Annual Report Year 2009 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

the Charles E. Via, Jr. 

Department of Civil and 

Environmental Engineering 

2009 Via Report • No. 23 

Patton Hall 

William Knocke 

Samuel Easterling 

The Year of Transition

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Department Head’s Message..............................................................................................................1 

Research News 

Disaster Management: A Complex World Brings New Vulnerabilities.........................................2 

Infrastructure Development: Implementation Is A Catalyst For Growth And Progress.............4 

Nanotechnology Impact: Are Nanomaterials A Risk To Environmental Health........................6 

Transportation Modeling: Systems Analysis Is Crucial to Future Safety And Planning............8 

New Faculty.......................................................................................................................................10 

Faculty Honors And Achievements.................................................................................................11 

Faculty News.....................................................................................................................................12 

Student News....................................................................................................................................15 

Alumni News.....................................................................................................................................18 

Program Areas 

Complete CEE Faculty Listing......................................................................................................19 

Vecellio Construction and Engineering Management................................................................20 

Environmental and Water Resources Engineering.....................................................................23 

Geotechnical Engineering.............................................................................................................30 

Structural and Materials Engineering...........................................................................................33 

Transportation Infrastructure and Systems Engineering...........................................................37 

Via Scholars.......................................................................................................................................41 

Via Alumni — Where Are They Now..............................................................................................57 

Donors................................................................................................................................................64

DEPARTMENT HEAD’S MESSAGE 

Changing times 

Future filled with challenges and opportunities 

Fifteen Years 

A lot has changed within the Via Department 

of Civil and Environmental Engineering 

during this time. 

The past 15 years have seen over 3500 

degrees conferred to undergraduate and 

graduate civil engineers. Over 50 percent of 

the current faculty and over 60 percent of the 

current staff in CEE were hired. 

External funded research has seen a fivefold 

increase; and our national reputation 

as measured by the U.S. News and World 

Report rankings have reached collective alltime 

highs with a 2009 undergraduate ranking 

of 10th, a graduate CEE ranking of 7th 

and a graduate environmental ranking of 9th. 

The English Geotechnical Laboratory, the 

Baker Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory 

and a major addition to the Thomas M. Murray 

Structural Engineering Laboratory were 

completed through private fund raising from 

many alumni and friends of the department. 

These are but a few of the many accomplishments 

and changes that have occurred 

in the past 15 years. 

Up until August 9th of this year, there has 

been one constant in the presence of all 

the change represented in the tremendous 

growth and progress. That constant has 

been the leadership of Bill Knocke as head 

of the Via Department of Civil and Environmental 

Engineering. 

Professor Knocke will be the first one to 

tell you that the success is a direct result 

of the hard work and dedication shown by 

our faculty, staff and students, as well as 

the loyal support of our alumni and friends. 

However, it is my firm belief that the department 

has reached the position that we have 

because of the exceptional leadership and 

unyielding commitment that Bill Knocke 

has shown to our department, college and 

university. No one exemplifies the university 

motto Ut Prosim – That I May Serve any 

more than Professor Knocke. 

You can read more about Bill’s service 

and plans for the future as he returns to a 

role of full time teaching and research on 

page 13. 

Bill, on behalf of the faculty, staff, students, 

alumni and friends of the Via Department 

of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 

let me simply say thank you and we are 

deeply indebted to your service. 

Now To The Future 

When I wrote this message, I was beginning 

my second day on the job as the department 

head. First, let me offer a collective 

thank you for the overwhelming support that 

I’ve received from all parts of the Virginia 

Tech family – alumni and friends of the department, 

faculty, staff and students. I cannot 

imagine that anyone entering this position 

could have had a stronger show of support – 

as I say it has been overwhelming. 

Certainly the future is filled with both challenges 

and opportunities. The financial situation 

in which we find ourselves in the midst 

of is certainly a challenge. Levels of state 

support continue to fall and higher education 

is carrying a significant portion of the budget 

reductions. 

I tend to be an optimist, and so I say to 

you that as bad as things are, I believe that 

Virginia is in better shape than many other 

states and that Virginia Tech is better positioned 

to cope than most universities. 

Regardless of how well prepared we may 

be, the economic downturn has and is affecting 

our program. We, like many others, 

will get through it and make every effort to 

maintain the high quality program that you 

and we have come to expect. 

Opportunities exist on many fronts and I 

am excited about what they offer. This fall 

semester we once again welcomed an academically 

talented and excited group of students 

to campus. The opportunity to interact 

with high caliber undergraduate and graduate 

students is what fundamentally drives the 

faculty and staff. 

I also continue to be thrilled with the opportunity 

to work with so many enthusiastic 

and dedicated alumni. The strong support of 

our alumni is not only inspiring but is a big 

part of the success of the department. 

The engagement and generosity of our 

alumni and friends enable us to fund scholarships, 

build laboratories such as those I 

mentioned earlier, support student field trips, 

recruit and recognize faculty through named 

professorships and in many other ways. 

While this support helps us in critical ways 

during the tough 

economy, what it 

is really doing is 

taking your department 

to great 

places. One of 

the aspects of 

my new job that 

I’m looking forward 

to the most 

is continuing to 

meet and work 

with more of 

our alumni and 

EASTERLING friends. 

The last opportunity 

that I’ll mention is on the funded 

research front, an area in which our faculty 

continues to have great success. This success 

tends to feed on itself and attract additional 

research and visibility for our program. 

One measure of the success is the annual 

ranking by the National Science Foundation. 

The most recent NSF rankings, which were 

based on FY 2007 expenditures, show CEE 

as the leading department in the College of 

Engineering. This is a great accomplishment 

and directly attributable to efforts of our faculty 

and supporting staff. 

Although he has not yet joined us, we 

are looking forward to welcoming Dr. Adrian 

Rodriguez-Marek to Blacksburg as a member 

of our faculty beginning in August 2010. 

Dr. Rodriguez-Marek will be a member of our 

geotechnical program area and joins us from 

Washington State University. Adrian brings 

great strength to an already strong group 

of faculty, with his research largely focused 

in the geotechnical earthquake engineering 

area. 

In closing, let me reiterate my appreciation 

for the opportunity to serve as the head of 

such a great department. I’m excited about 

what lies ahead! 

With kind regards, 

2009 | VIA REPORT | 1

RESEARCH NEWS 

James R. 

Martin 

Disaster management 

A complex world brings new vulnerabilities 

W 

hen dealing with a disaster, 

at least one expert believes 

the governing bodies should 

resemble a starfish, and not a spider. 

And his intriguing theories about why are 

gaining momentum across the U.S. and 

around the world. 

James R. Martin, director of Virginia 

Tech’s Institute for Disaster Risk Management, 

is basing some of his novel 

approach to mitigating disaster to the 

book, “The Starfish and the Spider,” by Ori 

Brafman and Rod Beckstrom. Released in 

July of 2008, it explores “the phenomenal 

and unstoppable new power of the starfish 

organizations” in the business world. 

“A disaster is no time to exchange a 

business card,” Martin said, quoting these 

words that he first heard from a colleague, 

Brian Tishuk, executive director of ChicagoFirst. 

Martin continues to echo Tishuk’s 

words, and uses them as an excellent 

reason to propose this shared leadership 

concept to change the way the public and 

private sector now look at disasters. 

Starfish have the ability to grow a new 

arm if one is cut off, and even more intriguing, 

the detached arm can develop 

into an entirely new body. By contrast, cut 

off the head of a spider, and death is immediate. 

Martin said these opposite biological 

events can be analogous to the various 

crises resulting from a disaster. If one responding 

agency is immobilized, the rest 

should continue to function seamlessly as 

in the case of the starfish. 

As the business world enters into more 

organizational charts that look like starfish, 

instead of the more traditional topdown 

communities, stories of successes 

abound. Authors Brafman and Beckstrom 

cite Craig’s List’s crippling of the newspaper 

classified ad industry, Napster’s 

success in the global music world, and the 

community-based Wikipedia over the traditional 

Encyclopedia Britannica. 

