating solar into the environment,” said Kerzmann. “They developed agrivoltaics to promote dual-use land space and included solar picnic tables and park benches, and solar parking canopies.”

They also used as much space as possible to produce more energy. Whereas most teams proposed systems that could generate a half megawatt, Pitt’s team designed one that could generate 26.3 megawatts.

“We thought, why not go as creative as possible, while keeping it reasonable,” said Chemaitilly. She noted how, initially, team members each designed their own systems. “We presented our ideas and rationale. Together, we picked the best aspects of each design and synthesized them into our final plan.”

“We learned how to focus on our individual strengths and interests,” added Ufer, “and I think that’s why we won our division.”

Fueling a solar-powered future

For Chemaitilly and Ufer, the Solar District Cup has fueled their interest in renewable energy.

Through the Swanson School of Engineering’s co-op program, Chemaitilly has already worked three semesters with Oriden, a Pittsburgh-based company that develops renewable energy projects.

“The co-op program at Pitt is truly one of a kind,” said Chemaitilly. “With this competition, I got to apply what I’ve learned at the co-op. It’s really solidified my interest in a career in solar power."

Ufer has also pursued internship opportunities, including Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) through the National Science Foundation. He researched wind and solar modeling, testing how accurately modeling software could predict real-time energy generation, and he presented his research at a conference. 

“I’ve always been interested in renewable energy broadly,” Ufer said, “but after this competition, I have so much more experience with solar. I gained valuable skills that I will use after I graduate and begin looking for jobs.”

This team from the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering placed second at the ninth annual CAWP Student Estimating Competition Championships. Eleven teams from seven universities competed in the event, held on February 20 – 22 at the Marriott Hotel in Cranberry and hosted by the Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania (CAWP).

The CAWP Student Estimating Competition Championships provides civil engineering students with experience working together to estimate a real-world project. Teams prepare during the school year with the help of industry mentors and compete over three days.  

For the 2025 challenge, teams were given plans to demolish the existing SR 4012 Brush Creek Bridge and rebuild it using a steel structure. Each team had eight hours to develop their bids and compile all their work and reasoning into a workbook, both which were submitted to eight judges, all experts in the field.

After submitting their bid and workbook, teams created a presentation that explained their proposal, and the next morning they delivered presentations to the judges, who provided constructive feedback and asked questions.

In addition to the competition, participants attended a career fair and networked with construction companies from across the region.

Pitt students Farrah Alkanaan, Fernanda Morales-Viveros, Joshua Zielinski, Tyler Jacobson, Justin Winslow, and William Jacobs competed for the Benedum Builders. John Sebastian, professor of practice and director of the McKamish Construction Management Program, serves as the faculty advisor. Jason Koss from CAWP and Bob McCall from Masters Builders Association of Western Pa. Inc. sponsored the team.

Also competing for Pitt were the Pitt Pavers team of Adam Holden, Christian Kohut, Matthew Macey, Chase Sikenberger, Angelina Sweeney, and Philip Williams.

Both teams are part of Pitt’s Association of General Contractors (AGC) Student Chapter, an organization dedicated to providing students with opportunities to develop experience and exposure to the contracting field.

“I’m so proud of these students,” Sebastian said. “All year they have prepared, working with generous mentors Joseph Neubert from Independence Excavating and Kurt Karanovich from Kokosing, who have shared their valuable insight and experience in the construction industry. These students are learning real-world skills far beyond estimating a project. They’re learning about working as a team, solving problems under pressure, organizing their work, and making their pitch.”

Check out CAWP’s recap of the event.

Read how CAWP estimating competitions and construction site visits, inspired Pitt’s AGC Student Chapter president Farrah Alkanaan.

Alkanaan grew up in Green Tree, just west of Pittsburgh, and when she enrolled at Pitt and chose engineering, she continued what had become a family tradition. Her parents had moved to the US from Saudi Arabia to pursue graduate degrees at Pitt, with her father earning a master’s degree in civil engineering and her mother in medicine. Her older brother earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

For Alkanaan, though, her path wasn’t as smooth. “Two years into school,” she said, “I was struggling academically and personally, and I second-guessed my place in engineering. I almost transferred out.”

Getting out into the field

With encouragement from her advisor she persisted, and during her third year, Alkanaan landed an internship with Fay, S&B USA Construction, where she would gain experience estimating projects. But it was a visit to a construction site that first inspired her.

“This is so cool,” she remembers thinking, wearing a hard hat and steel-toed boots, as she stood amid the structures being built around her. “This was better than sitting at a desk working on AutoCAD.”

Alkanaan had spent so much time on paper and behind screens, but now she was watching calculations and drawings turn into real structures. It clicked. “I was lost before I did this internship. I realized, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

That summer, she met two important mentors: Juliah Seymour, a project engineer at Fay, and Josh Fetcko, a senior estimator and project manager at Gulisek. “They taught me estimating and helped me grow my passion for construction management. They also told me about a student estimating competition.”

Each year, the Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania (CAWP) holds its Student Estimating Competition Championships. Teams from universities across the region compete over a weekend to estimate and bid on a major construction project.

The event intrigued Alkanaan. “I’d been estimating a single project for months. It seemed crazy you’d do that in two days.” 

