Faculty

Professor Sashi Kunnath was recently honored as a distinguished member of ASCE for his contributions to civil engineering, ASCE, and mentorship. Professor Kunnath's outstanding dedication to earthquake engineering and collapse analysis has been instrumental to the advancement of the field. More information about his work and recognition by ASCE can be found on the ASCE website. Congratulations Dr. Kunnath!

Professor Geoff Schladow, Director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center, appeared in the recent NPR Weekend Edition Sunday to discuss the presence of zooplankton in Lake Tahoe. He was interviewed by Ayesha Rascoe about the role of the microorganisms in the lake and their importance to the ecosystem. The interview and transcript can be found on the NPR website. 

Congratulations to CEE Professor Katerina Ziotopoulou on receiving the 2023 Young Researcher Award (under age 40) from the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering's (ISSMGE) Technical Committee on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering. The award was just announced, with Katerina scheduled to receive the award and give an award lecture at the 8th International Conference on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering in Osaka, Japan, in March 2024.

Past award recipients and award details are at:

Dr. Jay Lund was elected as a 2022 American Geophysical Union Fellow for his continued contributions and achievements in the Earth sciences. This prestigious recognition is awarded to top innovators in the field, and Fellows are selected because they embody the AGU values of equity, diversity, and integrity in the sciences. We are incredibly proud of Dr. Lund and the impact that he has in our own community and beyond. Congratulations Dr. Lund!

Dr. Michele Barbato was selected by UC Davis Graduate Studies to receive a 2022 Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award for outstanding service in advising and mentoring graduate students at the program level. Congratulations Dr. Barbato for your vital role in mentoring the academic and professional development of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars at the University of California, Davis!

Congratulation to Professor Heather Bischel for her NSF CAREER award, which was just announced yesterday! The award is titled "PFAS-BioAction: Innovative treatment of municipal solid waste organics through insect-mediated bioprocessing and sequestration of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances." 

Dr. Michele Barbato was awarded the 2021 ASCE Outstanding Reviewer Award for the Journal of Composites for Construction. This award is given annually to reviewers selected by the ASCE journals’ editors for their exemplary contributions to voluntary peer review. The Outstanding Reviewer Award was established in 2009 by the Journals Division of ASCE to recognize the altruistic contributions of dedicated reviewers. 

Professor Barbarto along with CEE Ph.D. Student Diogo Zignago, who co-authored the paper “Reliability-Based Calibration of New Design Procedure for Reinforced Concrete Columns under Simultaneous Confinement by Fiber-Reinforced Polymers and Steel” (https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29CC.1943-5614.0001199) has been selected as Editor’s Choice for 2022’s 3rd issue of the ASCE Journal of Composites for Construction. 

Prof. Mike Kleeman is one of the authors of recent research, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, that demonstrates how switching to renewable energy like solar, wind, and water power will also reduce racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to air pollution.

The Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Davis is excited to have Prof. Kari E. Watkins join our department as an Associate Professor. Prof. Watkins is a leading expert in transit, whose research contributes to the goal of expanding mobility options by improving transit, walking, bicycling, and other alternatives to driving. Her work supports societal efforts to reduce the climate impacts of transportation and improve transportation equity.

Reporter David Owen interviewed CEE Professor Jay Lund and WFCB Professor Emeritus Peter Moyle for a feature about the Sacramento River Delta and how best to protect the freshwater that millions of people depend on for drinking and agriculture. The piece covers the industrialization of the Delta, conservation issues like the Delta smelt, land subsidence, levee failures, and more. You can read the full article here.

Every year, we see more electric vehicles (EVs) on the road. By 2035, all new passenger vehicles sold in California will be EVs to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful pollutants. As EVs take over, we need new approaches to deal with manufacturing EV batteries and the end-of-life challenges EV batteries face.

Civil and environmental engineering professor Sabbie Miller has received $1.5M in federal funding from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E agency to advance the methods and metrics necessary to quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) sequestration in building materials.

