Spring2024Awards

Unstoppable: Gabrielle Dunn honored as overall Outstanding Undergraduate of the College

Anonymous — Tue, 07 May 2024 22:26:31 +0000

Unstoppable: Gabrielle Dunn honored as overall Outstanding Undergraduate of the College Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/07/2024 - 16:26

Susan Glairon

Gabi Dunn gives a speech at the 2024 Kiewit Scholars celebration.

Gabi Dunn and another student put final touches on the 2023 concrete canoe.

Civil engineering major Gabrielle Dunn’s dedication to academic, personal and professional development, as well as to support her peers, has earned her the 2024 Outstanding Undergraduate of the College award.

“Gabi juggles a packed schedule and still manages to exceed the accomplishments of most of her peers,” said Associate Teaching Professor Chris Senseney, who nominated her for the award.

Throughout her undergraduate career, Dunn has maintained a part-time job as a course assistant, where she conducted office hours, graded assignments and taught lessons. She also held leadership roles, most notably as the president of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter. Dunn is also a peer mentor with the BOLD Center and the Kiewit Design-Build Scholars Program.

Despite her extensive commitments and taking four graduate-level classes, Dunn, a civil engineering major at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, maintained an impressive 3.92 grade-point average.

Dunn will graduate this spring with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a minor in engineering management. Additionally, she’s on track to complete an MS in water resources engineering next spring through the Bachelor’s-Accelerated Master’s program.

She is actively involved in the Society of Women Engineers; the Design-Build Institute of America student competition team; the Colorado Contractors Association student competition team; and serves as secretary and treasurer of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chi Epsilon, an honor society for civil engineering students.

As a junior, she was selected by her peers as the Outstanding Kiewit Scholar, an honor typically awarded to a senior.

Lindsey Pratte, the Kiewit program administrator, said that Dunn’s proactive approach to learning led to her being invited to serve as a peer mentor.

“She has a spark of curiosity and intrinsic motivation to engage with the many opportunities that the College of Engineering has to offer,” Pratte said.

The past two summers, Dunn served as an engineering intern for Manhard Consulting in Greenwood Village, where she worked on hydraulic modeling for a 100-acre commercial site.

“In my 20-plus years of experience, rarely have I had the opportunity to work with an intern who is able to grasp new concepts and execute assigned tasks in a timely manner the way Gabi did,” said Julie Rentz, who supervised Dunn for two summers. “Her positive attitude and attention to detail led us to extend her internship into the fall.”

All-around mentor

Dunn served as vice president of the ASCE student chapter in her sophomore year and as president during her junior and senior years. As president, she organized the Concrete Canoe Pour Day, with a record 22 student participants in 2024 and ensured that the chapter met deadlines for the annual ASCE Student Symposium. Additionally she arranged weekly visits by engineering professionals and raised more than $6,000 in donations for the chapter.

“She single-handedly turned a chapter from a floundering group during COVID to a thriving student organization with passionate members,” said Senseney, who is the faculty advisor for the ASCE chapter.

Emma Andreasen, left, and Gabi Dunn at the 2024 Kiewit Scholars celebration. Both women are Kiewit Scholars who majored in civil engineering and received the Outstanding Undergraduate of the College Award; Andreason in 2023 and Dunn in 2024.

Dunn also served as a Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering ambassador, where she engaged with prospective students and their families and gave tours of the department’s lab spaces.

At the movie premiere, “Cities of the Future,” hosted by the ASCE Denver chapter at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Dunn spoke to K-12 students and community members about civil engineering and the concrete canoe that the ASCE student chapter was building. She also planned and executed kinetic sand and shake table demonstrations to simulate liquefaction.

“The students were amazed by the demonstration and talked to Gabi about careers in civil engineering,” Senseney said.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility (JEDIA)

While working in the BOLD Center, Dunn supported a diverse group of students and helped organize events that support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

She served as a student assistant at the SpectrumX Center, which brings in students to conduct research for a broadband mapping project. In this role, she developed a DEI curriculum to encourage universities to recruit students from diverse backgrounds and organized workshops to ensure students entering the program felt included and welcome.