But first, do you want to be the president?

To get involved, Alkanaan emailed the president of Pitt’s Associated General Contractors (AGC) Student Chapter, who was graduating and responded to her questions with a question: would she like to be the chapter’s president?

A little over a year after she’d considered leaving engineering entirely, Alkanaan accepted.

She soon grew into her leadership role with the support of Professor John Sebastian, Pitt’s AGC faculty advisor; Fernanda Morales-Viveros, the chapter’s vice president; the rest of the AGC student board; and Jason Koss (CAWP), Bob McCall (Masters Builders Association of Western Pa. Inc.), and Joseph Neubert (Independence Excavating), industry professionals who donate time and help fund AGC activities. Alkanaan set out to share with members the experience of visiting construction sites. She has never lost her love of seeing construction management in action.

“We’ve visited probably 20 sites—many of the construction sites on Pitt’s campus and across Pittsburgh, including a trip to Pittsburgh International Airport and its terminal modernization project. We even went to an operating engineer site and got to operate cranes and excavators,” Alkanaan said. “That was the coolest thing ever.”

May the estimations be ever in your favor

Were it not for the CAWP estimating challenge, Alkanaan believes she may never have developed the leadership skills as president of Pitt’s AGC chapter. She also would have missed two of the more intense and rewarding weekends of her life.

“It’s a big commitment—it’s something you have to make time for every week,” said Alkanaan.

All school year, to prepare for the challenge, teams learn the ins and outs of estimating from industry professionals who generously donate their time to mentor them.

After months of preparation, teams check into the Marriott Hotel in Cranberry on a Thursday evening in April. They receive a set of plans for an existing, real-life project but don’t know yet what they’re estimating for.

Early the next morning, the lead engineer on that project addresses the teams and announces the specific challenge. With that, they race to rooms where, sequestered, they pore over the plans, delegate, solve problems, answer questions, print out their work and reasoning, compile it into a binder, and, of course, make their bid.

In the end, teams race—sometimes literally sprint—their bids and their folders to the judges’ table. If a team is even a second late, they lose 25 points, a steep deduction. “It can feel a little like The Hunger Games,” said Alkanaan.

Redemption, and well-organized folder

Alkanaan’s 2024 competition with the Benedum Builders (one of the two Pitt teams) didn’t go how she’d hoped. The challenge was to bid on an emergency bridge replacement, and Alkanaan was responsible for the concrete—and she “completely ran out of time.”

The team also ran out of time to organize their binder, an important step. They finished fifth.

While she was proud of the team’s work, it nagged her all year, how she’d run out of time, and Alkanaan worked hard to be more prepared.

This April, they approached the competition differently. For one, Alkanaan and Morales-Viveros stopped at Staples ahead of the weekend and bought organizers for their binder. “We were playing classical music and organizing everything as we went. We were way calmer, and everyone was so supportive,” Alkanaan said, of teammates Fernanda Morales-Viveros, Joshua Zielinski, Tyler Jacobson, Justin Winslow, and William Jacobs. “It was chaotic toward the end, sure, but in a more peaceful way.”

After teams submit their bids and their binders, they must create a presentation and discuss their work. The judges—eight engineers from construction companies around the region—question them on their rationale and provide constructive feedback.

This year, the judges singled out the Benedum Builder’s binder. “They said it was one of the best they’d seen. Fernanda and I were so proud about that,” Alkanaan said.

The team placed second, missing by just seven points to Penn State. It stung, but much less than the previous year. They received a $1,000 prize. Far more satisfying than the money, though, was working together to solve problems and develop a compelling bid, for which they received such positive feedback from industry leaders.

For Alkanaan, this challenge was her last chance to help Pitt to an elusive victory. “I get to graduate together with my older sister,” she said, keeping alive what is a family tradition of Pitt scholars. “But I told Josh [Zielinski], the new AGC president for Pitt, they have to get it next year!”

Through her time with the AGC, through the many opportunities she’s had to don a hard hat and visit construction sites, and of course through the grueling estimating challenges, Alkanaan, a Saudi American female civil engineer once full of doubt, has found her community, a supportive, exciting place where she can thrive.

Bittar, who attends Downington STEM Academy, is one of five recipients of a Nordenberg Scholarship. Over 900 high school seniors across Pennsylvania applied for the scholarship. Named in honor of Chancellor Emeritus Mark A. Nordenberg, the scholarship promotes “continued leadership development, civic engagement, and career preparation.”  As a recipient, Bittar, who plans to pursue a degree in environmental engineering, will receive full tuition for four years of undergraduate studies.

Maisano, a senior at Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School who plans to study civil engineering, has received a Stamps Scholar Award. The award recognizes “first-year students from Pennsylvania who exemplify leadership, scholarship, service, perseverance, and innovation.” Through the Stamps Scholars Program, Maisano will receive full tuition, room and board, and mandatory fees as well as an allowance for books, supplies, transportation, and related costs. Enrichment funds up to $17,400 are also available for opportunities such as conferences, study abroad, and leadership training. Of the over 900 students across Pennsylvania who applied for the Stamps Scholarship, only five were awarded. 

