Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University

Take a look at what one of CEE's PhD candidates, Barney Miao, is up to!

When Sarah Billington joined Technical University of Munich's Sustainability Day as its plenary speaker last summer, she also engaged in its global discourse series, "One Topic, One Loop." You can read her contribution at the link, which includes an account of the founding of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. https://lnkd.in/eAkhANWX

CEE’s Martin Fischer and his co-instructors once again welcomed Howard University students for a joint course in sustainable building design and construction.

Sebastian Pintea?is an undergraduate junior majoring in Environmental Systems Engineering in the Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. His research revolves around the intersection of climate change and medicine. During this past summer, he conducted his own data analysis study exploring the impacts of ambient air pollution on chronic pain prevalence in children. Upon interpreting the results, he found that volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were the most statically significant class of air pollution impacting children's experience with chronic pain. He hopes this novel study will shed light on an overlooked intersection in public health for vulnerable, pediatric populations. By engineering effective filter systems for VOCs and other air pollutants through environmental justice advocacy, we can take a step towards helping our planet's health as well as our own.

The Stanford University School of Engineering hosts a wonderful podcast, The Future of Everything. Some time back, it featured an interview with CEE's Catherine Gorle discussing how cityscapes catch the wind. Take a listen, and enjoy! https://lnkd.in/gWVsZaRf

Lavinia Pedrollo is a second-year PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. Lavinia’s PhD research focuses on improving the systems that handle heating, electricity, and water in buildings (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) systems). Her goal is to make these systems more efficient and environmentally friendly by developing ways to measure their performance early in the design process. Recently, Lavinia joined a multi-million-dollar hospital renovation project, working with various stakeholders to gather insights for her research. By optimizing MEP systems, the core of any building, she plans to contribute to a more sustainable and efficient construction industry. Beyond her research, Lavinia serves as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) liaison for her department, advocating for inclusivity and equal opportunities for all students. “Life at Stanford is truly beautiful,” Lavinia shares. “Coming from a small village in Italy with just 1,500 inhabitants, I often marvel at the diversity and opportunities here. Sometimes, we don’t fully appreciate how special this place is. We are surrounded by amazing people, and this experience is something to cherish.” To students feeling overwhelmed, she offers encouragement: "It’s okay to struggle but remember how lucky we are to be part of this extraordinary community. Take a moment to appreciate the campus and the opportunities around you - you belong here, and you’re capable of achieving great things! ??"

In a project supported by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), CEE's Ram Rajagopal and other researchers including Tianyuan Huang, Zejia Wu, Jiajun Wu, Jackelyn Hwang led a study entitled, "Using AI to Map Urban Change." "Physical changes in urban environments offer profound insights into urban policies and economics, including housing value trends and spatial segregation effects. They also provide insights into downstream impacts, such as neighborhood gentrification and disaster recovery. At present, researchers predominantly use datasets made up of satellite and aerial imagery, survey data, and building permit data to measure physical urban change, but these methods have many limitations. Survey data is often inadequately granular, both spatially and temporally; top-down views from remote sensing data incompletely capture street-level changes that impact daily life in cities; and data on construction permits is not always accessible. "Street-view imagery provides a more comprehensive spatial representation of city development over time. Such imagery has already been used to quantify urban greenery, indicate region functions (e.g., areas used for public health or recreational purposes), uncover economic and sociodemographic patterns, predict a population’s well-being, and estimate buildings’ energy efficiency. Imagery of city streets can also be used to broadly evaluate how buildings, streets, and other city elements deteriorate and change. But current methods rely on comparing pairs of historical street-views for individual locations, which doesn’t capture the full range of transformations that can occur in cities. A comprehensive time series of street-view data would enable a more granular, insightful, and generalizable analysis of urban environments. "With that objective in mind, we collected and curated a Google Street View time series dataset with images on about 1,000 coordinates in six cities, collected from 2007 to 2023—the largest street-view change- detection dataset available to date. Each time series contains around 10 images over the 16-year period, and each image is labeled with “change” or “no change.” We then leveraged past work on the use of neural networks and machine learning techniques for change detection, commonly used in remote sensing to identify differences between two images, to train an AI model on our street-view time series dataset to analyze urban change. The AI model can extract object details and structural information about the built environment and mitigate noisy effects, thereby enabling a more fine-grained analysis of urban change. It also enables change detection at scale—so researchers can ingest more data and analyze more cities." https://lnkd.in/gC9zeZyV ?

We invited Merrill Storch to tell us more about her work in CEE. "Hello, my name is Merrill Storch and I am a 2nd year Master's student in the Atmosphere/Energy program. I’m interested in decarbonizing electricity generation and enhancing energy resilience through clean energy systems. This quarter, I’ll be working on a microgrid research project, focusing on how we can optimize a 100% clean energy system with all localized generation to support the system's annual energy demand needs. I’m also excited to share that I’ll be serving as a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Liaison for the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department this quarter. My goal in this role is to help foster a more inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and heard. Whether you have ideas, suggestions, or concerns related to DEI within our department, I’m here as a resource. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me—this is a shared space, and your voice matters. Feel free to connect if you’d like to chat about DEI, energy, or any other ideas you might have. I look forward to working with you all to make the CEE department an even better place to learn and grow!"

Today, we're thrilled to share this spotlight of our staff colleague, Racquel Hagen, who manages the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center! “Over the years, Stanford has given me so many opportunities – from taking classes to attending events, meeting new people, and learning new things. I couldn’t imagine working anywhere else, and I’m excited for the next 20 years here! I’m the administrator and building manager for the John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center. In this role, I handle all the administrative tasks for the center, as well as events and projects for both the Blume Center and CEE. As building manager, I’m part of the SOE Facilities Team responsible for maintaining the building and labs, and keeping these spaces safe. My path to Stanford was a bit unusual. I was a theater major in college, with plans to go into theater administration. After graduation, I spent five years at the San Jose Repertory Theatre (which no longer exists) as a company manager. In that job, I took care of everything related to the actors and directors – booking flights, arranging lodging, even organizing meals between performances. It was tough, underpaid work. A friend who worked at Stanford told me about the opening at the Blume Center and encouraged me to apply. I interviewed with Anne Kiremidjian and the DFO on a Friday, got hired on Monday, and left the theater on my five-year anniversary. I started here two days later – that was 25 years ago, and I’m still in the same office! The most inspiring thing about my job is the students. Their energy, creativity, and brilliance are incredible. I’ve stayed in touch with many even after they’ve graduated, and hearing how I’ve made a difference in their lives makes everything worthwhile. Of course, after 25 years, there are challenges. One of the biggest is staying open to new ways of thinking and adapting to technology as it evolves. Luckily, I love learning and finding better solutions, so I’m always willing to change and improve. Another challenge is making sure I’m fully supporting CEE’s students – ensuring they feel safe with me and that I’m tuned in to their needs. The world changes, and I try to keep up with it. Ultimately, I feel really fortunate to be working at Stanford. The faculty and staff are incredibly supportive, and the students are a joy to work with."

“If you have a hurricane without significant flooding, but still very strong winds, if your lines are put underground, then you're quite well protected against that,” said Ram Rajagopal, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford University. Ram Rajagopal was quoted in this story from The Hill about blackouts following hurricanes and major storms. https://lnkd.in/g3ggXfGD