And since the fall, she has worked in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Research and Innovation Office to organize workshops supporting faculty and staff in addressing JEDIA aspects within federal grant applications.

Through the WRTG 3035 Technical Communication and Design course, Dunn organized a mural painting “competition” amongst the students in the College of Engineering and Applied Science; the topic was supporting DEI in STEM.

“The Kiewit Scholars leadership team could not be more proud,” Pratte said, noting that the last two winners of the Outstanding Graduate of the College were Kiewit Scholars. "The only question is which Kiewit Scholar will be the next recipient."

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Congratulations to our 2024 CEAE department undergraduate award-winners!

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 21:54:45 +0000

Congratulations to our 2024 CEAE department undergraduate award-winners! Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/23/2024 - 15:54

Susan Glairon

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Manjeet Pandey honored as a 2024 New Face of Civil Engineering

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 20:47:57 +0000

Manjeet Pandey honored as a 2024 New Face of Civil Engineering Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/17/2024 - 14:47

An engineering assessment visit to a remote village in Nepal five months after the April 2015 earthquake.

A community hospital that Manjeet Pandey and the International Medical Corps built in the same village in 2016 .

Manjeet Pandey, a graduate research assistant at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder pursuing a master’s degree in civil engineering, was recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as one the 2024 New Faces of Civil Engineering for his outstanding contributions to the field.

In 2015, Pandey was drawn to relief work. While taking his final undergraduate exam at a university in Jaipur, India, he and his fellow students felt the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck his home country of Nepal, nearly 700 miles to the northeast.

Fresh out of college, Pandey became involved in a reconstruction project as a project engineer amid recovery efforts. Within five months he advanced to taking on leadership of the project and overseeing a team of engineers and public health professionals in constructing 21 community hospitals in Nepal.

Following the health post reconstruction project with International Medical Corps (IMC) Nepal, Pandey continued his impactful work by collaborating with the United World Schools organization to build 72 new schools in Nepal and later contributed to building 30 more schools in four other countries.

Read the full articles on the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) website...

ASCE feature article

Faces 2024 article

Manjeet Pandey, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder civil engineering master's student, was named a 2024 ASCE New Face of Civil Engineering. After the 2015 Nepal earthquake, he led the construction of 21 community hospitals in his home country of Nepal and helped build 102 schools in Nepal and worldwide.

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Three CEAE seniors take home CEAS graduating student awards

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:13:41 +0000

Three CEAE seniors take home CEAS graduating student awards Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/17/2024 - 11:13

Susan Glairon

Three graduating seniors from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering earned Graduating Student Awards from the College of Engineering and Applied Science this year and shared their thoughts about their experiences at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

Civil and architectural engineering students will celebrate graduation on Thursday, May 9, 2024 at 12 p.m.

Three seniors from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering received Graduating Student Awards from the College of Engineering and Applied Science and shared their thoughts about their �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder experiences.

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PhD Student Madeline Pernat honored with prestigious NSF fellowship

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 15:03:15 +0000

PhD Student Madeline Pernat honored with prestigious NSF fellowship Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/15/2024 - 09:03

Susan Glairon

Civil Engineering PhD Student Madeline Pernat received a 2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (GFRP), a prestigious award that recognizes and supports outstanding students in a wide variety of science-related disciplines, for her research on large-scale water management in the Colorado River Basin. Pernat is advised by Associate Professor Joseph Kasprzyk and Research Professor Edie Zagona, the director of the Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES).

The GRFP recognizes outstanding graduate students from across the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, paving the way for their continued work exploring some of the most complex and pressing issues of our time. This year the NSF awarded 27 �鶹��Ѱ�� students, including 18 from the College of Engineering and Applied Science, with the graduate research fellowship.

Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $37,000 and full coverage of tuition, fees and insurance, along with opportunities for international research and professional development that span five years.

What does it mean to you to have received the NSF GRFP?
Firstly, I am honored to receive the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. I am passionate about the research that I do, and I like to think that my enthusiasm for my work resonated with the reviewers. Secondly, I am grateful to everyone who has helped me reach this point in my academic journey, from my family, partner and undergraduate professors at Montana State University, to my current professors and advisors here at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. I really see this award as a testament to the support of all these individuals – without them, I don’t believe I would be where I am today.