Fang and Si’s results, “Interaction between swarming active matter and flow: The impact on Lagrangian coherent structures” (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.9.033101), were published in Physical Review Fluids in March 2024. The American Physical Society included this important research in its collection of Top Papers of 2024, which were among the most downloaded.

Fang, an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering, and Si explore the extent to which active matter in the ocean can alter Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs). In bodies of water or the atmosphere, LCSs are the structures created by the flow of a current—they are the coherent patterns that appear in the seeming chaos of turbulence.

Either hyperbolic or elliptic, these structures serve as a backbone of the flow and create barriers. Hyperbolic LCSs create stronger barriers that a flow cannot penetrate. In coastal waterways, these LCSs transport and organize inactive matter like water, storm run-off, or even oil.

For facilities such as bioreactors or desalination plants on coastlines, or even nearshore aquaculture farms, where huge schools of fish must be fed and their waste removed, understanding LCSs can help ensure safer, cleaner waterways. 

However, many unknowns remain. For Fang and Si, one unknown was whether and to what extent tiny swarming active matter affected LCSs. “The ocean is filled with small fish, shrimp, zooplankton, and bacteria,” said Fang. “Yet there has been little research into the ways this active matter and turbulence flow interact.”

“Previously, we studied how LCS organize small active matter,” said Si, first author of the paper. “For this research, we wanted to find out how this active matter can alter LCSs, especially hyperbolic LCSs.”

Modeling the impact of active matter

To model a quasi-two-dimensional flow, Fang and Si built a testing structure with copper electrodes on opposing sides and magnets in the underside. On a thin layer of salt water, they measured the effects of tiny swimmers on LCSs, in this case adult-sized Artemia salina (brine shrimp), approximately 15 millimeters long. 

“Some people think that many small swimmers in large LCSs just add random noise—that it’s such a small amount of energy that it would average out over time—but our research shows that even tiny shrimp can affect the structure,” said Fang.

Fang and Si found that tiny active matter introduces new energy that alters the boundary of hyperbolic LCSs and that can break elliptic LCSs. They even found that when they reduced the density of the swarming active matter, the LCS was still affected.

For Fang, who also received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in 2024 to explore how tiny active matter can create turbulence in the ocean, this research sheds new light on the complexity of flow.

“For people studying turbulence and those concerned with coastal waterways and the distribution of inactive matter near coastlines, it’s important to consider not just how active matter moves—but how that movement impacts flow,” said Fang. “While they may be tiny, these organisms can make a difference far beyond their size.”

Teams of two to eight students were mentored by Pitt faculty and local industries, and their projects were judged by Pitt alumni and faculty as well as by industry volunteers. Attendees also voted on their favorite project, which earned the People’s Choice Award.

“Each year, the Swanson School’s many industry partners generously pose real-world problems for the Design Expo,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Seeing how our students work together to solve these challenges, for me, is an endless source of inspiration. This spring, the new venue has only added to the event’s success. We are grateful to the judges, our partners, and the attendees for their support of our students and engineering at Pitt.” 

Visit Flickr for the Expo Photo Album.

Winners below:

Best Overall Project
Vision-Language-Action Model for a Generalist Robotic Manipulator 
Benjamin Carnovale, Samarth Chopra, Alexander McMoil, and Evan Sokolson

People’s Choice Award
Standardizing Starline’s Warehouse Pickings
Maggie Altschaffl, Bikai Fang, Sarai Morato, Xindi Shao, and Matt Tarone

DEPARTMENT AWARDS  

Bioengineering 

1^st Place Improving Bag Value Masks in Emergency Medicine  
Kelly Isola, Connor LaMarca, Ben McCutcheon, Rebecca Miller, Brock Pemberton, Madison Smith, and Erica Taylor 
  
2^nd Place Adjustable Pediatric AFO with Locking Flexion Hinge for Diplegic Cerebral Palsy  
Aritra Ghatak, Semira Kizhakkey, Kshitija Koli, Andrea Moore, Francine Sanoy, and Danielle Yakubisin 
  
3^rd Place Still Grip: Ergonomic Surgical Grip  
Michael Christofidis, Maya Franklin, Ryan Ging, Tarnini Ravikumar, Suyash Sinkar, Peter Wood, and Eileen Zhang  

Civil and Environmental Engineering 

1^st Place Bullock-Pens Park Project 
Erica Beigi, Madelynn Bennett, Brandyn D’Amico, Connor Kane, Paige Mancia, and Nick Rocco

2^nd Place BNY Mellon Center Retrofit 
Trey Blystone, Michael Constantine, Ashley Lucente, Michael Makowski Jr, Daneil Schaub, William Schmidt, and Grace Walker

3^rd Place Sylvan Ave Slope Stabilization Project 
Liam McLaughlin, Fernanda Morales-Viveros, Chris Moran, Cora Nevel, and Daniel Parks

Electrical and Computer Engineering

1^st Place Vision-Language-Action Model for a Generalist Robotic Manipulator
Benjamin Carnovale, Samarth Chopra, Alexander McMoil, and Evan Sokolson

2^nd Place Satellite Tracking Directional Antenna Array (STARR-LOC)
Kaye Baron, Thomas Eckrich, Aidan Gresko, and Adam Nichols