Martin, a professor of geotechnical 

engineering who specializes in the study 

of the construction of infrastructure such 

as roads and buildings for increased resilience 

to natural and human-induced or 

terrorist activities, is a strong proponent of 

community-based leadership to minimize 

disasters. 

“The private sector sets up a balancing 

act between efficiency and public vulnerability,” 

Martin explained. As an example, 

he spoke of the phone company that 

wants to make its profit. Yet, past disasters 

prove that more switches are needed 

to handle the overload on communications 

networks that arrives with an unexpected 

event. If the company elects to trim efficiency 

to increase its profit, this decision 

“may make the public more vulnerable 

during the disaster,” Martin said. 

“Disasters are multidisciplinary,” Martin 

said. “Our highly inter-connective complex 

world brings new vulnerabilities. We now 

depend on high tech solutions and efficient 

infrastructures … Our center is looking 

at disasters in a holistic way. Hurricane 

Katrina had engineering, political, social, 

economic and environmental issues.” 

In a disaster, the government must 

coordinate efforts but the private sec- 

Continued on next page 

2 | VIA REPORT | 2009

RESEARCH NEWS 

tor must perform much of the work. As 

with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 

construction utility, banking, and other institutions 

needed to interact, and it is well 

documented that many things did not run 

smoothly. 

So, “to develop resilient solutions for the 

problems of the 21st Century, where solutions 

come from many different people, 

in conjunction with policy makers, we 

need the leadership networks of starfish. 

Instead of one strong head, we need the 

transportation, water, power, and other 

industries to share the leadership,” Martin 

said. 

Martin pointed to the creation of the All 

Hazards Consortium (AHC), a 501c3 nonprofit 

dedicated to re-engineering the way 

state governments are collaborating with 

industry, as the “first starfish” organized 

to handle disasters. AHC is comprised of 

eight Mid-Atlantic states plus the District 

of Columbia. According to its website, it 

visualizes the government as the owner 

of the problem, with the private sector 

owning most of the assets, technologies 

and solutions. The universities provide the 

research and education to address the 

problem and the non-profit organizations 

provide access to information and people 

who are focused on a particular aspect of 

the problem. 

Thus, AHC is attempting to bring together 

all of the stakeholders in a powerful 

environment of collaboration to solve the 

tough problems that require resources 

from every sector. http://www.ahcusa.org/ 

whols.htm 

“AHC is working together in an unprecedented 

way,” Martin said. “The county 

government is on a level playing field with 

the head of the Federal Emergency Management 

Agency (FEMA).” 

DRM at Virginia Tech has now partnered 

with AHC and is using this model 

in an attempt to persuade the federal 

government that there should be 10 such 

regions in the country. 

And in an effort to enhance this model, 

Martin is investigating the use of computer 

simulations to model the various responses 

during a disaster. “With our simulations 

we can see the impacts. The key is no 

one is in control. The small company has 

as much influence as the big company,” 

he explained. 

“This modeling component of the nation’s 

infrastructure is new,” said Martin 

who has worked on the building of numerous 

structures in areas where the probability 

of earthquakes is high. 

To produce the model, he is working 

with researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics 

Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech. 

“Once we develop the system, a city manager 

could turn on the program and work 

through the sophisticated tools to manage 

his particular environment. The product 

will be a universal tool,” Martin said. In 

addition to VBI, he is partnering with Virginia 

Tech’s Institute for Policy and Governance, 

the Center for Power Electronics 

Systems, and Space@VT, as well as the 

Brookings Institute of Washington, D.C. 

“We are creating a foundation, and hoping 

to do something truly revolutionary. It’s 

a leap and definitely outside my comfort 

zone,” Martin said. 

But the time seems right. As the Obama 

administration is focusing so much of its 

efforts on the rebuilding and repair of the 

nation’s infrastructure, Martin was asked 

by the American Society of Civil Engineers 

(ASCE) to introduce the concept of “New 

21st Century Disaster Vulnerability Challenges” 

at it recent statewide meeting 

in Williamsburg, Va. ASCE then asked 

Martin to supply his ideas to the Obama 

transition team. And in October of 2009, 

he developed a special session, “Infrastructure 

Investment and Sustainable 

Solutions” at ASCE’s 139th Annual Civil 

Engineering Conference. 

“The synopsis of this session was the 

world is a smaller place, and the engineer’s 

role in designing infrastructure is 

evolving rapidly. Recent disasters, such 

as the levee failures during Hurricane 

Katrina, the Midwest flooding, the 2003 

Northeast Power Blackout, and the collapse 

of the I-35 W bridge in Minnesota, 

have exposed the far-reaching effects a 

local disaster can have on both a domestic 

and a global scale,” Martin said. 

A year prior to the ASCE meeting, DRM 

held a workshop at the National Regulatory 

Commission explaining its new paradigm 

for minimizing disasters. And Martin 

presented at the 2008 International Disaster 

Reduction Conference, held in Davos, 

Switzerland, and sponsored by the United 

Nations. This presentation was done in 

partnership with Virginia Tech’s Institute 

for Policy and Governance (IPG). Results 

of this symposium will be featured in a 

special issue of the Journal for Emergency 

Management on “Multi-Organizational and 

Networked Alliances.” Martin and Max 

Stephenson of IPG are the editors of this 

journal. 

Also, the Naval Post Graduate School 

Center for Homeland Defense and 

Security published a special report on 

“Multi-Jurisdictional, Network Alliances 

and Emergency Preparedness” based in 

part on the work of DRM. FEMA and the 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

sponsored the report, and in it, the DHS 

underscored the need for “building effective 

partnerships between all levels of the 

government, the private sector, international 

partners, and the general public. 

Research shows that multi-organizational 

partnerships can produce greater ability 

and timeliness in response and recovery, 

better communication and coordination, 

and reduce vulnerability and consequence.” 

Martin is working with AHC ChicagoFirst 

and several other partners to bring this 

model to each of the 10 FEMA regions in 

the U.S. 

DRM is working on a number of smaller 

projects, including: serving as a Disaster 

Recovery Center to a classified data provider 

for the Pentagon and other major 

clients; working on a landslide risk study 

in Romania and conducting analyses for a 

risk study for a major Romanian dam that 

is threatened by landslides; and conducting 

similar mitigation projects in Turkey, 

Italy and Switzerland. DRM also provides 

training to major agencies such as FEMA, 

ASCE, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and 

the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 

about four times annually. 


RESEARCH NEWS 

Infrastructure development 

Implementation is a catalyst for growth and progress 

Michael J. 

Garvin 

Over the roughly last two decades, 

alternative approaches for delivering 

infrastructure projects such 

as public-private partnerships (PPP) have 

received significant attention in the United 

States, particularly in Virginia. 

In northern Virginia, the Dulles Greenway 

was one of the first U.S. highway 

projects to be delivered by a PPP franchise 

agreement. The extension of the 

existing Dulles Toll Road was intended 

to provide a more attractive commuter 

route and serve as a catalyst of property 

development. Planning started in 1987, 

and a private consortium named TRIP II 

secured the right to develop the extension 

as a toll road. After a schedule slip, the 

toll road opened in 1995 and was soon in 

financial distress. To make matters worse, 

the Virginia Department of Transportation 

(VDOT) started improving Route 7, 

a competing free road, marginalizing the 

government’s commitment to the Greenway 

project. 

Seven years ago, VDOT issued a request 

for the private sector to join with the 

state to develop proposals for improvements 

to Interstate 81, one of the top eight 

trucking routes in the U.S., and considered 

to be operating in a substandard, 

even dangerous condition. Several studies 

occurred but the extensive changes to the 

corridor envisioned never materialized. 

