Latest News

Awards bestowed upon Laura Hernandez-Bassal

Laura Hernandez-Bassal, PE, is a current structural and earthquake engineering Ph.D. candidate at UC Davis. Recently, she was awarded fellowships from the ACI Foundation and ASCE. 

The ACI Foundation is a non-profit subsidiary of ACI that promotes progress, innovation, and collaboration in the concrete industry through strategic investments in research, scholarship, and ideas. 

The ACI Foundation awarded Hernandez-Bassal the ACI Presidents' Fellowship. 

Barbato awarded the 2020 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize

Professor Michele Barbato has been awarded the 2020 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize for “his outstanding research in structural engineering and engineering mechanics, with emphasis on finite element response sensitivity analysis, seismic response steel-concrete composite systems, seismic pounding mitigation, performance-based hurricane engineering and hurricane hazard mitigation, nonstationary stochastic dynamics, multi-hazard performance-based engineering, and sustainable construction materials.”

NSF CAREER Award: Martinez

Alejandro Martinez, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program, for his proposal, “Soil Penetration Through Bioinspired Stress State Manipulation.”

The grant is worth up to $500,000 over five years. Martinez studies bioinspired geotechnics, a field that looks to biological organisms for inspiration to solve problems in geotechnical engineering.

Bruce West Honored by Chancellor May

University of California, Davis, Chancellor Gary S. May announced Feb. 7 he will award the UC Davis Medal to alumnus Bruce West, chair of the UC Davis Foundation Board and a member of the Chancellor’s Board of Advisors.

The chancellor made the surprise announcement at a foundation board meeting this morning. “I’m pleased to say that the 2020 recipient of the UC Davis Medal is right here in the room,” May said as he turned to West.

West

James Cheney Obituary

Professor James Cheney passed away on Nov. 22, 2019, just before Thanksgiving.  He was one of the first faculty hired in the Civil Engineering in 1962 and remained with the faculty until his retirement.  Please follow the link here to read more about his life, both personal and professional. 

ASCE/SEI Symposium: Bay Area Resilience on 30th Anniversary of Loma Prieta Earthquake

Professor Brian Maroney speaker on panel at ASCE/SEI Symposium 

Many UCD students and alumni attended the ASCE/SEI San Francisco Chapter hosted a symposium on resilience to mark the 30th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The speaker panel consisted of representatives from BART, Caltrans, EBMUD, City of Oakland, and the San Francisco Office of Resilience and Capital Planning. This event presented a unique opportunity to learn about the resiliency efforts of major building and infrastructure agencies in the Bay Area. 

A Building Legacy - Jeff Hoopes

CIVIL ENGINEERING WAS ALWAYS IN HIS BLOOD:

His grandfather was a UC Berkeley civil engineering graduate. But UC Davis ran in his family, too: As a little boy, Hoopes actually lived on the UC Davis campus with his family while his father pursued his Ph.D. in Russian history. After his dad’s hiring as the first professor at Eureka’s College of the Redwoods, Hoopes grew up in Humboldt County enjoying his math studies and participating in summertime survey-crew internships.

Modeling small cigar smoke in the lungs

Everyone knows cigarettes are bad for you. Much research has been done and because of that, legislators have put a lot of sales restrictions and taxes on them. This is why companies are developing new products that deliver nicotine such as vapes, small cigars and cigarillos that have sugary flavors to addict a new generation of users.

These newer products have really caught on, especially with young people, who are adopting them faster than they can be researched or regulated.

Two CEE Faculty Receive NSF CAREER Awards

Civil and Environmental Engineering Assistant Professors Holly Oldroyd and Verónica Morales each received the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award for their research in environmental engineering.