3^rd Place (tie) 
Cheap High-Performance Advanced Storm Equipment (CHASE) 
Rohan Ari, Noah French, Ruizhe Gao, Natan Herzog, and Beryl Sin 

CAVEMAN – Cave Autonomous Vehicle for Exploration, Mapping, and Navigation 
Benjamin Esquieres, Tyler Hansen, Kushal Parekh, Pavel Serhiayenka, and David Zhang

Industrial Engineering

1^st Place Lunar Intelligence and Reconnaissance Initiative (LIRI) 
Connor Cosgrove, Katherine Gonzalez, Felicity Thatcher, Andrea Toader, and Brian Trieu

2^nd Place Standardizing Starline’s Warehouse Pickings 
Maggie Altschaffl, Bikai Fang, Sarai Morato, Xindi Shao, and Matt Tarone

3^rd Place NurturePA: Streamlining Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder (PMAD) Assessment 
Hannah Bradfield, Xiangyy Cheng, Jordan Henry, Xinkai Li, and Roan McCall

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

1^st Place Vibration Durability of Printed Electronics for UAVs 
Ezra Dugosh, David Engler, Adam Gosden, Nathan Hoffeditz, Minh Nguyen, and Brittany Sadej

2^nd Place (tie) 
Multimodal UAV Detection  
Dmitri Asay, Matthew Houston, Jayden Provance, and Alex Schehadi 

Acoustic Noise Reduction for Urban Homeless Populations  
Rebekah Burns, Ben Fidler, Elizabeth Fillman, Maia Gulley, Brendan Lang, Hannah Muschinski, and Steven Panico

Development of Thermal Management Solutions for AI Datacenters Using High Thermal Conductivity Materials – B  
Lauren Beck, Ryan Carroll, Emma Murphy, Ganesh Selvakumar, Taorui Su, and Ruiqi Wang

Product Realization

1^st Place Wearable Fall Injury Protection via Expandable Foam 
Shane Conlin, Eric Eversbusch, and Kenechukwu Nnake

2^nd Place Alternate (Renewable) Energy Sourcing at Commercial Scale  
Arjun Bains, Bhargav Gadiparthi, John Nelligan, and Brigit O’Bannon

3^rd Place “Smart” Medicine Dispenser  
Jeremy Fresh, Cindy Lkhagvasuren, Jessica Wong, and Danielle Yakubisin

“This is the pinnacle event of the year for most ASCE chapters,” said Garret Phipps, vice president of Pitt’s ASCE Student Chapter at the Swanson School of Engineering. “We rally together so many people—it’s what we’re pulling for the entire year.”

Pitt’s team competes in the western Region 2, which has 16 member schools including Carnegie Mellon University, George Mason University, Howard University, and Penn State. Teams participate in challenges such as creating and racing concrete canoes, designing and constructing scale-model bridges, and developing sustainable solutions.

Central to the competition is the concrete canoe. While many may question the logic of a concrete canoe, for Katherine Volna, president of Pitt’s student chapter, it makes perfect sense. “What’s more civil engineering than concrete?”

Teams design a canoe, develop a concrete mix, build the form, pour the concrete, sand it, and stain their creation. Then at the competition, team members race the finished product. As Volna said, “It’s one of the crazier engineering challenges that we accomplish—creating a concrete canoe that will float.”

This year, 34 Pitt students joined the concrete canoe team and traveled to the symposium, where they placed second. “It shows the power of the community,” said Phipps. “To get around 30 people out on a Saturday to sand a concrete canoe, it’s remarkable.”

“It also helps when you have a big team to help lift a 300-pound canoe,” said Volna.

To complete the Student Steel Bridge Challenge, teams develop a concept for a scale-model bridge that can span 20 feet and hold 2,500 pounds. They fabricate pieces and then construct it efficiently within time constraints at the competition.

“These students are not just participating; they are pushing boundaries,” said Associate Professor Amir Alavi, advisor of Pitt’s ASCE Student Chapter and BP America Faculty Fellow in civil and environmental engineering. “For the first time in a national student competition, they used advanced materials like metamaterials to design bridge piers for lightweight structures, and even 3D-printed a bridge deck with metamaterial-inspired geometries.”

“In previous years, our team had struggled to finish building the bridge in time," said Volna. "This year, it was amazing that they used new technology and still built it in time and placed third.”

In the Surveying Competition, Pitt’s team placed first in the category of Topographic Mapping & Presentation, and they finished fourth overall.

Of the annual ASCE symposia, Volna said, “They’ve been the most fun I’ve had as a college student—it’s what got me so interested in ASCE.”

Beyond the thrill of competing, the events help prepare students for life after graduation. “We’re learning time-management and project-management skills and organizing a team,” said Volna. “We’re getting workforce experience even before getting an internship.”

“The community of ASCE is so powerful,” said Phipps. “Not only does it give you the experience of leading a team, but it connects you to civil engineers and industry leaders from across the country. It’s a special place. It’s fantastic.”

“What an honor it is to recognize Jeff Mascaro as the 2025 Distinguished Alumnus in Civil and Environmental Engineering,” said Radisav Vidic, Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor and Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Jeff has played a vital role in championing sustainability at Pitt and across the Pittsburgh area. A hands-on engineer who values the opportunity to engage with our students and monitor projects here on campus, he is a champion of the Swanson School and a key to its success.”