These are just two examples cited by 

Michael J. Garvin, associate director of 

Virginia Tech’s Myers-Lawson School of 

Construction who is tenured through the 

Via Department of Civil and Environmental 

Engineering. “Despite the recent economic 

turmoil, indicators suggest that the 

utilization of PPPs in the United States will 

not cease,” Garvin said. “The current conditions 

have made these arrangements 

more challenging to implement, but this 

is not necessarily a bad thing. The due 

diligence necessary with such projects is 

significant, so the economic situation is 

forcing decision-makers and analysts to 

sharpen their pencils.” 

Garvin recently co-authored a paper 

with Doran Bosso, a former Virginia Tech 

graduate student now with Skanska Infrastructure 

Development, titled, “Assessing 



RESEARCH NEWS 

the effectiveness of infrastructure publicprivate 

partnership programs and projects” 

that appeared in the October, 2008 issue 

of Public Works Management & Policy. 

They wrote about several other projects, 

including the Pocahontas Parkway, 

near the Commonwealth’s state capitol. 

Plans for this project started around 1980 

when state transportation officials wanted 

an extension of the east-west connection 

between I-95 and I-295 south of Richmond. 

Progress stalled when state funds 

did not materialize in the late 1980s. 

An agreement was reached between 

VDOT and the joint venture team of Flour 

Daniel and Morrison Knudsen, and the 

8.8-mile route began opening in stages 

in 2002 at a cost of $314 million. Once 

tolls were activated, consumer demand 

dropped, generating half of the expected 

revenue. 

So, in 2006, Transurban, an international 

toll road owner and operator with 

interests in Australia and North America, 

acquired its first transportation asset in 

the U.S., entering into an agreement with 

VDOT to effectively lease the parkway for 

99 years. 

“The public-private partnership movement 

is arguably the most significant 

worldwide trend in the public sector,” 

Garvin and Bosso wrote. In countries with 

emerging economies, financially challenged 

public administrations look toward 

the private sector to develop basic infrastructure. 

But in the U.S., activity is just 

beginning to pick up, they noted. 

With the examples they cite in their 

paper, they provide reasonable doubt that 

the expected benefits always occur. However, 

Garvin noted that with the proper 

“framework,” PPPs can succeed. The crux 

is the “notion that PPP strategies must 

balance the interests of society, state, 

industry, and the market for ultimate success.” 

Garvin cited three interplaying factors 

driving the progress of the market: the 

general reluctance of public agencies and 

governments to raise taxes; the emergence 

of private sector participants who 

are capable of handling the risks and delivering 

the services of infrastructure projects; 

and the attractiveness of privately 

financed projects in terms of returns to 

investors. 

PPPs must have “clear and enforceable 

partnership conditions,” Garvin said, 

and he and Bosso proposed the following 

working definition for these arrangements: 

A PPP is a long-term contractual agreement 

between the public and private sectors 

where mutual benefits are sought and 

where ultimately the private sector provides 

management and operating services 

“The 

publicprivate 

partnership 

movement 

is arguably 

the most 

significant 

worldwide 

trend in 

the public 

sector.” 

~ Michael Garvin, 

~ Doran Bosso 

and/or puts private finance at risk. 

Garvin argued the “significance of this 

definition” is it excludes both design-build 

and the transfer or sale of infrastructure 

assets or services to the private sector. 

“Design-build is a modest derivative of the 

design-bid-build project delivery system, 

which is the dominant and often mandated 

delivery method for public works projects 

in the United States. This distinction is 

more than semantic as the transfer of an 

asset or a service qualifies as privatization.” 

In a March, 2009 report for the Federal 

Highway Administration (FHWA), the 

American Association of State Highway 

and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), 

and the National Cooperative Highway 

Research Program (NCHRP), Garvin 

served as one of nine authors and as 

the report facilitator. The publication was 

titled, “Public-Private Partnerships for 

Highway Infrastructure: Capitalizing on 

International Experience.” 

The three agencies commissioned the 

study through its International Technology 

Scanning Program aimed at evaluating 

innovative foreign technologies and practices. 

Since 1990, more than 75 international 

scans have been completed on 

topics ranging from bridge construction to 

intelligent transportation systems. 

As a result, the U.S. has implemented 

a number of improvements and incurred 

substantial savings in road program technologies 

and practices, according to the 

report. 

In its scan of P3s, Garvin and his colleagues 

– members of the FHWA, various 

state DOTs, and the National Council for 

Public-Private Partnerships – examined 

the practices of other countries that involve 

the private sector in the construction 

of various types of highway infrastructure. 

They documented the lessons learned 

and made implementation recommendations 

to improve U.S. policy and practice. 

Among their findings, Garvin said, 

“Highway PPP arrangements, particularly 

in the most mature markets, are not 

exclusively financial transactions. They 

are the selected project delivery strategy 

based on a value-for-money or feasibility 

analysis.” 

In agreement with Garvin’s earlier writings, 

this group also strongly suggested 

that public agencies should recognize that 

a PPP arrangement should be a contractual 

long-term partnership with the private 

sector. There should be a balance among 

the technical, commercial, and legal conditions 

to insure its success. And user fees 

are not necessarily a requirement. 

They also endorsed the idea of the U.S. 

establishing a comprehensive strategy for 

educating and training state and local officials. 

“PPPs are neither a panacea nor 

a fad,” Garvin said. “But they need to be 

one of the tools considered to address the 

nation’s infrastructure challenges.” 


RESEARCH NEWS 

Peter Vikesland 

and Linsey Marr 

Nanotechnology impact 

Are nanomaterials a risk to environmental health 

As researchers around the world 

hasten to employ nanotechnology 

to improve production methods for 

various applications that range from manufacturing 

materials to creating new pharmaceutical 

drugs, a separate but equally 

compelling challenge exists. 

History has shown that previous industrial 

revolutions, such as those involving 

asbestos and chloroflurocarbons, have 

had some serious environmental impacts. 

Might nanotechnology also pose a risk 

Linsey Marr and Peter Vikesland, two 

faculty members in the Via Department of 

Civil and Environmental Engineering, are 

among the ground-breaking investigators 

in this field. They are part of the national 

Center for the Environmental Implications 

of NanoTechnology (CEINT), funded by 

the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 

2008. Along with Michael Hochella, University 

Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, 

they represent Virginia Tech’s efforts in 

a nine-member consortium awarded $14 

million over five years, starting in 2008. 

Virginia Tech’s portion is $1.75 million. 

CEINT is dedicated to elucidating the 

relationship between a vast array of nanomaterials 

— from natural, to manufactured, 

to those produced incidentally by human 

activities — and their potential environmental 

exposure, biological effects, and 

ecological consequences. It will focus on 

the fate and transport of natural and manufactured 

nanomaterials in ecosystems. 

Headquartered at Duke University, 

CEINT is a collaboration between Duke, 

Carnegie Mellon University, Howard 

University, and Virginia Tech as the core 

members, as well as investigators from 

the University of Kentucky and Stanford 

University. CEINT academic collaborations 

in the U.S. also include on-going activities 

coordinated with faculty at Clemson, North 

Carolina State, UCLA, and Purdue universities. 

At Virginia Tech, CEINT is part of the 

University’s Institute for Critical Technology 

and Applied Science (ICTAS). 

Scientists and engineers at the center 

have outlined plans to conduct research 

on the possible environmental health 

impacts of nanomaterials. The plans include 

new approaches, such as creating a 

predictive toxicology model based on cell 

assays and building ecosystems to track 

nanoparticles. 

Characterization of Airborne Particles 

In one of the novel ways Marr is conducting 

her tests, she and her colleagues 

are growing human lung cells and placing 

them in chambers that leave the lung cell 

surface exposed to air. This placement 

allows for direct contact of the cells with 

aerosolized particles at the air-liquid interface 

(ALI). One of Marr’s post-doctoral researchers, 

Amara Holder, and colleagues 

from Berkeley have previously exposed 

the cells to particles in diesel exhaust and 

a methane flame. They compared the ALI 

exposure to conventional in vitro exposure, 

where particles are suspended in a liquid 

cell culture medium. 

