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