About Jeffrey Mascaro 

Jeffrey Mascaro is an executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Mascaro Construction Company, L.P., a multifaceted regional general contracting firm that performs various construction services to the commercial and heavy/industrial markets. The company, which has an average revenue of $400 million, is consistently ranked in the Engineering New Records Top 400 Contractors and Top 100 Green Contractors in the nation. Mascaro’s father, John (Jack) Mascaro, an alumnus of the University of Pittsburgh, started the company on April 12, 1988, and since its beginnings, his son has worked there.

Mascaro works side by side with his brothers: John, president and CEO, and Michael, executive vice-president and chief communications officer. Beginning his career as a construction laborer in 1989, he progressed through the company, holding positions that include surveyor, estimator, project engineer, superintendent, project manager, and chief estimator. He traveled and worked on various projects in the tri-state area and eventually settled into his current role in 2006, overseeing accounting and legal aspects of the organization as well as assisting with supporting services and construction operations.

Mascaro has a bachelor's degree in civil and environmental engineering and a master's degree in construction management from the University of Pittsburgh. He serves on the advisory committee for the University’s Construction Management Program and on the committee for the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department, and he recently served as the chair of the visiting committee during the ABET accreditation for the CEE program. He obtained his Legacy LEED AP designation during his professional career, served on the board for Phipps Conservatory, and currently presides on the Board of Directors for Beadling Soccer Club.

Mascaro and his wife, Michelle, have resided in Peters Township for the past 18 years with their three children: Ashley, 21; Brooke, 18; and Ryan, 15.

“I am so impressed with our George Washington Prize finalists,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “Their accomplishments at the undergraduate level are already remarkable, making a difference here at Pitt and across the Pittsburgh community. I’m excited to see how they continue to grow and impact our region while earning their graduate degrees.” 

A member of the David C. Frederick Honors College, Ramsey Smith has earned a 4.0 grade point average while dual majoring in chemical engineering and biological sciences, with a minor in chemistry. Along with his stellar academic performance, Smith has held leadership roles in Pitt’s Student Government Board and the Pitt chapter of Triangle Fraternity, a fraternity of engineers, architects, and scientists. He has completed four summer internships in health care; three global programs, in Cyprus, India, and Costa Rica; and 175 hours of community service.

Trey Blystone, also a member of the Frederick Honors College, is pursuing a major in civil engineering with a concentration in structural engineering, a minor in economics, and a certificate in sustainability. He has contributed to research projects in the DISCOVER Lab, including the use of LIDAR scanning used in the rebuilding of the Fern Hollow Bridge. For three years, he has served on the executive board of the student chapter of ASCE, captaining the 3D Printed Bridge Competition Team, and he was as a project lead at Pitt’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders. For the third consecutive summer, Blystone will intern at Michael Baker Inc., and this fall, he will pursue a Master of Science in Civil Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering.

Also recognized at the banquet was George Washington Award finalist Jerome Poravanthattil. The Executive Vice President of Pitt’s Incline Consulting Group, a student-run organization supporting area nonprofits, Poravanthattil will graduate in April with a degree in industrial engineering. Active across Pitt’s campus, he is part of Pitt’s Electric Boat Building Club, Pitt News ad sales, and Pitt Men’s Cheerleader Line. As a finalist, Poravanthattil will receive $500 and a $2,500 Dean’s Fellowship to pursue graduate studies at Pitt. 

Each year, the Engineering Society of Western Pennsylvania awards the George Washington Prize to celebrate student leaders in engineering and encourage them to pursue graduate degrees.  

“On behalf of the Swanson School community, we are excited that Chancellor Gabel is recognizing these exemplary faculty,” said Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “Each is passionate to transform student and community engagement at the Swanson School and creating greater impact across the university and the communities we serve.”

This year’s awards will be presented at the Faculty Honors Convocation, Thursday, April 3. Each award includes a cash prize of $2,000 and a $3,000 grant to support the faculty member’s teaching and public service activities.

Distinguished Teaching Award

Matthew Barry, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

For the transformation of mechanical engineering and materials science courses, including the development of “Statics and Mechanics of Materials: An Example-Based Approach," a Top Hat interactive textbook.

Distinguished Teaching Award

Robert Parker, Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and Associate Dean for Graduate Education

For his role as co-PI in developing "Pillars of Chemical Engineering," a Department-Level Reform of Undergraduate Engineering Education funded by the National Science Foundation, "drafting" the innovative and widely popular Engineering a Craft Brewery course.

Distinguished Public Service Award

Harvey Borovetz, Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering

For helping to establish an infrastructure for teaching biomedical engineering at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University; and for personally providing nearly 20 years of teaching, training and mentoring to students in NC A&T's biomedical engineering program, including through leading NC A&T's Bioengineering Advisory Board.

Distinguished Public Service Award

David V.P. Sanchez, Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Associate Director, Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation

For collaborating with local organizations in Beaver County, Homewood, Uniontown, Fayette and elsewhere to develop programs that help to increase community sustainability; focusing research on sustainable design for critical water and agriculture systems and adapting the findings to benefit local and international communities; and creating educational initiatives such as Teach the Teacher workshops which empower educators to incorporate sustainability concepts in their classrooms.