Tell me about your research.
My research focuses on large-scale water management in the Colorado River Basin. The Colorado River is a vital source of water for the American Southwest, fueling its productive cities and agricultural regions. The utilization of the Colorado River’s waters is made possible by engineered infrastructure designed to store and deliver the river’s waters effectively – particularly through Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the largest reservoirs in the basin. These reservoirs function as “savings accounts,” storing water during times of surplus and allowing for the release and use of that water during drier periods. However, since the onset of the Southwest's "megadrought" in 2000, these reservoirs have consistently experienced higher rates of withdrawals than replenishment, leading to significant drops in reservoir levels. As of now, Lake Powell and Lake Mead are only about one-third full.

The current policies governing the operations of Lakes Powell and Mead are set to expire at the end of 2026, necessitating the development of new "post-2026" policies. This process is being undertaken by the Bureau of Reclamation, amidst challenging conditions of ongoing drought and low reservoir levels. My research, currently funded by the Bureau of Reclamation, takes place against the backdrop of these negotiations. The development of these new policies involves significant challenges, to name a few: a) many people and stakeholders depend on the Colorado River, often with competing interests that are difficult to balance, and b) the future, especially in terms of hydrology, is uncertain – we don’t know how much water will be available in the post-2026 era.

My research addresses these challenges through a twofold approach. The first part utilizes multiobjective optimization to generate new potential operating policies. This approach is used due to the presence of many conflicting objectives within the basin, such as ensuring water deliveries, producing hydropower, and meeting environmental flow requirements. Given these conflicting objectives, there is no single "optimal" policy that can satisfy all objectives simultaneously. Instead, multiobjective optimization is used to search for a set of policies, where each policy strikes a unique balance among the objectives. The generated policies cover a wide range in terms of performance characteristics, enabling various stakeholders to identify policies that cater to their specific interests while also understanding their tradeoffs and potential shortcomings.

Secondly, I am developing a novel visual framework to enhance the decision-making process. This framework will enable stakeholders and decision-makers to visualize the array of potential future scenarios we could experience post-2026, while also illustrating how various policies would perform across these potential scenarios. Utilizing a visual “map” (as shown in the bottom figure), users can navigate through these potential future scenarios and assess the performance of different policies at a simple glance.

Why is this research important to you?
My research in water management is important because it bridges many important domains: engineering, data science, science communication, politics, economics and social justice. Although my academic background is primarily in engineering, I believe that in order to maximize my impact as a researcher, I must have a comprehensive understanding of these other diverse areas. I view the Colorado River Basin, with its pressing water management issues, as an exceptional case study for understanding this interconnectedness.

My interest in this research began in my undergraduate years after reading “Where the Water Goes” by David Owen, which discusses water management in the Colorado River Basin. Reading this book just seemed to connect the dots for me. It showed me a field where having a strong technical background in engineering is important for understanding the system and its challenges, while also emphasizing the need to understand and appreciate the system's broader societal and environmental dimensions.

Tell me a little more about your work with the Kasprzyk Research Group and CADSWES.
The Kasprzyk Research Group primarily focuses on multiobjective decision problems and the optimization and analysis of environmental systems and CADSWES specializes in water resources systems modeling. Over the years, Professors Kasprzyk and Zagona have not only developed a strong connection between their research interests but have also established collaborative ties with the Bureau of Reclamation. Their collaborative efforts and the work of the many students they have co-advised, have significantly advanced water resources management, especially in the Colorado River Basin. I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of this team and to learn from some of the best in the field.

Image caption: Madeline Pernat developed a novel visual framework to enhance the decision-making process. Utilizing a visual “map," users can navigate through potential future scenarios and assess the performance of different policies at a glance. The figure on the left displays a map of potential future scenarios, where each hexagon, referred to as a neuron, represents a possible scenario in terms of hydrology and water demand. The figure on the right presents the same map but illustrates how a specific policy performs across each neuron/scenario.

Civil Engineering PhD Student Madeline Pernat received a 2024 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her research on large-scale water management in the Colorado River Basin.

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