“Our findings showed the ALI exposure 

inhalation route is a relevant in vitro approach 

and is more responsive than the 

conventional exposure to particle suspen- 


6 | VIA REPORT | 2009 


RESEARCH NEWS 

sions,” they concluded. Now, Marr and her 

colleagues are repeating the exposure 

with engineered nanoparticles. The researchers 

will enhance the deposition of 

smaller particles by generating an electric 

field and “relying on the electrophoretic 

force to drive charged particles to the cell 

surface.” 

“With this design, lung cells can be 

exposed to substantial numbers of aerosolized 

engineered nanoparticles, such as 

silver and metal oxides, as single particles 

rather than large conglomerates,” Marr 

explained. A challenge in tests of nanoparticles’ 

toxicity has been that very small 

particles like to form aggregates, so testing 

interactions of the smallest particles with 

cells requires special approaches. 

Marr and one of her graduate students, 

Andrea Tiwari, have also selected the C 60 

fullerene as a model for carbonaceous 

nanomaterials because of its relative simplicity, 

evidence of toxicity and rich history 

in the scientific literature. The discovery of 

the C 60 compound in 1985 earned Harold 

Kroto, James R. Heath, and Richard Smalley 

the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. C 60 

fullerenes and variations on them are being 

used throughout the nanotechnology 

industry. 

“Airborne carbonaceous nanomaterials 

are likely to be found in production facilities 

and in ambient air and may exhibit 

toxic effects if inhaled,” Marr and Tiwari 

said. They further theorized that when exposed 

to the air, nanomaterials are likely to 

be chemically transformed after the exposure 

to oxidants in the atmosphere. 

In their preliminary studies, results indicate 

that “oxidation does impact solubility, 

as absorbance after resuspending in water 

is lower for fullerenes exposed to ozone.” 

The implication is that reactions in the atmosphere 

can transform nanoparticles and 

make them more likely to dissolve in water 

once they deposit back to earth. There, 

they can travel farther and come in contact 

with more organisms than if they were 

stuck to soil. 

To collect airborne nanoparticles for 

analysis, Marr’s group designed a low-cost 

thermophoretic precipitator that uses ice 

water as a cooling source and a 10-W resistor 

as the heating source. They flowed 

synthetic aerosols through the precipitator 

and used a transmission electron microscope 

to inspect the particles. 

“Preliminary analysis confirmed that 

this precipitator was effective in collecting 

nanoparticles of a wide range of sizes and 

will be effective in future studies of airborne 

nanoparticles,” Marr said. 

As her work in this field progresses, 

Marr was able to use her research in the 

characterization of airborne particle concentrations 

during the production of carbonaceous 

nanomaterials, such as fullerenes 

and carbon nanotubes, in a commercial 

nanotechnology facility. 

Based on the measurements of her 

study, done with Behnoush Yeganeh, 

Christy Kull and Mathew Hull, all graduate 

students, they concluded that engineering 

controls at the facility “appear to be effective 

in limiting exposure to nanomaterials,” 

and reported their findings in the American 

Chemical Society’s publication Environmental 

Science and Technology (Vol. 42, 

No. 12, 2008) 

However, they point to the limitations of 

this initial study that focused mainly on the 

physical characterization, and which did 

not differentiate between particles generated 

by nanomaterial soot production and 

those from other sources. 

Effects of Carboxylic Acids 

on nC 60 Aggregate Formation 

“The increasing production and application 

of the C 60 fullerene due to its 

distinctive properties will inevitably lead to 

its release into the environment,” Marr’s 

colleague, Vikesland, said. Already, the 

biomedical, optoelectronics, sensors and 

cosmetics industries are among the users 

of the C fullerene. 

60 

“Little is currently known about the 

interaction of the C 60 fullerene with the 

constituents of natural waters, and thus it 

is hard to predict the fate of C 60 that is released 

into the natural environment,” Vikesland 

added. “The C 60 fullerene is virtually 

insoluble in water.” 

However, one of the components of 

natural water is natural organic matter 

(NOM). When the C 60 fullerene is released 

in water, it forms “highly stable dispersed 

colloidal C 60 aggregates or nC 60,” Vikesland 

explained. These aggregates can 

exhibit significant disparities in aggregate 

structure, size, morphology, and surface 

charge and behave very differently than 

the C 60 alone. 

The problem with NOM is its randomness, 

resulting in diverse characteristics 

of the aggregates that form when they mix 

with the C 60. 

So, Vikesland is looking at small molecular 

weight carboxylic acids such as acetic 

acid, tartaric acid, and citric acid, all widely 

detected constituents of natural water 

and biological fluids. He and his graduate 

student Xiaojun Chang have specifically 

looked at the formation of nC 60 in acetic 

acid (vinegar) solutions, subjected the aggregates 

to extended mixing, and found 

that the solution’s chemistry differs substantially 

from nC 60 mixed in water alone. 

“The citrate affects the formation of the 

nC 60 in two ways,” Vikesland said. It alters 

the pH, a key factor in controlling the surface 

charge of nC 60 and it directly interacts 

with the C surface. 

60 

Vikesland explained the significance 

of this result. When nC 60 is produced in 

the presence of the carboxylic acids, its 

aggregates differ significantly from those 

produced without the acids. In general, 

Vikesland said, these aggregates have 

more negative surface charges and are 

more homogenous than those produced in 

water alone. 

“These results suggest that the ultimate 

fate of C 60 in aqueous environments is likely 

to be significantly affected by the quantities 

and types of carboxylic acids present 

in natural systems and by the solution pH,” 

Vikesland added. 

Furthermore, because carboxylic acids 

are common in biological fluids, Vikesland 

is interested in how his findings relate to 

the mechanisms by which C 60 interact with 

cells in vivo. 

These acids may significantly affect any 

conclusions ultimately reached regarding 

the impact of the C 60 fullerene into the 

environment. His current work appears in 

an issue of Environmental Pollution 157 

(2009), pp. 1072-1080. 


RESEARCH NEWS 

Transportation modeling 

Systems analysis is crucial to future safety and planning 

Toni Trani 

Do you plan to catch a plane, a 

train, or a bus, or will you drive 

your own car on your next trip, 

whether it is business or pleasure 

The likelihood that you will decide 

commercial air is the optimal choice is 

not as insignificant as you might think. 

In fact, “we are building a schedule 

for the future. Demand and supply go 

hand-in-hand,” said Toni Trani of the Via 

Department of Civil and Environmental 

Engineering at Virginia Tech. 

For the past 12 years, Trani has 

played a lead role in the Federal Aviation 

Administration’s (FAA) Air Transportation 

Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations 

Research (NEXTOR). 

One of the many projects he has researched 

for the National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration and the FAA is 

a Transportation Systems Analysis Model 

(TSAM) to predict such choices. 

Such information is critical to air carriers 

as they plan schedules for the future, 

currently looking as far ahead as the 

year 2040. 

TSAM was initially conceived to quantify 

demand for NASA’s Small Aircraft 

Transportation System (SATS). The SATS 

program, aimed at improving reliability 

of general aviation aircraft, has inspired 

several new aircraft designs and air taxi 

companies. 

“NASA Langley develops new aerospace 

engineering vehicles technology 

that a Boeing or a Lockheed Martin may 

use to make the technology cheaper and/ 

or more reliable to operate,” Trani said. If 

airline travel costs can be reduced, then 

predictive models might suggest more 

people will opt for flying when traveling. 

“No one has a crystal ball,” Trani admitted, 

but “we do need to make the best 

guess possible.” Recent global events, 

such as the worldwide downturn in the 

economy, the rise and fall of the price of 

gasoline, and any terrorism threat, can 

play havoc with the predictive modeling, 

he acknowledged. 

The SATS program extended over a 

five year period from 2001 until 2006 and 

was administered by the National Consortium 

for Aviation Mobility, a public-private 

partnership. In conjunction with the SATS 

report, “Virginia Tech recommended that 

a transportation systems analysis be conducted 

to develop some understanding of 

the performance of the new transportation 

paradigm.” Trani said. 