###

Nature’s npj series is a group of discipline-specific journals led by experts in the field. The npj Metamaterials editorial board includes Sir John Pendry from Imperial College London and Federico Capasso from Harvard, both regarded as pioneers in the discipline. It also features leading scholars such as Katia Bertoldi from Harvard University, Julia Greer from the California Institute of Technology and Nikolay Zheludev from the University of Southampton, along with many other distinguished experts.

“We are privileged to have some of the most exceptional talents in the field of metamaterials on our editorial team. I believe this journal has significant potential for growth and will become an excellent platform for high-quality research in this area,” Alavi said.

In his lab, Alavi’s primary focus is on exploring novel engineered material systems. He and his team are dedicated to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the mechanics and electronics of these material systems across multiple scales. His vision is to take metamaterials to the next level through the deep integration of multifunctionality, sensing, electrical actuation, communication and information processing as well as leveraging data-driven designs.

In 2023, he led a perspective paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, with colleagues from University of California, Berkeley; University of Pennsylvania; Johns Hopkins University and Zhejiang University. In Mechanical Metamaterials and Beyond, the group provided a road map for the design and discovery of next-generation active and responsive mechanical metamaterials.

He has since been working on developing such materials; in January of this year, Alavi published a paper in Materials Today that outlined a paradigm for creating intelligent metamaterial implants that can wirelessly transmit self-generated electrical signals without relying on integrated electronics or external power sources. This concept has the potential to reshape the field of intelligent implants by eliminating bulky wireless interrogation circuits while offering unparalleled mechanical tunability through the properties of metamaterials.

Alavi’s research and innovation have led to multiple accolades. He is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards, including an NSF CAREER Award, NIH Trailblazer Award and ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering Award.

“This event is always so inspiring,” said Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering. “The energy as students share their projects and engage with judges, their peers, and other attendees is amazing. Their projects reflect the power of creative, collaborative thinking to solve real-world problems.”

Pitt alumni, faculty, and industry volunteers judged the event, and teams were sponsored by faculty and other Pitt schools as well as by UMPC hospitals, government agencies, nonprofits, and industry.

Winners below. View the program for the full list of participants. Visit Flickr for the Expo Photo Album.

Best Overall Project 
Benevolent Robot Service Dog (BRSD) 
Myles Fernau, Timothy Horrell, Roldan Kramer, and Krishna Patel

People’s Choice Award
Development of a Sliding Wall Squat Machine
Luca Carson, Oscar Oliva, William Pastro, Jonathan Savko, and John Tocheny

DEPARTMENT AWARDS  

Bioengineering 

1^st Place Improving Bag Value Masks in Emergency Medicine 
Kelly Isola, Connor LaMarca, Ben McCutcheon, Rebecca Miller, Brock Pemberton, Madison Smith, and Erica Taylor 
  
2^nd Place Improved Speculum 
Aadhira Arun, Aashka Garg, Isabella Gaydosh, Malini Harinath, Sofia Milone, and Nalima Munyofu 
  
3^rd Place (3-way tie) 
The Re-Boot: Orthopedic Boot Redesign 
Kate Bonifacic, Gabby Brubach, Ruanny Cadima, Zander Coleman, Amna Imran, Danielle Scott, and Ritesh Shrivastav 

Adjustable Pediatric AFO with Locking Flexion Hinge for Diplegic Cerebral Palsy 
Grace Agnagnost, Olivia Curtis, Aritra Ghatak, Semira Kizhakkey, Kshitija Koli, Andrea Moore, and Danielle Yakubisin

IV Management System
Karina Atiegha, Jiaxuan Kong, Nikhil Madaka, Divya Narayan, Louis Sauter, Juniper Smyth, Sachin Srikar, and Nicholas Vasas

Civil and Environmental Engineering 

1^st Place (tie)
Allegheny County Intersections
Benjamin Carr, James Celebrezze, Cameron Dominick, and Jacod Gorham

Acid Mine Drainage Active Treatment Plant, Carmichaels, PA
Keith Coless, Claire Gendron, Daniel Larkin, and Claire Olmsted

2^nd Place Turtle Creek Connect Trail
Jonah Ansell, Zachary Dittman, Emma Easly, and Matthew Williams

Electrical and Computer Engineering

1^st Place Benevolent Robot Service Dog (BRSD)
Myles Fernau, Timothy Horrell, Roldan Kramer, and Krishna Patel

2^nd Place FPGA-Based Hybrid Audio Synthesizer
Ralph Baker, Victor Chiang, Vincent Jackson, and Matthew Prock

3^rd Place Automated Multi-String Guitar Tuner
Joshua Rioux, Jonathan Rodriguez, Charles (Baxter) Sewall, and Christina Sivaprakasam

Industrial Engineering

1^st Place The Heart of Healthcare: Improving the Cardiac Monitoring Process for Lifesaving Outcomes 
Brooke Busche, Robert Edney, Andrew Fox, and Zhuoya Tang

2^nd Place Enhancing Sustainable Mobility Through Efficient Warehousing Logistics 
Flynn Dymkowski, Asia Jones, Junyi Tao, and Katrina Vongrej

