News

The following graduate students received a $250 Kolodzey Travel Grant for the Spring 2022 or Summer 2022 semester.

In celebration of International Women's Day, we would like to highlight Dr. Kasey Faust!

Dr. Faust has been with the department for 7 years, focusing on water infrastructure, and was recently promoted to Associate Professor. She was also awarded the 2022 Daniel W. Halpin Award for Scholarship in Construction, due to her “scholarly contributions made in the fields of community resiliency, human-infrastructure interactions, and socially sustainable water and sanitation infrastructure” by the ASCE’s Construction Institute.

Dr. Todd Helwig, professor and director of the Ferguson Structural Engineering Laboratory, has won the 2022 Richard S. Fountain Award for his innovation and leadership within the steel industry.

Dr. Mary Jo Kirisits, environmental engineering professor for CAEE, has won the 2022 Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family K-16 Teaching Innovation Award. The award is reserved for faculty members in the Cockrell School of Engineering who has most impacted students in K-12 and beyond, encouraging enrollment into STEM education and empirically improving the educational experience across all grade levels.

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced today that Civil Engineering Alumni Ahmad Abdelrazaq (B.S. Civil Engineering 1984, M.S. CE 1986) was among the 111 new members and 22 foreign members to be elected into the academy in 2022. The induction showcases the prestigious achievements of Abdelrazaq who received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from UT Austin. Abdelrazaq was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 2009.

CAEE's Department Chair Robert Gilbert is a member of the Committee tasked with analyzing the failure and collapse of the 305-Meter Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The committee was requested byt the Director of the National Science Foundation, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine convened the committee. Upon conclusion of the committee, a report will be released explaining the failure. Learn more about the committee and their findings on the website published by the National Academies of Sciences, Enginering. and Medicine.

Lance Manuel, CAEE faculty member and associate chair, is one of the 6 new fellows from UT Austin that has been elected into the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society. This election honors members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society have distinguished them among their peers and colleagues. Dr. Manuel’s work focuses on wind turbines, and improving design criteria for complex inflow turbulence conditions, as well as long0term performance of deepwater offshore floating structures. Visit Dr. Manuel’s website for more information on his groundbreaking work.

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 University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering is once again ranked in the top ten in the latest rankings from U.S. News & World Report, strengthening the department's position as one of the nation’s best undergraduate engineering programs.

Matthew Hebdon is the department's new Structural Engineering associate professor.