The completed models and simulation 

will offer the transportation industry 

greater insight on automobile traffic, fuel 

consumption and emissions for cars, airlines 

and air taxis, airline route structures 

and schedules, and highway fatalities 

estimation. 

“A lot of improvements are related to 

flying smarter. The Next Generation Air 

Transportation System which has developed 

more efficient routing, means 

passengers spend less time in airports,” 

Trani said. Such improvements increase 

air traffic. 

Working with Trani on this forecasting 




RESEARCH NEWS 

project are Nicholas Hinze and Howard 

Swingle, Virginia Tech research associates, 

as well as three doctoral students 

and seven master’s candidates. 

To create Virginia Tech’s model of 

transportation usage, they used a number 

of socio-economic metrics. The U.S. has 

some 3000 airports, with approximately 

500 of them used for commercial flying 

when they started their studies. Today, 

that number is down to about 375, mostly 

due to changing economic conditions and 

airline consolidation in the past decade. 

Furthermore, some 80 of these 375 airports 

are actually subsidized by Congress 

through the Essential Air Service System. 

These airports may only have a few flights 

a day, and passenger counts can be 

minimal. So Trani and his team also take 

these numbers into account as they make 

their best estimates. 

They look at factors such as trips that 

are greater than 100 miles and business 

versus non-business needs. They 

sampled five different household income 

groups and looked at three types of metropolitan 

statistical areas, as well as other 

parameters. 

The market share for airline routes are 

subject to variables such as travel time 

and cost, direct or one-stop flight availability, 

and hub types. 

They even assembled information as 

to how potential improvements at airports 

could increase air travel. For example, 

“After 9/11 a lot of short-term flights were 

eliminated. But if the Transportation Security 

Administration (TSA) could screen 

more efficiently, allowing travelers to 

spend less time at the airport, then this 

could change people’s travel planning,” 

Trani said. 

They also looked at fares. “Airlines by 

law must report 10 percent of their fares. 

We use this number and determine the 

average fares. One year of analysis allowed 

us to analyze 12 million tickets, 

about 10 percent of all that were sold that 

year. We determined that fares had gone 

down when adjusted by inflation,” Trani 

said. 

Lower fares can mean increased travel 

in the researcher’s modeling of the system. 

A prime advantage to the Virginia Tech 

modeling of transportation systems is 

Trani’s group looked at competing models. 

“We calculate why people travel, and we 

look at ground transportation. We can do 

comparisons. It is not in the FAA’s radar 

scope to predict ground transportation,” 

he said. “Even President Obama’s administration 

is now taking on the multi-modal 

issues, trying to deal with models that allow 

for competition.” 

With competing models, Trani predicted 

that with a 10 percent airfare increase in 

2015, the resulting increase in vehicular 

traffic will bring the likelihood of an additional 

120 intercity automotive fatalities. 

“Driving can be as much as 90 times 

more dangerous than flying on a per seatmile 

basis,” he said. 

About NEXTOR: 

Environmental concerns are another 

factor. With hydrocarbon emissions of 

rising international concern, Trani noted, 

“Aviation is an easy target even though it 

only produces about three to four percent 

of the emissions. To offset the carbon 

footprint, airlines like Virgin Atlantic already 

offer the service to buy offsetting 

carbon footprints…. Airlines will eventually 

have to re-fleet to use airplanes that are 

greener.” 

The Cap and Trade legislation is going 

“to force fuel efficiency and is giving impetus 

to synthetic fuels in aviation,” Trani 

added. 

In addition to Virginia Tech’s lead on this 

research project, NASA Langley, ATK (a 

NASA contractor) and the Missouri University 

of Science and Technology were 

collaborators. 

Virginia Tech, in conjunction with the University of California at Berkeley, the 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Maryland, comprised 

the NEXTOR center when it started in 1996. Five years later, George Mason University 

was added to the group. Together, they have worked on safety, business, 

and operational issues in the aviation industry. 

Since its inception, the center has focused on the development and use of operations 

research -- a focused blend of applied mathematics, computer science, and 

engineering aimed at finding optimal solutions to complex problems.” Specific work 

has addressed such issues as air traffic, management and control, human factors 

(the relationship between humans and machinery), system performance and assessment 

measures, safety data analysis, scheduling, navigation communications, 

and aviation economics. 

Benefits to the Aviation Community 

• FAA increases its access to forward-looking aviation research from leading universities. 

• Universities enlarge their technical capabilities and create greater academic opportunities 

for their students, faculty, and partners. 

• Industry receives the opportunity to participate in developing or adopting new 

technologies. 

All gain insights to improve their operational efficiencies and profitability. 

All benefit from creating highly skilled aviation professionals and future leaders. 


NEW FACULTY 

ERICH HESTER 

Erich Hester received his doctorate 

in ecology from the University of 

North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2008. 

He earned his master’s degree in civil 

and environmental engineering from 

Stanford University in 1998, and his 

bachelor’s degree in biology from Dartmouth 

College in 1992. 

While pursuing his doctorate, Hester 

was an Environmental Protection 

Agency STAR Graduate Fellow for two 

years. He also held a UNC Kenan Fellowship 

for four years at UNC. 

He has professional experience at 

four companies. He served as a civil 

engineer at Herrera Environmental 

Consultants of Seattle, Wash. (2002- 

2003), Philip Williams and Associates 

of San Francisco (2001-2002), and 

LFR of Emeryville, Ca. (1998-2001). 

He also served as a staff scientist at 

Ecology and Environment, Inc., of San 

Francisco from 1993 until 1995. 

His varied work included performing 

hydrologic, hydraulic and geomorphic 

analysis and design for stream and 

wetland ecological habitat restoration 

and water resources projects. 

WILLIAM WRIGHT 

William J. Wright joined the Via Department 

of Civil and Environmental 

Engineering as an associate professor. 

He is a member of its structural 

engineering and materials program 

area. 

Wright received his bachelor’s degree 

in civil engineering (CE) from the 

University of Maryland at College Park 

in 1986, his master’s degree in structural 

engineering, also from University 

of Maryland in 1988, and his Ph.D. in 

CE from Lehigh University in 2003. 

His research is in the fatigue and 

fracture of high performance steels, 

performance and evaluation of truss 

bridge connections, horizontally 

curved steel girder bridges, forensic 

He also 

performed 

analytical and 

numerical modeling 

of water 

movement and 

chemical migration 

in groundwater, 

surface 

water, and ambient 

air for soil 

and groundwater 

contaminant 

remediation 

projects. HESTER 

He is a registered 

Professional Engineer in Washington 

State. 

His research interests focus on how hydrology, 

hydraulics, and geomorphology 

influence ecological health in streams, rivers, 

and wetlands. His goal is to advance 

process-based knowledge to allow better 

informed land use planning, ecological 

restoration design, and preservation of 

aquatic ecosystems. 

He is particularly interested in how 

complexity and heterogeneity in physical 

evaluation of 

bridge failures 

and modular 

steel bridge systems. 

His primary 

research interest 

involves 

development 

and experimental 

evaluation of 

new, innovative 

bridge systems 

that can meet 

three critical WRIGHT 

requirements: 

rapid construction, life cycle durability, 

and cost effectiveness. He has targeted 

structure (bathymetry, topography, substrate 

composition, large woody debris, 

floodplain forest patterns) affect water 

exchange among channel, floodplain, 

and hyporheic environments, and how 

this affects ecologically relevant properties 

and processes like temperature, 

flow and retention of water, and biogeochemical 

cycling. 

While stresses due to urbanization, 

agriculture, forestry, and resource extraction 

are substantial, he is becoming 

increasingly convinced that climate 

change is one of the biggest challenges 

from the scientific and landscape 

management perspective. 