Professor Boris Jeremic and his colleagues Alain Pecker and James J. Johnson have published a book on seismic soil-structure interaction analysis in the design and assessment of nuclear interactions. His work is printed through the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency and is summarized as follows:

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced in a press release on Feb. 9 that Professor Dan Sperling has been elected as a member of the 2022 class of the NAE for leadership and outstanding entrepreneurial contributions in transportation energy, advancing alternative energy policies and promoting government-industry-university collaborations.

In a continuation of the Bischel team's work on wastewater analysis with Healthy Davis Together, Hannah Safford, Karen Shapiro, and Professor Bischel published an op-ed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The article, titled Opinion: Wastewater analysis can be a powerful public health tool—if it’s done sensibly, can be found here. Congratulations, Hannah and Professor Bischel!

Professor Alejandro Martinez is one of two recipients of the 2022 Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award, with the other recipient being Professor Brett Maurer of University of Washington, Seattle.

The paper “Experimental investigation of postearthquake vertical load-carrying capacity of scoured reinforced concrete pile group bridge foundations” has been selected as Editor’s Choice for 2021’s 12th issue of the ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering. This paper was co-authored by CEE Professor Michele Barbato and is the result of an ongoing research collaboration with Tongji University. Congratulations, Professor Barbato!

 Fire has always been part of the Western landscape, but the fire season gets longer and more severe every year. So far this year, California has seen four of the largest wildfires in its history, and the Dixie Fire, the second-largest in state history, is still burning after two months. 

Fire is part of our future. What can we do to protect homes, neighborhoods and communities and make them more resilient to fire hazards? Hear from two UC Davis experts on these and related questions Sept. 30. 

Congratulations Professor Amit Kanvinde for receiving the 2022 American Institute of Steel Construction T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award. This award recognizes outstanding researchers whose technical papers made outstanding contribution to the literature on fabricated structural steel. 

Each year, AISC's T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award recognizes an outstanding lecturer and author whose technical paper or papers, published during the eligibility period, are considered an outstanding contribution to the engineering literature on fabricated structural steel.

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Professors  Heather Bischel  and Chris Cappa on preventing the spread of COVID-19 and wearing masks 

Professor Heather Bischel shares wastewater warning signs with the Wall Street Journal. 

The American Philosophical Society Welcomes New Members for 2021. Election to the American Philosophical Society honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields. The APS is unusual among learned societies because its Membership is composed of top scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines.

Professor Emeritus Deb Niemeier was selected as a member of Class 1 Mathematical and Physical Sciences. 

June 23, 2020 

By Rachel Steere

From studying environmental and molecular biogeochemistry to addressing water quality issues, Jasquelin Peña looks forward to sharing her knowledge and connecting with UC Davis students this fall.

Washington, DC, June 23, 2020 —

Eighty-five of the nation’s brightest early-career engineers have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 26th annual US Frontiers of Engineering (USFOE) symposium. Engineers who are performing exceptional research and technical work in a variety of disciplines will come together for the two-and-a-half day event. The participants -- from industry, academia, and government -- were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations.

Professor Michele Barbato has been awarded the 2020 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize for “his outstanding research in structural engineering and engineering mechanics, with emphasis on finite element response sensitivity analysis, seismic response steel-concrete composite systems, seismic pounding mitigation, performance-based hurricane engineering and hurricane hazard mitigation, nonstationary stochastic dynamics, multi-hazard performance-based engineering, and sustainable construction materials.”

Alejandro Martinez, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program, for his proposal, “Soil Penetration Through Bioinspired Stress State Manipulation.”

The grant is worth up to $500,000 over five years. Martinez studies bioinspired geotechnics, a field that looks to biological organisms for inspiration to solve problems in geotechnical engineering.

Professor James Cheney passed away on Nov. 22, 2019, just before Thanksgiving.  He was one of the first faculty hired in the Civil Engineering in 1962 and remained with the faculty until his retirement.  Please follow the link here to read more about his life, both personal and professional. 

Assistant Professor Alexander Forrest's environmental-engineering research is the subject of a new Seeker video article.

UC Davis CEE Professor Michele Barbato was recently named ASCE Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) Fellow.

Professor Emeritus at the UC Davis Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Ed Idriss received the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s (EERI) 2018 George W. Housner Medal at the 11th US National Conference on Earthquake Engineering (11NCEE) in Los Angeles last month.