On June 12, the UC Davis Solar Decathlon team, led by Professor Frank Loge in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the Excellence in Structural Engineering Award from the Structural Engineers Association of Central California for their work designing and building OurH2Ouse for the 2017 U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon competition.

The NSF-funded workshop, the product of a year and a half of planning by UC Davis civil and environmental engineering professors Alejandro Martinez and Jason DeJong, brought together 60 experts from engineering and science research, as well as industry, to foster dialogue and collaborations to better establish the field of bio-inspired geotechnics.

The California Energy Commission awarded the Center for Water and Energy Efficiency at UC Davis $3.1 million to pilot-test a system to help water utilities optimize their energy use and reduce operational costs while continuing to meet customers’ water needs.

A small group of scientists and doctoral students from the University of California, Davis, recently returned from Antarctica, where they became the first group to collect turbulence measurements from an underwater glider beneath an ice shelf. 

From the CA Department of Water Resources: 

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) has partnered with the UC Davis J. Amorocho Hydraulics Laboratory (JAHL) in Yolo County to find innovative ways to investigate fish protection technology within California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta estuary. Originally built as a hydraulics lab to perform modeling studies for the State Water Project (SWP), JAHL has been a DWR tool for maintaining and protecting the State’s water supply for more than half a century.

Professor Ross Boulanger and the rest of the team at the CGM were thrilled to have UC Davis Chancellor Gary May tour the Center for Geotechnical Modeling.

Lake Tahoe, with its iconic blue waters straddling the borders of Nevada and California, continues to face a litany of threats related to climate change. But a promising new project to remove tiny invasive shrimp could be a big step toward climate-proofing its famed lake clarity.

A University of California, Davis research team led by civil and environmental engineering professors Geoff Schladow and Alex Forrest, along with environmental science and policy professor Steve Sadro, is launching a new project this month to test and optimize a strategy to improve water clarity in Emerald Bay and Lake Tahoe.

A return to more normal weather and streamflow conditions in 2018 saw Lake Tahoe’s annual clarity value improve dramatically to 70.9 feet. This represents a 10.5-foot increase over the 2017 value. That is according to a report of Lake Tahoe clarity released by the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.

New study finds surprisingly high contribution from paints, pesticides, perfumes as vehicle emissions drop.

Professor Brian Maroney speaker on panel at ASCE/SEI Symposium 

Many UCD students and alumni attended the ASCE/SEI San Francisco Chapter hosted a symposium on resilience to mark the 30th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The speaker panel consisted of representatives from BART, Caltrans, EBMUD, City of Oakland, and the San Francisco Office of Resilience and Capital Planning. This event presented a unique opportunity to learn about the resiliency efforts of major building and infrastructure agencies in the Bay Area. 

Mohamed Elkashef, a postdoc working with Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor John Harvey and University of California Pavement Research Center Associate Director David Jones, recently received a 2018-2019 Mistletoe Research Fellowship.

UC Davis’ Women in Water Research team announced it will take the plunge for the third consecutive year in the Trans Tahoe Relay, a 10-mile swim across the alpine lake — no wetsuits permitted.

UC Davis research by a team including CEE’s Dr. Frank Loge connecting electricity savings and urban water conservation was spotlighted in The Los Angeles Times.

CEE Professor Heather Bischel and graduate student Hannah Safford were chosen to receive the top $40,000 prize from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Pathogen Monitoring Prize Competition.

The College of Engineering will welcome Carnegie Mellon University’s David Dzombak as its winter 2019 distinguished lecturer.

Everyone knows cigarettes are bad for you. Much research has been done and because of that, legislators have put a lot of sales restrictions and taxes on them. This is why companies are developing new products that deliver nicotine such as vapes, small cigars and cigarillos that have sugary flavors to addict a new generation of users.

These newer products have really caught on, especially with young people, who are adopting them faster than they can be researched or regulated.