As a result, he is also interested in 

how climate change will alter the quantity, 

timing, and temperature of hydrologic 

flows through river and wetland 

systems; how such altered hydrology 

will influence aquatic ecosystems; and 

how humans can use knowledge of relevant 

hydrological and ecological processes 

to help minimize the ultimate 

ecological impact of climate change 

and ease the transition to this new 

ecological state. 

this “Bridge of the Future” goal as the 

overriding principle guiding the FHWA 

research program. 

He is currently the principal investigator 

for two research projects in the 

structures laboratory at FHWA: Fatigue 

Resistance of Orthotropic Bridge Deck 

Welds Produced with the Hybrid Laser 

Assisted Welding (HLAW) Process and 

Design and Evaluation of Gusset Plates 

for Major Truss Bridges. 

He teaches courses in structural steel 

design and in bridge engineering. 

Among his honors, Wright received 

the 2008 Richard S. Fountain Award 

from the American Iron and Steel Institute 

and the AASHTO T-14 Steel Bridge 

See Wright, page 11 


FACULTY HONORS AND ACHIEVEMENTS 

Jesus de la Garza 

CII Distinguished Professor 

Award and a Dean’s Award 

for Excellence in Teaching 

Innovation 

Andrea Dietrich 

Dean’s Award for 

Excellence in Research 

Marc Edwards 

Praxis Award in 

Professional Ethics from 

Yale and a National 

Association of Corrosion 

Engineers Technical 

Achievement Award 

Bill Knocke 

Dean’s Award for 

Excellence in Service and 

the ExCEEd Leadership 

Award from the American 

Society of Civil Engineers 

John Novak 

Feng Lecturer at 

the University of 

Massachusetts - Amherst 

Carin Roberts- 

Wollmann 

CEE Alumni Teaching 

Excellence Award 

Mike Duncan 

Opal Award from the 

American Society of Civil 

Engineers 

John Little 

Academy of Fellows of 

the International Society 

of Indoor Air Quality and 

Climate 

Sunil Sinha 

College of Engineering 

Faculty Fellow 

Randy Dymond 


Certificate of Teaching 

Excellence and G.V. 

Loganathan Teaching 

Excellence Award from 

CEE Department. 

Tom Murray 

Ernest E. Howard Award 

from the American Society 

of Civil Engineers 

Sam Easterling 

Montague-Betts Professor 

of Structural Steel Design 

Pamela Murray-Tuite 

Outstanding New Assistant 

Professor Award from the 


Wright continued from page 10 

Committee for his outstanding contributions 

to the steel bridge industry. 

In 2007, he received a U.S. Department 

of Transportation Gold Medal 

for his work on the Minnesota I-35W 

Bridge Response Team. 

In 2006, Wright earned the George 

S. Richardson Medal, presented by the 

Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania 

and Roads and Bridges magazine 

for his development of the Load 

and Resistance Factor Design Unified 

Steel Design Code. 

Wright also won an Award for Engineering 

Excellence from the Federal Highway 

Administration administrator for superior 

technical accomplishments on steel highway 

bridge structures in 2003. That year, 

the National Society of Professional Engineers 

named him the Federal Engineer of 

the Year. 

In 1997 the Civil Engineering Research 

Foundation of ASCE presented him with 

its Charles Pankow Award for Innovation 

for his work on the development of high 

performance steels for highway bridge 

applications. 

Wright is a member of the American 

Society of Civil Engineers and 

is a present/past member of numerous 

technical committees serving the 

Transportation Research Board (TRB), 

the American Society for Testing and 

Materials (ASTM), the American Iron 

and Steel Institute (AISI), the American 

Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) 

and the American Association of State 

Highway Transportation Officials 

(AASHTO). 


FACULTY NEWS 

Numerous successes 

Accolades abound for teacher and scholar 

Michael C. 

Vorster 

More than 20 years ago, Michael 

C. Vorster was recruited to Virginia 

Tech to create and direct 

the Via Department of Civil and Environmental 

Engineering’s (CEE) undergraduate 

and graduate programs in construction 

engineering and management 

(CEM). During his 23-year tenure, he was 

instrumental in a number of the program’s 

successes. 

As one example, members of the 

Vecellio family donated $1 million to the 

CEM program, and it was subsequently 

named in their honor. Then, in 2005, CEE 

alumnus A. Ross Myers and his longtime 

friend and fellow classmate from the early 

1970s, John Lawson, each gave $5 million 

to start the Myers-Lawson School of 

Construction. 

In 1998, Vorster was awarded the David 

H. Burroughs Professorship, recognizing 

his eminent teaching and sustained 

and distinguished scholarship. Burroughs, 

a 1942 Virginia Tech engineering graduate, 

was president of the Virginia Road 

Builders Association in 1962, and spent 

two years as chair of the Virginia Registration 

Board of Contractors. 

Accolades for Vorster’s successes 


abound. One comes from G. Wayne 

Clough who currently heads the Smithsonian 

Institution in Washington, D.C., and 

who was Dean of Virginia Tech’s College 

of Engineering from 1990-93. He credited 

Vorster with building “…the Virginia Tech 

construction program into one of the best 

in the U.S.” 

At the end of the fall 2009 semester, 

Vorster will retire from Virginia Tech, but 

he does plan to remain a very active consultant 

from his Blacksburg, Va., home 

that he shares with his wife Merle. 

Vorster is recognized as an international 

expert in the CEM field, with specific 

emphasis on applications of engineering 

economics to construction machinery. He 

has personally directed or co-directed 

externally funded research grants and 

contracts totaling more than $5 million, 

with such funding providing the means 

for Vorster to support numerous graduate 

students. 

One of these former students, Govi 

Kannan who earned his doctorate while 

working with Vorster, had mixed emotions 

regarding his adviser’s retirement. He 

wrote in an email, “On one side there is 

sadness on behalf of scores of students 

who are going to be deprived of not being 

a student of Dr. Vorster’s. They will read 

about your work but not have indulgence 

of your simple and tasteful communication 

and personal charm. They will not get 

to hear the stories that instill confidence 

and credibility. On the other side, there is 

a sense of relief … (for you).” 

Another former student and now an assistant 

professor of construction management 

at the University of North Carolina 

at Charlotte, John Hildreth, wrote, “Mike 

is noted for his work regarding construction 

equipment, but to his students he is 

also renowned for his work in the classroom. 

He teaches beyond construction 

engineering and management to topics 

he knows equally well, such as passion, 

curiosity, and dignity. Fortunate are those 

of us who have known him.” 

In addition to the students’ overwhelming 

support for Vorster, he also had outstanding 

relationships with construction 

industries. One reason was an initiative 

he is particularly proud of — his founding 

of the Construction Mentoring Program 

in 1990 in partnership with the Virginia 

Department of Transportation (VDOT). 

See Vorster, page 14

FACULTY NEWS 

Outstanding leadership 

Knocke credited by colleagues, alumni, and staff; 

plans to restart environmental research program 

In the Charles E. Via Report, William 

R. Knocke, W.C. English Chaired Professor 

and head of the Charles E. Via, 

Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental 

Engineering (CEE) at Virginia Tech from 

1995 until the summer of 2009, needs no 

introduction. 

A 30-year veteran of Virginia Tech’s College 

of Engineering faculty, Knocke arrived 

on campus in 1979 after obtaining all three 

of his degrees from the University of Missouri. 

He quickly distinguished himself as 

a scholar, earning a 1984 National Science 

Foundation (NSF) Presidential Young 

Investigator Award. These Presidential 

awards recognize remarkable achievements 

by outstanding engineers, scientists 

and educators. Only 100 such awards 

were presented nationwide in 1984. 

His work on the NSF award was in the 

areas of physical-chemical water and 

wastewater treatment systems, sludge 

handling and disposal, biological waste 

treatment, and heavy metal chemistry. 

Knocke used his NSF money to attract 

matching research dollars from a number 

of industries concerned with environmental 

issues. 

