News & Events

Engineering Systems and Environment professor Jon Goodall will co-chair and serve as a subject matter expert for a new study committee of the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine initiated through Virginia Senate Joint Resolution No. 38, passed during the 2020 session of the Virginia General Assembly. The resolution directs the Joint Commission on Technology and Science to “study the safety, quality of life and economic consequences of weather and climate-related events on coastal areas in Virginia.”

Congratulations to this year's civil engineering student and faculty award winners.Undergraduate Awards
The American Society of Civil Engineers William J. Thompson Award
Lindsey Maxwell
Louis T. Rader Awards
Anna Cerf
Emily Chen
Lindsey Maxwell
Michael Peyton Rice
Brendan Vachris
Graduate Awards
Civil Engineering Graduate Award for Superior Teaching
Benjamin Bowes*
Civil Engineering Graduate Award for Superior Research
Udayan Singh*
Faculty Award
Outstanding Teaching in Civil Engineering

Congratulations to this year's systems engineering student and faculty award winners.Graduate Awards
Louis T. Rader Outstanding Systems Engineering Graduate Student
Steven Hauser
Sanjana Mendu
Cody Pennetti
Louis T. Rader Systems Engineering Graduate Service
Daniel Andrews*
Robert T. Ferguson III Memorial Award
Courtney Rogers*
Ruthie Oxford Memorial Award
Anna Baglione*
Chang Xu*
Undergraduate Awards
Louis T. Rader Outstanding Undergraduate Award in Systems
Camryn Burley
Emma Hand

A team of University of Virginia undergraduates won first place in the Virginia Water Environment Association Student Design Competition, making them eligible to represent Virginia at a national competition in the fall.

Julie B. Zimmerman, who earned her degree in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Virginia, has been named editor-in-chief of Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society and a top environmental engineering journal. Zimmerman, who also held a civil engineering faculty appointment from 2005-2010 at the School of Engineering, is a professor of chemical and environmental engineering at Yale University.

Hyunglok Kim, a Ph.D. student in Engineering Systems and Environment's civil engineering program, won the Outstanding Student Presentation Award at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting held last month in San Francisco. Kim presented his research titled “Assimilation of GPS soil moisture data from CYGNSS into land surface models.”

Mehrdad Shafiei Dizaji has received a Student Travel Grant to attend the 2020 American Society for Nondestructive Testing ASNT Research Symposium in Williamsburg this spring. The symposium is one of the premier platforms for exchanging information on groundbreaking, trending and emerging research, technology transfer and engineering practices in the field of nondestructive evaluation (NDE).

Charles Burgis and Faria Tuz Zahura, both Ph.D. students in civil engineering in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment, were recognized as outstanding presenters at the Global Water Initiative's Graduate Water Symposium on Nov. 20. Burgis presented “Tracking Denitrification in Green Stormwater Infrastructure with Nitrate Stable Isotopes” and Zahura presented “Assessing a machine learning surrogate for a detailed physics-based model used to predict urban coastal street flooding.”

The Virginia Section Institute of Transportation Engineers held its fall meeting Dec. 5 with several representatives of the University of Virginia's student chapter of the Institute in attendance. The meeting was held nearby in Ruckersville, at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. At the meeting, civil engineering graduate students Linda Lim and Wesley Michaelson and undergraduates Emily Chen and Lena Nguyen represented UVA in the Traffic Bowl competition against Virginia Tech. UVA held the lead until the final jeopardy round, but ultimately fell short.

Professor Venkataraman “Venkat” Lakshmi, one of the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment's newest faculty members, has been elected to serve as chair of the University of Virginia School of Engineering Faculty Council.