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

1^st Place In-Situ Monitoring for Defect Detection in Binder Jet Printing 
Dana He, Jiaming Huang, Aimee Lin, and Sai Namasivayam

2^nd Place Cooling System for a High-Performance Electric Motor 
Lucas Betancur, Andre Cortes, Benjamin Green, and Tyler Kenney

3^rd Place Design of Lightweight Broad-Band Microwave Absorbers 
Joseph Antonucci, Tegan Carr, and Abegale Jones 

Medical Product Prototyping

1^st Place Surgical Suite Select 
Owen Boccabella, Nicole Bohatch, Adriana Cocco, and Alec Maraska

2^nd Place Edema Detection Smart Sleeve 
Anil Siva Kumar Mekala, Varun Shilesh, Nikhila Simhadri, and Chengcheng Zhao

Product Realization 

1^st Place Pet Temperature Monitoring 
Nick Cessna, Veo Liu, Sofya Plokhova, and Michael Wang

2^nd Place Canales Blockage Elimination 
Lauren Coffman, Olivia Dodge, and Brett Wilson

3^rd Place DDM 24 Food Security Challenge 
Hermione Byworth, Aashka Gang, and Zack Layton

An assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, Sachs focuses his research on concrete and pavement. As part of Pitt’s Pavement Engineering program, he collaborates with researchers from around the world to help develop stronger roads and infrastructure and to find the most effective ways to repair them.

Beyond his research, collaboration, and publications, Sachs serves as the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies, helping students find their right pathways and progress successfully toward graduation.

“Steven plays a vital role in guiding the undergraduate program,” said Radisav Vidic, Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor and Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pitt. “This recognition from the ASCE reflects his commitment to our students. Steven serves as a valuable mentor to so many young engineers and is a tremendous asset to the school.”

Said Sachs, who earned his B.S. and PhD degrees from Pitt, “Having been an undergraduate and a graduate student here in the Swanson School, I am honored to have this unique opportunity to help prepare and support students as they pursue their passion for engineering.”

The paper, “How Can the Environmental Impact of Orthopaedic Surgery Be Measured and Reduced? Using Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction as a Test Case,” was published this month by Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research (doi 10.1097/CORR.0000000000003242). Principal investigator is Melissa M. Bilec, PhD, the George M. and Eva M. Bevier Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering and co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation; and first author is Nathalia Silva de Souza Lima Cano, MSc, Fulbright/CAPES PhD Fellow at Pitt. Bilec partnered with Fu and his team at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, where he served as chair.

The investigators utilized a method known as life-cycle assessment (LCA), which analyzes the entire life cycle of a product, service, or industry, from raw material extraction, manufacturing, distribution, use, and end-of-life. Bilec was the first to apply this process to examining hospital room infant births in 2012 in a study with UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital.

“While life cycle assessment and material flow analysis (MFA) are  tools in engineering and sustainability research, their potential has only recently been adapted to understanding the incredible impact that healthcare has on climate,” noted Bilec, who is also the Special Assistant to the Provost for Sustainability at Pitt. “This “cradle-to-grave” assessment takes a hard look at every product and process involved – in this case, with ACL surgery, everything from the materials used to make the devices used in surgery to the energy consumed, and the cost of disposing of the material. Partnerships with Pitt and UPMC are critical to advancing our collective strategic climate and environmental goals.

An unrivaled carbon footprint

Greenhouse gas emissions seem easy to understand – a fuel is produced and consumed, and emissions are released into the atmosphere, like when driving a car or flying in a plane. However, according to first author Nathalia Cano, conducting an LCA on a complex process such as construction of a building or performing surgery results in astonishing carbon footprints. 

“As healthcare professionals and researchers, we must explore ways to make our practices more sustainable without compromising patient outcomes,” Cano said. “With LCA and MFA as our toolbox, we examined scenarios throughout the operation to reduce environmental impact, including reducing resources, optimizing surgical practices, and exploring innovative materials and circular economy approaches.”

Some of their findings include:

• The carbon footprint of one ACLR is 47 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂eq) or driving a typical gasoline-fueled passenger vehicle about 120 miles.
• The 130,000 ACLRs each year in the U.S. produce approximately 6,110 metric tons of CO₂eq per year, or about 15 million miles driven.
• Products contributing most to global warming potential were disposable cotton for OR towels (9 percent) and laparotomy sponges (1 percent) and disposable plastics made of polypropylene (6 percent), including disposable fabrics such as drapes.
• Production of all products accounted for 58 percent of global warming potential, and energy for OR equipment and HVAC were responsible for 10 percent and 14 percent, respectively.
• Autoclaving steel surgical instruments was responsible for 9 percent, linens laundering for 4 percent, and waste disposal for 1 percent of global warming potential.

“Though the most important priority in surgery is excellent patient care, surgeons can and should also be mindful of the carbon footprint of our surgeries,” noted Ian Engler, MD, Orthopedic Sports Medicine Surgeon at the Central Maine Medical Center (previously a research fellow at . “We make many decisions in patient care that lead to a big environmental footprint, and this research helps us guide efforts to integrate sustainability into orthopedic surgery. 

