The College of Engineering and the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) Department awarded annual student fellowships to a selection of deserving CAEE graduate students. The most recent award winners are listed below.
The CAEE Department recipients of the Koerner Family Awards for Graduate Students in the College of Engineering (see article here) are doctoral students Anita Johnson and Jacob Price. Anita is from Modesto, California and received her BS in Environmental Chemistry from the University of California (UC), San Diego. Before coming to Drexel she was a staff researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Anita is currently a Research Assistant and was previously a Teaching Assistant for Introduction to Infrastructure (CAEE 201), Introduction to Fluid Flow (CIVE 320), and Hydraulics (CIVE 330). She also recently traveled to Antarctica with her advisor Peter DeCarlo, PhD to collect real-time measurements of aerosol composition (also known as particulate matter) as part of an NSF funded research grant.
Jacob Price is from Lancaster, PA and received his BS in Mathematics from Penn State University. Jacob worked as an actuary and then a statistician before returning to school to obtain a MS in Environmental Engineering from Temple University. Jacob’s research interests consist of algal biotechnologies for waste treatment and resource recovery, contaminant fate and transport, and he is currently a College of Engineering recipient of a U.S. Department of Education GAANN Fellowship. Jacob is advised by Christopher Sales, PhD.
The Harry Brown, Jr. Endowed Fellowship was awarded to doctoral student Ben Cohen. Ben is from Havertown, Pennsylvania and graduated from Drexel with a BS/MS in Civil Engineering. Ben worked for Boeing Commercial Airplanes before he was offered the opportunity to return to Drexel to pursue a PhD in Civil Engineering. As a teaching fellow for the College of Engineering, Ben helped create a new civil engineering teaching module that introduces bridge engineering to freshman engineering students. Ben’s current research interests are involves asset Management of Infrastructure; Complex, Large-scale, Interconnected, Open, Sociotechnical (CLIOS) Systems; and Bridge Performance. Ben is advised by A. Emin Aktan, PhD and Sabrina Spatari, PhD.
The George Hill, Jr. Endowed Fellowship was awarded to doctoral students Kaitie Sniffen and Bidya Prasad. Kaitie is from Long Valley, New Jersey. She received her B.S. Chemistry, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and worked in Dow Chemical’s Electronic Materials Department before coming to Drexel for graduate school. Kaitie’s research interests involve algae as a biofuel, wastewater remediation, and coupling waste to energy processes. During the summer 2014 term she was the Teaching Assistant for Franco Montalto’s Sustainable Water Resource Engineering (CIVE 564) class and went with the class to the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in Venice, Italy to execute an in-depth investigation of the treatment efficiency of a constructed wetland. Kaitie is advised by Mira Olson, PhD and Christopher Sales, PhD.
Bidya Prasad is from Little Falls, New Jersey. She received her BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from Rutgers University and prior to coming to Drexel she worked in PepsiCo’s Research & Development Division. Bidya is currently a Research Assistant and her research interests involve modeling microbial risk using R and MATLAB. At the 2013 Society for Risk Assessment Conference, Bidya won the student award for her presentation “A Risk Model for Inhaled Toxins Associated with Spores of Stachybotrys Chartarum.” Bidya is advised by Charles Haas, PhD.
The Kling-Lindquist Partnership Engineering Fellowship was awarded to doctoral students Noura Abu Al Faraj, Fuad Khan, Chunyi Wang, and Seungcheol Yeom. Noura is from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and she received her BS and MS in Civil Engineering with a certificate in Stormwater Management from Temple University. She came directly to Drexel’s PhD program from Temple and her research interests involve risk assessment from shale gas development, data modeling, and water resources. Noura published a paper in 2014 titled "Characterization of Marcellus Shale Flowback Water" and was recently accepted to give an oral presentation at the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) conference in June. She is advised by Mira Olson, PhD.
Fuad Khan is from Dhaka, Bangladesh and came directly to Drexel after receiving his MS in Civil Engineering from North Dakota State University. He received his BS in Civil Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology. Fuad is currently a Freshman Design Fellow for the College of Engineering, where he serves as a lead instructor of core freshman level engineering courses. His research interests are Structural Health Monitoring and Non-destructive Evaluation and he recently published a paper on finite element modelling (FEM) for prediction of Infrared Thermography (IRT) results. Fuad is advised by Ivan Bartoli, PhD.
Chunyi Wang is from Harbin, Heilongjiang Provence, China and received his BS degree from Tongji University, China and then worked as a water treatment engineer in Shanghai where his work mainly focused on the design, construction, and operation of a 50,000 ton/day industrial waste water treatment plant in Shenyang Provence. As a Research Assistant at Drexel, Chunyi’s research is in air quality and involves simulating indoor organic aerosol concentrations by considering both outdoor organic aerosol transportation and indoor chemical reactions and then analyzing the relative importance of each source portion. He is advised by Michael Waring, PhD.
Seungcheol Yeom is from Daejeon, South Korea. He received his BS in Civil Engineering from ChungBuk National University, South Korea and his MS from Bucknell University in Civil Engineering with a Geotechnical concentration. He came to Drexel immediately after Bucknell and is currently a Teaching Assistant for Construction Materials (CIVE 250) and Soil Mechanics (CIVE 310). Seungcheol’s research involves unsaturated soil behavior he was recently invited to present his research at the 2015 International Foundations Congress & Equipment Exposition (IFCEE 2015). Seungcheol is advised by Kurt Sjoblom, PhD.
Lauren Smalls-Mantey was the recipient of the annual Professor Wesley O. Pipes Environmental Engineering Student Award, which is given to a doctoral student in environmental engineering whose research shows the most potential, with a preference to students who are working on biological systems or processes. This award is given at the CAEE Department’s Annual Alumni Lecture, supported by Wesley O. and Jane Pipes. The 2015 speaker was Andrea Welker, PhD, ’91, ’93, Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Villanova University, and Associate Director of the Villanova Urban Stormwater Partnership.
Lauren received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and her M.S. in Environmental Science at Drexel. Her research interests are sustainable urban development, urban water resources and management, relational databases, agent-based modeling, and low impact development technologies. Lauren was recently mentioned in a New York Times article featuring the research of her advisor, Franco Montalto, PhD and his Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Lab. The group is monitoring environmental data as part of the U.S. Forest Service’s Smart Forests Network.
BS/MS students Eliya Hurd (Civil/Environmental) and Audrey Ryan (Architectural/Civil) were recipients of The Steven E. Giegerich Memorial Scholarship. This scholarship is awarded annually to one or more graduate students in the Department. In 1984, John “Jack” Giegerich established this scholarship to honor his son Steven. While a student at Drexel, Steven was killed in a motorcycle accident. Since its founding, more than 40 Drexel students have benefited from the scholarship. There was a luncheon that provided the opportunity for current and past scholarship recipients to meet. This most recent luncheon honored the 30th anniversary since the inception of this scholarship. The guest speaker was Christine Fiori, PhD, ’92, ’94, and ’97, the Preston and Catharine White Fellow and Associate Director of the Myers-Lawson School of Construction at Virginia Tech.