October 2020

• Jack Montgomery received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for research on “From Pore to Pipe: A Multiscale Experimental and Numerical Study of Piping in Unsaturated Soil”.  This an outstanding accomplishment and a great sign of recognition. 
• Advanced Structural Engineering Lab (ASEL) is open
• Carla Story was selected to receive the AU Spirit of Excellence Award for the month of September. 
• Billur Kazaz (Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering) took first place in the College’s “Finish in Five” competition.  The competition challenges graduate students to give a 5-minute rapid-fire presentation on their research project.  Billur’s presentation was titled “Deep Learning-Based Aerial Stormwater Inspections”.  Billur is advised by Dr. Mike Perez.

September 2020

• Natalie Capiro has a new research project on the Development of Predictive Tools for Assessment of Natural Attenuation Capacity and Treatment Transition at Chlorinated Solvent Sites, sponsored by the Strategic Environmental Remediation Development Program (SERDP) through the Department of Defense (DoD), $1,282.250 – congratulations!

August 2020

• We are now the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
• Dr. Dave Timm is Associate Department Chair.
• Jenny Sconyers is Student Initiatives Administrator for CE students. Student Initiatives Administrator is to assist with our student chapters.
• Dr. Anton Schindler was selected to serve a three-year term as Voting Member of the Technical Activities Committee (TAC) of the American Concrete Institute (ACI).  The Technical Activities Committee manages all ACI technical committee activities, development of ACI design codes and construction specifications, development of ACI reports, and oversight of technical content of ACI convention programs and special publications that include peer-reviewed articles in symposium volumes.  TAC consists of 12 voting members—with six members currently in academia—that collaborate with ACI staff to manage the technical activities of ACI

• Dr. Mike Stallings retired after 32 years as a faculty member and 11 years as CE Department Head.
• Dr. Mark Barnett submitted his resignation as Associate Chair effective July 1. He served as Associate Chair since 2014.
• PhD student Zack Coleman was selected to receive the very prestigious American Concrete Institute (ACI) Daniel W. Falconer Memorial Fellowship for $15,000 for the 2020-2021 academic year.  Zack’s advisor is Dr. Anton Schindler.
• Auburn has accepted to host the 2022 ASCE Southeast Student Competition. It will be 900 to 1000 students from around the southeast and Puerto Rico. It will be a great opportunity to showcase our school and program.  Faculty advisor is Dr. Justin Marshall.
• Sylwia Stawska received an award for the Most Exceptional International Students of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.  Sylwia is a doctoral student in Structural Engineering.
• Tristan Wilson has been selected as the Outstanding ASCE Student by the Alabama Section ASCE.
• Dr. Robbie Barnes was selected as a member of the newly formed committee charged with developing the first set of building code requirements for precast concrete structures for eventual adoption into the International Building Code. This is Joint ACI-PCI Committee 319 Precast Structural Concrete Code.
• Dr. Jeff LaMondia is the winner in the competition for NCHRP Project 08-132: Access America's Great Outdoors: Forecasting Recreational Travel Demand, in partnership with Resource Systems Group (RSG) in Vermont. The research will involve modeling long distance travel to all US National Parks and State Parks. They will be working very closely with the National Park Service, Federal Lands, and the State Boards of Public Lands to develop tools that will be used for economic and transportation modeling for the foreseeable future.

April 2020

• Book on 150-year Auburn Civil Engineering History: "A Century and a Half of Civil Engineering at Auburn Since 1872" by Arthur L. Slotkin; 1000 copies of distribution: donors, CE Advisory Board, deans, CE faculty, and development office.

January 2020

• Debbie Tidwell was recognized as a December winner of the Spirit of Excellence Award.  This is a very well deserved recognition and CE office under Debbie’s supervision is a nice and efficient work place for students, faculty and staff.
• Guy O’Connor (CE in 1985) is selected as 2020 Outstanding CE Alumnus.  He will be honored at the Spring 2020 Faculty/Student Awards and Alumni Reception on April 3.
• Antonio Soldo’s (Ph.D. Student) latest work on biopolymer-amended soil was recently published in Nature – Scientific Reports. His advisor is Dr. Marta Miletić
• Dr. Jeff LaMondia was elected as a member of the International Steering Committee for Transport Survey Conferences (ISCTSC), which is recognized as the highest honor for travel survey researchers in the world. This small elected board represents leaders from around the world and is responsible for directing international travel survey methods research and organizing a biannual conference.
• Dr. Jeff LaMondia was invited to chair and organize the conference workshop on long distance travel big data and survey applications, this summer in Portugal.
• Paper co-authored by Jose Vasconcelos and with Harry Schulz was selected to be featured in the ASCE SmartBrief publication on the area of smart infrastructure.
• CE Assessment Report prepared by Dr. Barnes and the Undergraduate Program Committee under his leadership received a “Mature” or “Exemplary” on every element of the Quality of Assessment rubric. In a result, the Civil Engineering program is awarded the Exemplary designation (top 26% out of 263 assessment reports)
• Megan Foshee is the 2019 Civil Engineering Student of the Year