“We presented this idea to Dr. Freddie Fu (left) several months before he passed. He said, “I thought I knew everything about the ACL, and here is something I didn’t know.” His contagious enthusiasm jumpstarted the research and is the reason it came to be.”

 Fu launched UPMC’s sports medicine program and was head team physician for Pitt’s Department of Athletics.

 Other researchers in the study:

• Nicholas Drain, MD, University of Pittsburgh Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
• Federica Geremicca, MSc, University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering
• Dylan Lawson, BSc, University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering
• Bryson P. Lesniak, MD, Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pittsburgh
• Rezvan Mohammadiziazi, PhD, senior research analyst, Energy Solutions (formerly post-doctoral researcher, Swanson School of Engineering)
• Volker Musahl, MD, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pittsburgh
  • Musahl is an orthopaedic surgeon and is board certified in orthopaedic surgery and orthopaedic sports medicine. He is the medical director of the UPMC Rooney Sports Medicine Complex, program director of the sports medicine fellowship program, and a professor of both bioengineering and orthopaedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh. 

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¹From the article: “The healthcare sector in the United States has increased its greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent since 2010 and today has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions globally. In 2018, the US healthcare sector emitted 550 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq), representing 8.5 percent of the total annual greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Recently, more than 872 hospitals have pledged to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 through the White House’s Health Sector Climate Pledge in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services.”

The recipients include: 

• Amir Alavi, Associate Professor and B.P. America Faculty Fellow, Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Mechanical Metamaterial Electronics: Theory, Design and Applications.”
• Qihan Liu, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. “Robust, Reversible, and Stimuli-Responsive Thermodynamic Adhesion in Hydrogels.”
• Ioannis Zervantonakis, Assistant Professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow, Bioengineering. “Illuminating the Effects of Hypoxia on Macrophage-Epithelial Crosstalk in Engineered 3D Environments.”
• Xiayun Zhao, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. “Toward RIPEST Photopolymer Additive Manufacturing (PAM): A Cyber-Physical System of Novel Dual-wavelength Photoinhibition aided PAM.”

Since 2016, 27 of Swanson School faculty have received CAREER awards. The Rising Stars Awards were presented at the International Mechanical Engineering Celebration and Showcase, a reception that included a poster session where researchers presented their work. The celebration was part of the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition.

“We are incredibly proud of our young faculty and their accomplishments in winning these significant awards at the beginning of their research careers,” noted David Vorp, senior associate dean for research and facilities. “External validation by historic associations like ASME testify to an academic's early trajectory and I congratulate them on this honor.”

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• PennDOT Major Bridges P3 Project: This is an award-winning public-private partnership megaproject addressing Pennsylvania’s backlog of major bridges needing replacement and rehabilitation. The project includes the design, construction, sustainable financing, and routine and life-cycle maintenance of six critical interstate bridges across the Commonwealth essential to the intra and interstate transportation system.
• Pittsburgh International Airport Roads and Bridges Project: S&B USA is building the network of new roads, bridges and supporting infrastructure for the visionary new terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport—highlighted by the dual-level bridge to connect arriving and departing travelers to the terminal.
• PennDOT I-376 Commercial Street Bridge Replacement Project: S&B USA is using accelerated bridge techniques to construct the new bridge alongside the current structure and slide it into place.

Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, says, “Industry, government, and the private sector have for decades been critical to the success of our engineering program and a pathway to student engagement and future employment across the university. S&B USA has been a long-time partner as well as employer of generations of alumni, and so we are excited to further expand our partnership.”

Sharon Novak, Chief Executive Officer of S&B USA and Chairman of S&B USA Construction, says, “We are proud to partner with the University of Pittsburgh, a cornerstone of our community, to offer engineering and business students with valuable, real-world experience in construction and project development. This collaboration not only supports the professional growth of emerging talent but also strengthens our shared commitment to Pittsburgh and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Together, we will do our best to support a future where education and industry intersect to drive innovation, cultivate rewarding careers and deliver impactful solutions for our region and beyond.”

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Dr. Haig’s research group studies microbial exposures in the built environment. Operating at the intersection of engineering, environmental microbiology, environmental chemistry, and public health her group assesses and mitigates health risks associated with pathogens transmitted within the built environment, with a specific focus on drinking water systems. Since 2018, her interdisciplinary program—funded by agencies like HUD, EPA, NSF (including a 2024 CAREER award) have tackled issues in building plumbing, water treatment, indoor air quality, and microbial risk assessment.

Using a combination of traditional microbiological techniques, modern molecular methods, and multivariate statistical analyses, her team advances knowledge, develops solutions, and informs strategies to improve indoor environments to safeguard public health.

“Since joining the Swanson School in 2018, Sarah has grown tremendously as an educator and researcher and has truly established her bona fides in the area of drinking water systems,” noted Radisav Vidic, PhD, PE, Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Pitt. “She is well deserving of this honor at the start of her very promising career.”

Dr. Haig has published several papers in leading journals in the fields of environmental engineering and microbiology and has given numerous presentations at national and international conferences. She has received continuous honors and awards for her research including a Lord Kelvin Adam Smith PhD scholarship, a Microbiology of the Built Environment fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a Dow Sustainability fellowship.

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