Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

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.

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.

Mimicking the human body, specifically the actuators that control muscle movement, is of immense interest around the globe. In recent years, it has led to many innovations to improve robotics, prosthetic limbs and more, but creating these actuators typically involves complex processes, with expensive and hard-to-find materials. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State University have created a new type of fiber that can perform like a muscle actuator, in many ways better than other options that exist today. And, most importantly, these muscle-like fibers are simple to make and recycle.

Getting people out of their cars in auto-centric cities will likely take both carrot and stick policymaking, according to a new survey from The University of Texas at Austin and Arizona State University. The survey found that 68% of people surveyed were happy with using cars for non-commute trips. And while many of these drivers want to live in neighborhoods with a mixture of businesses and residential and healthy transit, they still prefer the convenience of driving their own car. Furthermore, the report found that more car use for non-commute trips generally led to increased satisfaction with their travel situation.

Two Cockrell School of Engineering faculty members have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. The honor recognizes important contributions to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics—including pioneering research, leadership within a given field, teaching and mentoring, fostering collaborations, and advancing public understanding of science.

On December 10, the Cockrell School of Engineering hosted a celebratory event to commemorate the naming of the Sam and Hema Kumar Construction Engineering and Project Management Program (CEPM) in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. The Kumar CEPM program is named in honor of alumnus Sam Kumar and his wife, Hema, for their transformative gift to the program.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought work travel and in-person conferences to a halt, but new research finds this shift has made it easier for more people who could not previously attend these events to participate and lowered their environmental footprint.

A first-ever database compiling movement of the largest rivers in the world over time could become a crucial tool for urban planners to better understand the deltas that are home to these rivers and a large portion of Earth’s population.

Sharon Wood does not start her day with coffee; she gave up caffeine during her undergraduate days. Instead, she starts by running or cycling. This will not surprise anyone who knows the hardworking, early rising engineer who, on July 19, becomes UT’s No. 2, the executive vice president and provost. “I drink cold water,” she says.

River deltas change over time, and the freedom to shift river location is important to maintaining a healthy ecosystem. However, humans are used to the stability of fixed infrastructure, so they struggle dealing with dynamic landforms like river deltas. And we tend to conflate river deltas that are changing with degradation, when in fact it is the opposite. Rivers changing course and evolving over time is a good sign for the delta and the environment around it.

Hundreds of millions of people live on river deltas around the world, making them central to rich diversity in culture and thriving economies. As deltas face environmental degradation and ongoing climate change, governments have sought ever more drastic measures to prevent flooding and protect society and its infrastructure. But, these policies can harm the natural environment and lead to loss of precious land. Striking a balance between limiting deltaic land loss and maximizing cultural and economic benefit to society is a top priority in sustainability policy.

Texas Engineers have turned to the research community to help solve a complicated energy problem, one that is likely top of mind for many Texans after the February storms that knocked out power for millions. The CityLearn Challenge, now in its second edition, tasks research teams from around the globe with creating control systems for virtual neighborhoods composed of nine buildings to best maximize energy efficiency. The teams must program an "intelligent agent" that uses a machine learning model called reinforcement learning, a way of training machine learning models to make a sequence of decisions with a specific goal or reward in mind and a trial-and-error component. Participating teams’ intelligent agents must make energy usage decisions with a goal of reducing the load on the grid during times of high demand.

For many engineers and scientists, nature is the world's greatest muse. They seek to better understand natural processes that have evolved over millions of years, mimic them in ways that can benefit society and sometimes even improve on them. An international, interdisciplinary team of researchers that includes engineers from The University of Austin has found a way to replicate a natural process that moves water between cells, with a goal of improving how we filter out salt and other elements and molecules to create clean water while consuming less energy.

Despite advances in medicine and technology, childbirth isn’t likely to get much easier on women from a biological perspective. Engineers at The University of Texas at Austin and University of Vienna revealed in new research a series of evolutionary trade-offs that have created a near-perfect balance between supporting childbirth and keeping organs intact on a day-to-day basis. Human reproduction is unique because of the comparatively tight fit between the birth canal and baby’s head, and it is likely to stay that way because of these competing biological imperatives.

The explosion of the podcast business has found an intriguing new home, in the classroom. Students in an inter-disciplinary class taught by Cockrell School of Engineering faculty are trying their hand at becoming the next Sarah Koenig (host and producer of the popular podcast Serial), turning to podcasting as the medium to explain a complex issue related to drugs designed to fight microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi.

Producing clean water at a lower cost could be on the horizon after researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State solved a complex problem that had baffled scientists for decades, until now. Desalination membranes remove salt and other chemicals from water, a process critical to the health of society, cleaning billions of gallons of water for agriculture, energy production and drinking. The idea seems simple — push salty water through and clean water comes out the other side — but it contains complex intricacies that scientists are still trying to understand.

In Seattle, “the big one” — a massive earthquake that could devastate the region — represents an ominous threat. So widespread are the concerns that city leaders there created standards to fortify new skyscrapers using data from studies forecasting the impact of a big earthquake in the region.

In the pre-pandemic world, peak water usage times were fairly predictable. Office buildings, manufacturing facilities and other commercial uses were busy during the day but quiet on weekends. Residential areas saw peaks in the early morning and evening.

According to the Water Research Foundation, the average person mindlessly flushes the toilet about five times a day, sending wastewater down pipes into city sewers and on to treatment plants. It’s easy to forget there’s a whole system running beneath our feet all the time. But that dirty, smelly water could hold something very valuable: the key to tracking COVID-19 hot spots in a city before diagnostic testing is able to identify outbreaks.

Cockrell School of Engineering faculty are leading a new project to study water quality in Alaska, featuring a unique team that includes engineers from multiple universities, renowned ethnographers and Alaska natives.