In spring 2016, environmental engineering doctoral student Bita Alizadehtazi received the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) Department’s Professor Wesley O. Pipes Environmental Engineering Student Award, given to an environmental engineering doctoral student whose research shows the utmost innovation.
Bita was also awarded Drexel University’s Graduate College Teaching Excellence Award, a university-level award that honors outstanding graduate students who have shown excellence and gone above and beyond in their roles as teaching assistants at Drexel. This year there were over 500 eligible nominees from all disciplines across campus.
Alizadehtazi’s research interests involve green infrastructure and low impact development technologies, sustainable water resources planning and management, and urban ecohydrology. Specifically, she focuses on “the evolution and significance of soil, soil surface, and soil moisture in the ecohydrology of engineered urban green spaces.” In 2016, she published a paper in the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering titled "Comparison of Observed Infiltration Rates of Different Permeable Urban Surfaces Using a Cornell Sprinkle Infiltrometer," and was recently accepted to give a presentation at the 2016 International Low Impact Development (LID) Conference in August. She is advised by Associate Professor Franco Montalto, Ph.D.
For the entire 2015-16 academic year Alizadehtazi has been an Engineering Teaching Fellow for the College of Engineering’s Freshman Engineering Design Lab sequence (ENGR 101, 102 and 103), where she works closely with freshman students to solve various engineering design challenges such as structural failure case studies, engineering education lab module creation, and human assist devices. Some human assist device projects that she currently oversees are early cancer detector, a 3-D avatar program for measuring body dimensions for virtual clothing, a smart mirror that informs users of daily reminders and alerts, and a smart pill box, to name a few. She was also a Teaching Assistant for the CAEE Department in the summer of 2015.
Alizadehtazi is originally from Tehran, Iran and received her A.S. from Iran University of Medical Sciences and B.S. from Shahid Beheshti University, both in environmental health. She received her M.S. in environmental engineering from Drexel. In 2015, she obtained a certificate for completing the Drexel Teaching Portfolio workshop. Her desire to complete post-graduate study stems from her life-long interest to contribute to the future of her field and to society. She looks forward to continuing her research and training exceptional students.