His teaching skills also brought accolades 

early on. In 1987 the Virginia State 

Council for Higher Education of Virginia 

(SCHEV) awarded him one of its Outstanding 

Faculty Awards. The competition 

for this award is also steep, as faculty at 

all of Virginia’s public and private colleges 

and universities are eligible. At the time, 

Knocke was 33 and recognized as one of 

the youngest recipients to ever receive this 

award. In 1987, the average age of the 

competitor was 47, and Knocke had only 

been teaching nine years when he won 

this honor. 

He was also one of the first of the Virginia 

Tech engineering faculty to teach 

the distance learning courses. He started 

in 1984 with the first CEE course offered 

through the Commonwealth Graduate 

Engineering Program (CGEP) when the 

technology was a microwave connection 

to selected cites. It was not unheard of 

for Knocke to reach out to more than two 

dozen sites in Virginia by the late 1980s, 

offering “live” graduate coursework through 

what was then the new satellite technology. 

In 1994, Knocke moved to administration, 

first serving as the interim department 

head, and then securing it on a permanent 

basis the following year. During his tenure, 

significant growth occurred and by 2009, 

U.S. News and World Report had it ranked 

among the top ten civil and environmental 

engineering programs at both the graduate 

and undergraduate levels. 

The department also ranks among the 

top ten for the total number of bachelor’s, 

master’s and doctoral degrees awarded in 

a given year. 

Accolades for his abilities abound. Veteran 

CEE Emeritus Professor and National 

Academy of Engineering (NAE) member, 

James Mitchell, said that in his “51 years 

in academia, both at the University of California, 

Berkeley and here at Virginia Tech, 

Bill Knocke stands right at the top among 

department chairs and heads that I have 

worked with when it comes to his overall 

commitment, dedication, and service 

across the full range of activities that make 

the job so demanding and important both 

within and outside the university,” 

Mitchell added that Knocke’s abilities 

“to look ahead, discern and evaluate the 

needs of the department, and then institute 

those activities required to address them, 

find the necessary resources, develop a 

plan, and carry it out have enabled CEE at 

Virginia Tech to grow and to enjoy a leadership 

position among comparable departments 

across the country.” 

Another senior emeritus member of 

the department, J. Michael Duncan, also 

a member of the NAE, credited Knocke 

with ”guiding the department to its top-ten 

ranking nationally through his leadership, 

See Knocke, page 36 

2009 | | VIA REPORT | | 13

Vorster continued from page 12 

This program was designed to 

provide comprehensive mentoring 

to Disadvantaged Business 

Enterprise (DBE) firms 

in the highway construction 

industry. Vorster oversaw all 

aspects of this program since 

its inception, including the selection 

of VDOT personnel to 

work as mentors with the DBE 

firms who participate in the 

formal program. 

“I started this program in 

the belief that small minority 

owned construction companies 

would benefit greatly from 

the services of a dedicated 

and experienced mentor from 

whom they can obtain advice 

and guidance across the full 

spectrum of personal, technical 

and business challenges 

that small companies face. 

The program employs a full 

time mentor who works under 

my guidance to proactively 

assist between six and eight 

small minority owned construction 

companies in southwest 

Virginia. 

The program has made an 

undoubted contribution to the 

Disadvantaged Business Enterprise 

community in southwest 

Virginia. Making that difference 

is an essential part of 

our service mission and of the 

privilege of being a member of 

our faculty,” Vorster said. 

When Connie Sorrell was 

the assistant commissioner 

of administration, VDOT, she 

wrote that “Mike has been 

instrumental in assisting 

(VDOT) in outreach efforts 

to strengthen and develop 

minority and women-owned 

businesses in obtaining their 

goals to become transportation 

contractors. ...Mike brings 

his integrity, trust, expertise 

and good humor to his clients 


“We strive to be the model 

Land Grant University of the 

21st century. I have valued 

the words, the spirit, and the 

challenge of that statement.” 

~ Michael C. Vorster 

in this program and his 

colleagues at VDOT 

in a way that enriches 

us all.” 

Another trait Vorster 

brings to his field is passion. 

After he spoke as a guest 

lecturer in Paul Torgersen’s 

Theory of Organization class, 

he received an email from one 

of the seniors in attendance, 

Ryan Arvin. In part, it read: 

“Your presentation … was 

the most inspiring lecture I’ve 

been in, and one that I’ve 

walked away remembering 

just about everything. …Your 

speech was inspiring and 

made me realize I need to follow 

my passion now.” 

Among his numerous 

awards, the National Academy 

of Construction inducted 

him as a member in 2000. 

Members of this academy are 

considered to “be industry 

leaders whose present or past 

professional career over a 

period of years demonstrates 

outstanding contributions to 

the engineering and construction 

industry.” 

The American Society 

of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 

awarded Vorster its Faculty of 

the Year Award in 2000 and 

its Thomas Fitch Rowland 

Prize for a Research Publication 

in 1992. The latter is an 

award given to recognize the 

best scholarly publication in a 

given year within the society’s 

construction engineering and 

management journal. 

The Construction Industry 

Institute, a leading organization 

of its kind in the U.S., 

gave him its Outstanding Research 

Award in 1995. 

The State Council of Higher 

Education of Virginia (SCHEV) 

presented its 2003 Outstanding 

Faculty Award to Vorster. 

At Virginia Tech, he received 

the Alumni Award for 

Teaching Excellence in 2001, 

Certificates of Teaching Excellence 

from the College of Engineering 

in 1993 and in 1999, 

a Dean’s Award for Excellence 

in Service in 1999, and the 

Via Department of Civil and 

Environmental Engineering’s 

2004 Alumni Teaching Excellence 

Award. He is a member 

of the Virginia Tech Academy 

of Teaching Excellence. 

At Virginia Tech, “we strive 

to be the model Land Grant 

University of the 21st century,” 

Vorster said. “I have valued 

the words, the spirit, and the 

challenge of that statement. 

A faculty position is a privilege 

not enjoyed by many. I 

accepted that the privilege 

carries heavy responsibilities; 

you work with the best young 

minds in the Commonwealth 

and beyond, you advance the 

frontiers of knowledge, and 

you truly seek to create a better 

future. Your contributions 

must lead to new peaks of 

achievement for an exceptionally 

talented generation that 

faces more challenges than 

ever before.” 

Vorster’s commitment to 

students throughout Virginia 

was illustrated through his 

involvement with the Commonwealth 

Graduate Engineering 

Program (CGEP). 

CGEP is a graduate distance 

learning televised program 

offered throughout the Commonwealth 

under the auspices 

of SCHEV. Throughout his 

career, Vorster taught several 

CGEP courses that were 

broadcast to sites in the Commonwealth, 

again receiving 

excellent student evaluation 

scores for the quality of instruction 

that he provided in 

the challenging environment 

of distance learning. 

A second major accomplishment 

in outreach/public 

service was Vorster’s development 

(in 1988) and continuous 

annual leadership of the 

Transportation Construction 

Management Institute (TCMI), 

a ten-day continuing education 

program developed especially 

for middle managers 

in VDOT and member companies 

of the Virginia Road 

and Transportation Builders 

Association. 

Vorster served as the Associate 

Dean for Research and 

Graduate Studies in the College 

of Engineering from 1993 

until 1997. 

While he was associate 

dean, he still taught each semester, 

played a significant 

role in the development of the 

Green Engineering program 

in the college, as well as the 

plans to open the College’s 

Ware Lab, a space devoted 

entirely to student design 

team projects in engineering. 

Vorster received his bachelor’s 

degree in civil engineering 

and his masters in business 

administration in 1965 

and in 1971, respectively from 

the University of Cape Town. 

He earned his doctorate in engineering 

from the University 

of Stellenbosch in 1980.

