The City of Atlanta’s North Avenue Smart Corridor Project was recognized as an innovative and transformative program during a leading international summit on smart cities.
To generate the energy delivered to each home, business and industrial user in the United States each year, trillions of gallons of water are required for energy production, processing, conversion and transport. However, the exact amount of water withdrawn from the environment and consumed for each energy source has never been quantified — until now.
If we tell people how they’re using energy, can we encourage them to conserve and change their behavior? That question drives School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student Abby Francisco, who has just learned the National Science Foundation is supporting her work through a graduate research fellowship.
The City of Atlanta will officially cut the ribbon on the North Avenue “smart corridor” Sept. 14, unveiling what city officials call the most-connected corridor in the state and a living laboratory for traffic management. It’s a partnership between the city, Georgia Department of Transportation, Georgia Tech and others.
Georgia Tech has been intensifying its smart cities initiative, including membership in the national MetroLab Network and the launch of a new faculty council with members from more than a dozen university units. Tech has long been working in the, but the now the Institute is organizing all the research that’s happening to have a bigger impact.
Tech Environmental Engineering Professor Armistead “Ted” Russell has traveled the world, including China, India and Minneapolis, studying air quality and its impacts on urban life. He is also part of a team of scientists, policymakers and industrialists working with a U.S. National Science Foundation Sustainability Research Network to build better cities.
The American Society of Civil Engineers Geo-Institute has selected graduate student Fikret Atalay to represent the United States at an international conference next year. Atalay, who’s entering his fourth year of Ph.D. studies, is one of only five people from the States chosen to attend the International Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference.
Two assistant professors in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering have won one of the nation’s premiere grants and the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for junior faculty, the Early Career Development award. Chloe Arson and Phanish Suryanarayana learned of their selection in early January for what are known simply as CAREER awards. The grants recognize the top educators and researchers in the country, those who “exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research,” according to the NSF.
Sheng Dai arrived in Atlanta just a week before classes began for the fall 2015 semester, and it was really a homecoming of sorts. Dai is the newest faculty member in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, arriving after two years at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. But before that, he spent half a decade in the School, earning his doctorate in civil engineering. He finished in 2013.
How will we build the cities of the future in a sustainable way? A new National Science Foundation-funded research network will connect scientists at nine universities with infrastructure groups, public policy experts, and industry partners to reimagine cities. Georgia Tech will be an anchor of the $12 million network, which will be led by the University of Minnesota, and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Ted Russell will serve as a co-director.
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Phone: 404-894-2201
Fax: 404-894-2278