Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
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Most Cities Receive More Rainfall Than Surrounding Rural Areas, Global Study Shows
In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin found that more than 60% of cities in a survey of 1,056 regions around the world receive more precipitation than their surrounding rural areas.
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Peer Mentorship: It Takes a Village
Kasey Faust was part of the second class of the Provost's Mentored Scholars program, which provides a year of scholarship-focused, one-on-one mentoring, specifically for tenured and tenure-track faculty, from any rank and discipline at The University of Texas at Austin.
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Texas Engineers Use Erwin Center as Blueprint for Sustainable Demolition
The Frank Erwin Center is coming down to make way for a new UT Austin-MD Anderson Cancer Center joint medical campus, but even in its demise, the former home of Longhorn basketball and many memorable moments in Austin's musical history is serving an important purpose.
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Revolutionizing Civil Engineering
It's been 40 years since I walked into my first civil engineering class at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The curriculum I studied back then is largely the same as what our students at The University of Texas at Austin experience today.
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How AI Can Bolster Power Grid's Resistance to Weather, Cyberattacks
Texas Engineer Javad Mohammadi has dedicated his research to strengthening power grids, using artificial intelligence to make them more resistant to evolving threats.
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Simulating How Big Waves Impact Shorelines
The crash of waves on the beach to many is the picture of peace and relaxation, but it’s also an important moment in the surrounding landscape. Known as the swash zone, where waves run up the face of the beach, this area is where crucial sand movement occurs, shaping the world’s coastlines over time and impacting flooding and other weather events.
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AI-Powered Civil Engineering: New NSF-backed Community Aims to Transform U.S. Infrastructure
Texas Engineers are creating a new community to unite civil engineers, cyberinfrastructure professionals and experts in artificial intelligence to better understand and protect our virtual and physical infrastructure.
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Digital Twin of UT Campus Visualizes Present, Past, Future Energy Needs
A new “digital twin” of The University of Texas at Austin campus gives the clearest picture yet of historical and current energy usage across the Forty Acres — from engineering labs, to medical facilities, to sports stadiums, to residence halls.
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Pottery Becomes Water Treatment Device for Navajo Nation
Large chunks of the Navajo Nation in the Southwest lack access to clean drinkable water, a trend that has been rising in many parts of the U.S. in recent years. A research team led by engineers with The University of Texas at Austin aims to change that.
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UT Establishes the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin will reimagine its approach to training civil, architectural and environmental engineering students as society’s designers, with a renewed emphasis on leadership and service needed to solve global challenges. A transformational investment from a UT alumnus will galvanize this approach, which he calls “engineering the big.”
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Why Black Neighborhoods Have More Vehicle-Pedestrian Crashes
There's a growing body of research showing that members of marginalized populations are more likely to be involved in severe or fatal crashes as pedestrians, and that disparity is on the rise.
Recent research from Texas Engineers unravels the reasons behind this trend. Looking at data from the city of Houston, the researchers found that vehicle-pedestrian crashes are far more frequent in primarily Black neighborhoods compared to non-Black neighborhoods, and infrastructure was the main reason.
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Fernanda Leite to Be Next Research Dean
Fernanda Leite, professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, will become the Cockrell School of Engineering’s new associate dean for research later this year.
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Professor, Alumnus Elected to National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering has elected Benny Freeman, a professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, to the academy for 2023. Alumnus Fariborz Maseeh, who received a master’s degree in civil engineering from UT Austin, has also been elected.
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The Quest to Use AI to Make Buildings More Efficient
The landscape of buildings that populate cities around the world are both major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and potentially, significant suppliers of energy to the electrical grid. As a result, there is a movement around the world, across multiple industries, to better control building emissions and energy usage.
A competition created by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin challenges teams of engineers and scientists to deploy artificial intelligence to improve building energy consumption. Now in its third year, the CityLearn Challenge is the biggest it’s ever been, with more than 600 people from 50 countries, across roughly 100 teams, participating.
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Ervin Perry and T.U. Taylor Inducted Into Academy of Distinguished Alumni
Ervin S. Perry and T.U. Taylor were inducted into the Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni, becoming the first posthumous inductees in the academy's history.
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Nine Texas Engineers Receive NSF CAREER Awards
Nine faculty members from across the Cockrell School of Engineering have earned the National Science Foundation's prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards. The awards provide up to five years of funding to junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of their organizations’ missions.
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Texas Universities Partner to Study Combined Impact of Flooding and Air Pollution in Beaumont-Port Arthur
Four Texas universities, led by The University of Texas at Austin, have been awarded a grant to establish a new research center to study the risks and impacts of flooding and air pollution in a fast-growing part of Southeast Texas. The scientists will focus on the interactions between these two key issues, as well as their potential acceleration under various climate scenarios.
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UT-led Research Center Aims to Find Better Ways to Clean Water
The Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems (M-WET) has been studying novel membrane-based approaches — and new materials — to change how we purify water for four years, and that work will continue after the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) renewed funding for the initiative. M-WET will receive an additional $12 million over another four years, through DOE’s Energy Frontier Research Center Program.
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Do Autonomous Driving Features Really Make Roads Safer?
In recent years, more vehicles include partially autonomous driving features, such as blind spot detectors, automatic braking and lane sensing, that are said to increase safety. However, a recent study by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin finds that some of that safety benefit may be offset by people driving more, thereby clogging up roads and exposing themselves to more potential crashes.
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Lydia Contreras Named Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity
The University of Texas at Austin has named Lydia Contreras as its new vice provost for faculty diversity, equity and inclusivity, effective immediately. Contreras, who currently holds the Jim and Barbara Miller Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Chemical Engineering, has served for the past two years as the managing director of diversity in the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost.