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WORKSHOP2019 Rising Stars
October 24-25, 2019
DEAR RISING STARS PARTICIPANTS,
I would like to extend a warm welcome to MIT and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering! On behalf of my colleagues, I am honored to host you at our third Rising Stars in Civil and Environmental Engineering workshop.
Through two days of stimulating scientific interactions and career-oriented discussions, our aim is to establish a cohort of the next generation of women CEE leaders and to create an open forum for you to learn and ask questions about careers in academia. The hope is that this program will provide you with insights and inspiration to pursue your aspirations in a variety of disciplines, and that it will help establish a
professional network to continue beyond your visit to MIT.
Your acceptance to this program is a testament to your exceptional promise as a researcher, educator and academic leader. I am looking forward to meeting you all and learning about your work, including your past and future research, as well as educational goals.
With best wishes for a productive workshop and a pleasant stay at MIT,
MARKUS BUEHLER
McAfee Professor of Engineering and Department Head
MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering
WELCOME2019 Rising Stars Workshop
FROM THE DEPARTMENT HEAD OF CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1
It is a pleasure to welcome you all to MIT and to the third Civil and Environmental Rising Stars workshop! We selected 20 outstanding women to participate in this event; you represent a broad and exciting cross-section of research relevant to CEE. The goal of the workshop is to bring together the next generation of leaders in CEE and help prepare them for careers in academia. We hope that this workshop will strengthen the academic pipeline for women in CEE and provide the opportunity for this talented cohort to develop an academic network of peers. In addition to hearing from you through research presentations, the workshop will feature a keynote talk by the Chancellor and a series of panel discussions on relevant to early career issues, as
well as an opportunity to visit the MIT campus and interact with our students and faculty. I would like to thank the Steering Committee members for their efforts in helping to organize this event and identify our Rising Stars, and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering leadership and staff for its support. On behalf of the Steering Committee, I hope that you will find this week informative and inspiring. We look forward to meeting you all!
Colette L. Heald, Workshop Chair
Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
On behalf of CEE Rising Stars Steering Committee:
Penny Chisholm (Professor)
Tal Cohen (Professor)
Heidi Nepf (Professor)
Bori Stoyanova (HR Administrator)
Franz-Josef Ulm (Professor)
Penny Chisholm
Institute Professor and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Tal Cohen
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Bori Stoyanova
Human Resources Administrator
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Heidi Nepf
MacVicar Faculty Fellow and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Franz-Josef Ulm
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
WELCOME2019 Rising Stars Workshop MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering
FROM THE DEPARTMENT HEAD OF CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
WELCOME ON BEHALF OF RISING STARS STEERING COMMITTEE
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 32 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
AGENDAOCTOBER 24-25, 2019
2019 Rising Stars Workshop
All events held in Room 1-131, unless otherwise noted. Presentations and panels open to CEE female postdocs & senior graduate students (RSVP required for lunch on Oct 24, please contact Colette Heald). Faculty welcome throughout except lunches.
Thursday, October 248:30 – 9:00 am Welcome from Dean of Engineering
Professor Anantha Chandrakasan
Welcome from CEE Department Head Professor Markus J. Buehler
Welcome from Chair of CEE Rising Stars Steering Committee Professor Colette Heald
9:00 – 9:30 am Introductions
9:30 – 10:30 am 5 Research Talks A User-Centered Approach to Transportation Systems Planning and Design Atyyia Faaiqa Shaw (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Facility Location for Disaster Relief Distribution based on the Continuous Approximation of Total Social Costs Diana G. Ramirez-Rios (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Unintended consequences of energy sector decisions and policies on drinking water vulnerability Kelly Good (Villanova University)
Understanding the impact of climate extremes and wildfires on Californian watersheds using an integrated hydrologic model Fadji Maina (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Urine the cloud: Control of urea hydrolysis in urine diversion systems based on use frequency Daniella Saetta (Arizona State University)
10:30 – 11:00 am Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:45 am Presentation and Discussion MIT Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 54 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
11:45 am – 12:00 pm CEE graduate student & postdocs introductions
12:00 – 12:45 pm Lunch with CEE graduate students & postdocs (in 1-114)
12:45 – 1:45 pm 5 Research Talks Control of Opportunistic Pathogens in Drinking Water Systems by Phage Therapy Elyse Stachler (EAWAG)
Beyond the “Omics” crystal ball: Integrating omics approaches to model microbial community responses to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Smruthi Karthikeyan (Georgia Institute of Technology) Understanding and Preventing Waterborne Pathogen Transmission: Bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and practical application Sara Beck (EAWAG)
Climate shocks, agriculture and trade Nicole D. Jackson (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne) Reducing Agricultural Environmental Waste Using Life Cycle Assessment Yetunde Sorunmu (SUNY Albany)
1:45 – 2:00 pm Coffee Break
2:00 – 3:00 pm Panel #1: The Job Search & Interview Process (in 1-114) Professors Markus Buehler, Dave Des Marais, Ali Jadbabaie, Heidi Nepf
3:00 – 3:30 pm Coffee Break
3:30 – 4:30 pm Panel #2: The First Few Years of a Faculty Career (Mentoring, Promotion & Tenure) Professors Saurabh Amin, Otto Cordero, Colette Heald, Franz Ulm
4:30 – 5:30 pm MIT Campus Tour
6:00 – 8:00 pm Dinner with MIT faculty Evoo Restaurant, 350 Third Street, Cambridge
AGENDAOCTOBER 24-25, 2019
2019 Rising Stars Workshop
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 76 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
Friday, October 258:50 – 9:00 am Instructions for travel reimbursement, feedback forms
(coffee served)
9:00 – 11:00 am 10 Research talks Atmospheric chemical transformations: from tree emissions to particle formation Emma D’Ambro (US EPA)
Using space-based observations to guide emission control strategies for surface ozone pollution Xiaomeng Jin (Columbia University) The Atmospheric Chemistry in the Indoor Environment Chen Wang (University of Toronto)
Role of natural organic matter in methane emissions from northern peatlands Prachi Joshi (ETH-Zurich) Safer by design: predicting properties of new nanomaterials Natalia Sizochenko (Dartmouth College) Computational Analysis of Energy Barriers in the Bottom-Up Design of Small Scale Smart Material Systems Mahnoush Babaei (Carnegie Mellon University) Biomechanical modeling for wrinkling phenomenon in the internal elastic lamina of arteries Nhung Nguyen (University of Pittsburgh) Autonomous morphing of structural form under winds Fei Ding (University of Notre Dame) Sensing for Decisions to Enhance Societal Resilience Katherine Flanigan (University of Michigan) Physics-guided information acquisition and learning for urban infrastructure systems with constrained sensing capabilities Susu Xu (Qualcomm AI research)
11:00 – 11:30 am Coffee Break
11:30 – 12:30 pm Panel #3: Work-Life Balance (Time Management, Career & Family) Professors Tal Cohen, Jesse Kroll, Benedetto Marelli, and Desiree Plata
12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 – 2:30 pm Discussion of specific challenges facing women during faculty career Professors Penny Chisholm, Tal Cohen, Colette Heald, Tami Lieberman, Caitlin Mueller, Heidi Nepf
2:30 pm Adjourn
MAHNOUSH BABAEI Carnegie Mellon University
SARA BECK Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag)
EMMA D’AMBRO U.S. EPA
FEI DING UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
KATHERINE FLANIGAN University of Michigan
KELLY GOOD Villanova University
NICOLE D. JACKSON University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
XIAOMENG JIN Columbia University
PRACHI JOSHI Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, ETH Zürich
SMRUTHI KARTHIKEYAN Georgia Institute of Technology
FADJI MAINA Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
NHUNG NGUYEN University of Pittsburgh
DIANA G. RAMIREZ-RIOS Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
DANIELLA SAETTA Arizona State University
ATIYYA SHAW Georgia Institute of Technology
NATALIA SYZOCHENKO Dartmouth College
YETUNDE SORUNMU SUNY University at Albany, School of Public Health
ELYSE STACHLER Eawag
CHEN WANG University of Toronto
SUSU XU Qualcomm AI research
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARSIN CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
IN CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 98 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Mahnoush BabaeiPostdoctoral Research Associate Carnegie Mellon University Talk Title: Computational Analysis of Energy Barriers in the Bottom-Up Design of Small Scale Smart Material Systems
Mahnoush Babaei received her B.Sc. in Civil Engineering in 2010 from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. After graduation, she joined Prof. Khoei’s research group in Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Sharif University of Technology where she carried out the research on the analysis of metallic and ceramic nanopowder compaction using molecular dynamic simulations. After receiving her M.Sc. degree in 2013, she moved to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2014. She completed her second M.Sc. in Civil and Environmental Engineering and her Ph.D.
studies in Computational Mechanics in 2019 under supervision of Prof. Kaushik Dayal (Carnegie Mellon University) and Prof. Ravi Shankar (University of Pittsburgh). Her thesis work focused on using structural instabilities to generate high power and work densities in heat- and photo-mechanically active thin Liquid Crystal Polymeric films using nonlinear finite element models. During her studies at CMU, she also collaborated with Prof. Meagan Mauter on analysis of self-assembly of Membrane Proteins in block copolymer matrices at the presence of a magnetic field. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Prof. Sarah Bergbreiter’s Micro-Robotics Lab and her project focuses on modeling and design of Shape Memory Alloy-based ratcheting micro-scale actuators for high work density applications.
Sara BeckScientist Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) Talk Title: Understanding and Preventing Waterborne Pathogen Transmission: Bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and practical application
Sara Beck first learned about environmental engineering as a NASA flight controller supporting the International Space Station program. This work combined with her involvement in Engineers Without Borders-USA inspired her to study water reuse in other resource-limited settings, particularly in low- to middle-income countries. She switched careers, obtaining her MS in environmental engineering at Georgia Tech and her doctorate at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her doctoral research focused on the effects of ultraviolet (UV) light on bacteria, viruses, DNA/RNA,
and proteins for understanding and improving water disinfection. She continued this work through a Fulbright fellowship at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) near Bangkok, Thailand. There, her group incorporated UV-C light emitting diodes (LEDs) into water reuse systems in Southeast Asia and evaluated inactivation of Ascaris lumbricoides eggs, an intestinal parasite responsible for roundworm infections in 1.4 billion people worldwide. Now at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Sara is researching the application of an inexpensive woven textile from South Africa as a gravity-driven filter. Working with students from a variety of backgrounds, Sara uses micro- and molecular biology tools to understand and prevent pathogen transmission with the goal of bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and practical application.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1110 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Emma D’AmbroPost-Doctoral Fellow
U.S. EPA Talk Title: Atmospheric chemical transformations: from tree emissions to particle formation
Emma D’Ambro grew up in upstate NY, in a small town called Schaghticoke about halfway between Albany and Saratoga. She received a bachelor’s in Chemistry with minors in Math and Physics at Le Moyne College in Syracuse NY while running NCAA cross country. She then attended the University of Washington in Seattle and joined Joel Thornton’s group to study secondary organic aerosol formation from biogenically emitted hydrocarbons. She graduated December 2018 with a PhD in Chemistry and joined the EPA as a post-doc working with Ben Murphy and Havala Pye.
Her main analytical methods include chemical ionization mass spectrometry, chemically explicit box modeling, and quantum chemical calculations. Her current project involves utilizing CMAQ, a regional model developed at the EPA, to understand the emissions and fate of a class of persistent organic pollutants.
Fei DingPhD Candidate University of Notre Dame Talk Title: Autonomous morphing of structural form under winds
Fei is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame under the supervision of Prof. Ahsan Kareem. She received her degree of Master of Philosophy in Civil Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
and a Bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University, China.
Her research interest lies in the area of morphing structural profiles to urban wind environment. She is focusing on developing a cyber-physical sensing control and actuation system for autonomous morphing of tall buildings with the knowledge fusion of sensing, computing and data analytics. This technique will permit a building to intelligently morph its profile in real-time to curb the source of dynamic wind loads and to ultimately create a sustainable urban habitat under climate anomalies. She was awarded Thornton Tomasetti Foundation Student Innovation Fellowship in 2018 to fund this study. She is also carrying out research in the fields of uncertainty quantification (UQ) using data assimilation approaches and high-performance computing (HPC) in computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1312 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Katherine FlaniganPh.D. Candidate University of Michigan Talk Title: Sensing for Decisions to Enhance Societal Resilience
Katherine Flanigan is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Civil Engineering Intelligent Systems program at University of Michigan, advised by Professor Jerome Lynch. Katherine currently conducts research in the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems Technology where she advances and uses cyber-physical systems to inform deliberate and analytical pathways between sensing and decisions in the context of structural health monitoring and urban systems. At University of Michigan, Katherine is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and received Master’s degrees in Civil
Engineering in 2016 as well as Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2018. Katherine received her Bachelor’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) from Princeton University in 2014 where she was Captain of the Division I Varsity Women’s Tennis Team and received the CEE Department’s Sigma Xi Book Award and School of Engineering and Applied Science’s George J. Mueller Award for her research and academic achievements.
Kelly GoodVisiting Assistant Teaching Professor Villanova University Talk Title: Unintended consequences of energy sector decisions and policies on drinking water vulnerability
Kelly Good is a visiting assistant teaching professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Villanova University. She holds degrees in civil engineering from Villanova University (B.S.) and civil and environmental engineering (M.S. and Ph.D.) from Carnegie Mellon University, where her work was funded by a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship in Nanotechnology-Environmental Effects and Policy (NSF IGERT-NEEP) and Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRF). Good’s primary research interests relate to
the interactions of water systems with other infrastructure systems and the resulting effects on the environment and health. Most recently, she was named a 2019 Siebel Scholar in Energy Science in recognition for her work on understanding the effects of power plant bromide discharges on drinking water sources. Good is actively engaged in the Pennsylvania Section of the American Water Works Association (PA-AWWA), where her efforts have focused on increasing student and young professional membership and engagement. She previously worked as a water utility engineer for American Water and is a registered professional engineer in Pennsylvania.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1514 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Nicole D. JacksonGraduate Research Assistant University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Talk Title: Climate shocks, agriculture and trade
Nicole D. Jackson is a Ph.D. candidate in civil engineering with a specialty in energy-water-environment sustainability at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Previously, she completed a bachelor’s in civil engineering and master’s in material science at Illinois as well a master’s in engineering mechanics at Virginia Tech. Her current work focuses on linking climate, land use, and economic data to understand how extreme events affect agriculture across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Nicole has also served as a graduate co-coordinator for the Girls
Adventures in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science (GAMES) Camp, which helps introduce high school girls to environmental engineering and sustainability. In the future, she would like to continue working at the intersection of sustainable development, natural hazards, the food-energy-water nexus, and community resiliency.
Xiaomeng JinPhD Candidate Columbia University Talk Title: Using space-based observations to guide emission control strategies for surface ozone pollution
Xiaomeng Jin is a Ph.D. candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, advised by Arlene Fiore. Xiaomeng received her Bachelor of Engineering in Remote Sensing from Wuhan University in China, and Master of Science in Environment and Resources from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Xiaomeng’s general research area is atmospheric chemistry. Her research aims to improve our
understanding of the distribution and formation of air pollution via integrating satellite remote sensing with atmospheric chemical transport models and in situ observations. Supported by NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship, lately she has been using multi-satellite observations to diagnose the sensitivity of surface ozone pollution to precursor emissions over urban areas across the world.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1716 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Prachi JoshiPostdoctoral fellow Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, ETH Zürich Talk Title: Role of natural organic matter in methane emissions from northern peatlands
Prachi is an environmental engineer interested in carbon biogeochemistry, with an emphasis on electron transfer (redox) reactions. Prachi received her PhD from the Pennsylvania State University in 2018. At Penn State, she studied the biogeochemistry of iron oxide minerals, which control the cycling of nutrients and pollutants. As a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich, she focuses on the carbon cycle. Using a combination of laboratory and field techniques, she investigates the role of organic matter in methane formation and emission from northern peatlands.
Smruthi KarthikeyanPhD Candidate Georgia Institute of Technology Talk Title: Beyond the “Omics” crystal ball: Integrating omics approaches to model microbial community responses to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Growing up in Chennai, a city in Southern India, near one of the longest and busiest beaches in the world, made me curious about the environment and its health. After getting my undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering, I switched gears to obtain a Masters in Environmental Engineering from Columbia University.
I’m currently in the 5th year of my PhD in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Georgia Tech. I work with Dr. Kostas Konstantinidis and my research is highly interdisciplinary working at the interface of microbial ecology, computational biology
and engineering. I was chosen as a GoMRI (Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative) scholar from 2016-2019 and won the 2018 James D Watkins student award for excellence in research instituted by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. My research work focuses on using microbial “omics” which harnesses the power of computational biology and machine learning to elicit information from as little as a gram of soil. As a part of my PhD thesis, I have worked on developing integrated wet-lab and computational biology based approaches to model, predict and forecast ecosystem recovery patterns in the ecological niches affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1918 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Fadji MainaPostdoctoral Fellow Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Talk Title: Understanding the impact of climate extremes and wildfires on Californian watersheds using an integrated hydrologic model
Fadji Maina is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Born and raised in Niger, Fadji finished high school at the age of 16 and left her home country to attend University in Morocco. She received her PhD in 2016 from the University of Strasbourg in France.
Before joining the United States, Fadji worked as a graduate research assistant at CEA (The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission)
and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at CNRS (The French National Center for Scientific Research) in France and Politecnico di Milano in Italy. Her research is focused on:
· The numerical resolution, inverse problems and global sensitivity analysis of high-fidelity physics-based models
· Understanding the impact of climate extremes and wildfires on the hydrology using integrated hydrologic models
Nhung NguyenPostdoc University of Pittsburgh Talk Title: Biomechanical modeling for wrinkling phenomenon in the internal elastic lamina of arteries
I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Pittsburgh. Prior to this position, I obtained a Ph.D degree from Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Michigan. My research focuses on investigating nonlinear mechanics of soft and polymeric materials, biomaterials and composite materials through a combination of theory, finite element modeling and experimental observations.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2120 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Diana G. Ramirez-RiosPhD Student Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Talk Title: Facility Location for Disaster Relief Distribution based on the Continuous Approximation of Total Social Costs
Diana Ramirez-Rios is a PhD student and Research Assistant at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Transportation Engineering. She obtained her BS-MS in Industrial Engineering at Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia. Her research interests are in Humanitarian Logistics and Urban Freight Transportation. Her recent work includes optimization models in disaster response logistics, empirical studies on the impacts of human suffering, urban freight activity modeling, and game theoretic models in supply chains. Her dissertation work is on facility location and
allocation models for disaster response. She is student member of the Logistics of Disaster Response, Business Continuity and Humanitarian Response (ABR20) of Transportation Research Board. She is also a member of Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS), the Production and Operations Management Society, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, and Minority Issues Forum. She is currently the president of WTS student chapter at RPI for 2019-2020. She is a fellow of the ENO Future Leaders in Transportation, a Colciencias Scholar named by the Governor of the Atlantico Department in Colombia, and was part of the team of finalists for the 2017 Franz Edelman Award, who developed the Off-hour Delivery Program in New York City.
Daniella SaettaPhD Candidate Arizona State University Talk Title: Urine the cloud: Control of urea hydrolysis in urine diversion systems based on use frequency
Daniella Saetta is a PhD candidate in environmental engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. Prior to attending ASU, she received B.S. and M.E. degrees in environmental engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. Her current research is focused on the implementation of urine diversion systems in commercial and institutional buildings in the United States. A large component of her research includes the use of cyber-physical systems for monitoring and control of real-world
systems. Her past research experience includes conducting life-cycle assessments on drinking water treatment plants facing saltwater intrusion. Daniella was born in Bogotá, Colombia and has lived in the United States since 1997.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2322 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Atiyya ShawPh.D. Candidate Georgia Institute of Technology Talk Title: A User-Centered Approach to Transportation Systems Planning and Design
Atiyya is currently a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech studying Transportation Engineering and Psychology. Her research spans behavioral modeling, human factors engineering, and engineering education. She is motivated by a desire to better understand transportation system users, and aims to achieve this through improved measurement of behavior and performance. Broadly, she hopes that her work will shed light on how the built environment influences safety, mobility, and quality of life for all system users. Outside of research, Atiyya is an avid reader, design
enthusiast, and writer, who dreams of having her non-research writing published one day.
Natalia SyzochenkoPostdoctoral Research Associate Dartmouth College Talk Title: Safer by design: predicting properties of new nanomaterials
Dr. Sizochenko currently serves as a postdoctoral research associate at Dartmouth College (NH, USA). She earned a doctoral degree in Chemistry from University of Gdansk (Poland, 2016) and a master’s degree in chemistry from Odessa I.I. Mechnikov National University (Ukraine, 2011). Her current research stands at the interface of computational chemistry, biology, and computer science, focusing on predictive modeling of nanomaterials toxicity and protein-inspired antibiotics engineering. Her research was recently recognized and
financially supported by Lush Prize (2018). The interdisciplinary nature of Dr. Sizochenko’s interests rises from her belief, that unique and the most exciting ideas are born when scholars with different backgrounds meet. Her ultimate goal is to direct an interdisciplinary research program that bridges gaps between chemistry, biology, and machine learning in the context of drug development.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2524 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Yetunde SorunmuPostdoctoral fellow SUNY University at Albany, School of Public Health Talk Title: Reducing Agricultural Environmental Waste Using Life Cycle Assessment
Yetunde Sorunmu completed her PhD in Environmental Engineering in 2018 at Drexel University under the advisement of Dr. Sabrina Spatari, with a focus on life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis of pyrolysis-oil upgrade technologies. Aside from her research in Biofuels, she has also done some active work in the field of Urban Farming where she explored the environmental, economic and social sustainability of urban farming. In the course of her studies she combined her research with lecturing Life Cycle Assessment courses at Drexel University and at
Jefferson University. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas and a Masters in Chemical Engineering from Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at SUNY Albany with a research focus on the environmental impacts of food waste in food supply chain.
Elyse StachlerPostdoctoral Researcher Eawag Talk Title: Control of Opportunistic Pathogens in Drinking Water Systems by Phage Therapy
Elyse graduated with her PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in August 2018 under the advisement of Dr. Kyle Bibby. Her thesis was on the topic of microbial source tracking and developing novel human-specific and abundant viral-based assays to track wastewater pollution in the environment. During her postdoc at Eawag, she is focusing on probiotic methods of pathogen control in the built environment, with a specific focus on developing bacteriophages for control of biofilms harboring opportunistic pathogens such as Legionella
pneumophila and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. She also has experience with sequencing technologies, metagenomics, qPCR, ddPCR, among other microbiology and molecular biology tools. Outside of working hours, Elyse is involved with theatre and improv comedy and is often traveling or hiking on the weekends.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2726 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
2019 RISING STARS 2019 RISING STARS
Chen WangPostdoctoral Fellow University of Toronto Talk Title: The Atmospheric Chemistry in the Indoor Environment
As an environmental chemist, Chen’s research focuses on the heterogeneous chemistry in both the indoor and outdoor atmosphere. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Jon Abbatt’s group at the University of Toronto, studying the fate and chemistry of cigarette smoke and cleaning emissions indoors. She also participated in the indoor air quality field campaign (House Observation of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry, HOMEChem) to probe the chemistry of indoor environments in a real-world experimental setting.
Chen obtained her Ph.D. in environmental chemistry under the supervision of Professor Frank Wania from University of Toronto Scarborough. Her doctoral research focused on the gas-particle partitioning that occurs during the formation of secondary organic aerosol in the atmosphere. She used both laboratory and modeling approaches to quantify the influence of salts on aqueous phase partitioning and developed models to predict aerosol formation.
Susu XuResearch Scientist Qualcomm AI research Talk Title: Physics-guided information acquisition and learning for urban infrastructure systems with constrained sensing capabilities
Susu Xu is a research scientist at Qualcomm AI research. She received her Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University, majoring in advanced infrastructure systems. She obtained her Master’s degree in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University and her Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Tsinghua University. She worked in multiple disciplines to bridge the gaps between machine learning theory and Internet of Things applications. Her research focuses on sensing and learning in smart urban infrastructure systems, from bottom layers such
as sensing system optimization and machine learning algorithm development to real-world applications such as city-scale air pollution monitoring and earthquakes-induced infrastructure health monitoring. She has published in top-tier Computer Science ACM/IEEE Journals/Conferences (IEEE transactions on Mobile Computing, IPSN, SenSys, NeurIPS, ICMLA) and Civil Engineering Journals/Conferences(Frontiers in Built Environment, SPIE, Energies, World Conference on Earthquake Engineering). She received Liang Ji-Dian Graduate Fellowship, Dowd Fellowship, CMU CIT Dean Fellowship, Best Paper Award (IEEE ICMLA), and the champion of NeurIPS Adversarial Vision Challenge.
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2928 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
Locations and Transportation Lodging: Boston Marriott Cambridge
Two Cambridge Center, 50 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02142, tel. 617.252.4402
Transportation: The Marriott Hotel is within walking distance to and from the workshop location (33 Massachusetts Avenue), see map; it’s also in immediate proximity to Kendall Square subway station of the MBTA red line
Workshop: Building 1, Room 131 (33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139), see map
Guided Tour: Starts from Building 1, Room 131 and ends at Evoo Restaurant
(350 Third Street), see map
Networking Dinner: Evoo Restaurant, 350 Third Street, Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA, see map, tel: 617-661-3866
CAMPUS MAP
October 24-25, 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3130 Rising Stars Workshop Civil & Environmental Engineering
70 Pacific
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Henry G. Steinbrenner Stadium
Briggs FieldJack Barry AstroTurf Field
du Pont Tennis Courts
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E18E17
E23
E25E38
E39
E40
E55
E53
E52E52
36
16
26
7 4
4
2
6
6B
8
56
18 54
6462
5014W 14E
14N
14S
51
13 12
10
3839
24
3
1
37
3117
11
3
5
9
33
35
48
N4
44
4241
N9N10
34
W59W64
W45W41
W51
W8
NW21
NW20
NW15
NW14
NW13
NW12
W34
W33W32
W20
W31
NW61
N51
N50
NW16
NW17
7A
NW10
68
NW22
NW23
W5W7 W2
W1
W11
W15
E1
E2
E48
E60
4342
W4W71
W84
W85
W91
W70
NW30NW32
W35
500 TS
300 TSNE45
200 T
S
400 TSNE46
100 TS
700 TS
NE49
600 TS
NE47
NE48
NE125A
N16
N16A
N16C N16B
W56
W55 W36
W57
W51CW51D
NW35
6C
W98
W97
MarriottHotel
W89
W92
The Charles Stark DraperLaboratory, Inc.
NW86
NW98
N57
32D 32G
32
EE20
E90
EE19
Technology Square
33 Mass Ave
16 Vassar St
50 Broadway
350 3rd St
Contacts:
Colette L. Heald
Professor Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering heald@mit.edu | tel: 617-324-5666
Bori Stoyanova
Human Resources Administrator Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering bori@mit.edu | tel: 617-253-1594 cell: 617-909-5677
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