STUDENT NEWS 

Undergraduate scholarships 

CE Alumni Board Scholarship 

Stephanie Burt 

John Draminski 

Andrew Harasz 

Melissa Ruth 

Ryan Yauger 

American Infrastructure Scholarship 

Erich Roscher (CEM) 

Lisa Alban (CEM) 

Jason Leib (CEM) 

Kenneth R. Ayers ’80 Memorial Scholarship 

Michael Prince 

Balzer & Associates Scholarship 

Maria Lang 

William A. Caruthers CE Scholarship 

Jonathan Sproul 

CE Class of ’58 Scholarship 

John Bergman 

Shane Cochran 

Katherine Masoero 

Nataliya Schroeder 

Michael Werder 

Warren F. Cline Scholarship 

Kevin Aswegan 

Sabina Fedrowitz 

Matthew Werder 

Stanley & Francis Cohen Scholarship 

Kendall Blanding 

Tyler Austin 

Andrew Gingrich 

CMAA (Construction Management 

Association of America) Scholarship 

Sabina Fedrowitz 

Brent Brown (CEM) 

C. Jacob Brown (BC) 

John DeBell Civil Engineering Scholarship 

Bradley Rieland 

Delta Airport Consultants, Inc. Scholarship 

Stephen Litsas 

Dewberry Scholarship 

Olivia Parks 

Jeffrey Wary 

L.J. Turner & W.S. Dewhirst Scholarship 

Nathan Fox 

Ryan Clayton 

Walter & Mary Ruth Duncan Scholarship 

Kyle Lawson 

Stephanie Shupe 

Chelsey A. Godfrey Scholarship 

Tyler Harrington 

Lois Cox & Edna Goodwin Scholarship 

Patrick Joyce 

Matthew Hynson 

Ryan Durner 

Harry S. & Patsy B. Williams Scholarship 

Mallory Barkdull 

Wesley Sturgill 

Hankins & Anderson Scholarship 

Zachary Stutts 

Kelso Baker Scholarship 

Bryan Carey 

Gary Riggins 

William Bulloss 

Joshua Magargee 

Charles & Patricia Brown Scholarship 

Lars Peterson 

Everett Carter Memorial Scholarship 

Carrie Hargraves 

Joseph & Jane Christenbury Memorial 

Scholarship 

Jaquelyn Dalrymple 

Geo-Technology Associates Scholarship 

Gerald Henson 

Williams A. Joyner Scholarship 

Elaine Huffman 

Dennis & Sherry Kamber Scholarship 

Elizabeth Gichana 

Lingerfelt Family Foundation Scholarship 

Roger Arnold 

Margret Mascaro 

Hersie B. & Ethel G. McCauley Scholarship 

Martin Johnson 

Ashleigh Newman 

Layla Cabrera 

Kenton & Liliana Meland Scholarship 

Kevin Pocta 

George Bowers 

Michael Baker Corporation Engineering 

Scholarship 

Christopher Trent 

Howell & Ann Simmons Land Development 

Design Scholarship 

Jamie Zivich 

Newport News Shipbuilding Scholarship 

Lindsey Hatcher 

John E. Pruitt, Jr. Scholarship 

Patrick Drury 

George A. Stewart Engineering Scholarship 

Corey Oliver 

Paul Zheng 

Thomas Sproul 

Sara Sidhom 

Daniel Boppe 

Kathryn Winters 

Andrew Sottile-Jackson 

Jonathan Grace 

Undergraduate Stewart Scholars 

Caitlin Proctor 

Faizan Qureshi 

SMC Concrete Scholarship 

Jonathan Emenheiser 

Will Matthews 

Southern Ironworks, Inc. Scholarship in 

honor of Charles E. Spitzer, Class of ’49 

Scott Darling 

Stantec Award for Excellence in Engineering 

Nick Ellington 

Vecellio Scholarship 

Shane Cochran 

Arsalan Heydarian 

Jeffrey Smith 

Zachary Stutts 

Jason Tartaglia (CEM) 

Joseph Arcella (CEM) 

Virginia-Carolinas Structural Steel 

Fabricators Association 

Elaine Huffmann 

Andrew Gillespie 

Virginia Concrete Scholarship 

Marwan Mahmoud 

Francis Pesce 

Via Scholarship 

Claire McKenzie 

Williams Industries Scholarship 

Junghoon In 

Cody McElroy 

Katie Young 

Verne & Jewel Williamson Scholarship 

William Carter 

Alumni Golf Tournaments Scholarship 

Elizabeth Moreton 

Anonymous Gifts Scholarship 

Christopher Dianora 


STUDENT NEWS 

Graduate scholarships and fellowships 

Academy of Athens, Greece Fellowship 

Nikolaos Apsilidis 

AWWA LARS Fellowship 

Christina Davis 

Yan Zhang 

Association of Drilled Shaft 

Contractors Fellowship 

Kurt Schimpke 

Rachel Finch (Women’s Association 

Scholar) 

Brian Bluhm Fellow 

Matthew James 

Stanley & Frances Cohen Scholarship 

Kendall Blanding 

Cunningham Fellowships 

Hannah Bruce 

Jennifer Miller 

Matthew Swenty 

Raymond & Madeline Curry 

Fellowships 

Micah Hatch 

Carlton Lanier 

J. Read Plott 

Maria Prieto Riqueime 

Davenport Fellowship 

Bernardo Castellanos 

Diversity Fellowship 

Jordan Jarrett 

Linsey Reese 

Dwight David Eisenhower Graduate 

Transportation Fellowship 

Crysta Highfield 

Aly Tawfik 

Wenjing Xue 

Environmental Protection Agency 

Lee D. Bryant 

Rebecca Halvorson 

FHWA Academic Study Program 

Carlos F. Figueroa 

David W. & Lillian Frances Scholarship 

Christopher Strock 

Leifur Eiriksson Foundation 

Kevin Foster 

Fugro Fellow 

Stephen Gyurisin 

Fulbright Fellowships 

Francisco Flores 

Nirupa Maharajh 

Vathana Poev 

Adrian Tola 

Geosynthetics Institute Fellowship 

Michael McGuire 

Matt Gwaltney Fellowship 

Christopher Shores 

Thomas N. Hunnicutt III Fellowships 

Tracy Gusukuma 

Sarah McIntyre 

Institute for Airflow Diagnostic 

Education Foundation (IADEF) 

Andrea Tiwari 

Ying Xu 

Institute for Critical Technology and 

Applied Science (ICTAS) 

Xiaojun Chang 

Susan Mirlohi 

Vathana Poev 

Dexter C. Jameson, Jr. National Chi 

Epsilon Scholarship 

Peter Kauffmann 

G.V. Loganathan Fellowship 

John Petrie 

Memorial Fellowship 

Richard Lizardi Chapel 

National Science Foundation (NSF) 

Integrative Graduate Education 

and Research Traineeship (IGERT) 

Fellowships 

Lee Bryant (NSF-IGERT) 

Jose Cerrato (EIGER-IGERT) 

Laura Kosoglu (NSF IGERT) 

Matthew Hull (MILES-IGERT) 

Melissa Stewart (IGERT) 

Andrea Tiwari (EIGER) 

Andrew Whelton (MILES-IGERT) 

National Water Research Institute 

(NWRI) Fellowship 

Christina Davis 

Pratt Engineering Fellowships 

Abeera Batool 

Thomas Bergbauer 

Shaoqing Ge 

Taehyoung Kim 

Simoni Triantafyllidou 

Wan Yang 

Rita Zelinski Gelinas Alumni 

Scholarship 

Christopher Grey 

Edna Bailey Sussman Fellowships 

Nikolaos Apsilidis 

Christina Davis (Jeremy Herbstritt 

Memorial Internship) 

Dyan Lorge Eppen 

Randi Lieberman 

Ana Arango Rodriquez 

Jia Tang 

SAIC Scholar Fellowship 


Sangjun Park 

Virginia Tech Engineering Dean’s 

Teaching Fellowship 

Aly Tawfik 

Walts Fellowship 

Garrett Menichino 

William R. Walker Fellowship Award 

John Petrie 

John E. Woodward Graduate 

Scholarship (VMI) 

Christopher Strock 


STUDENT NEWS 

Ph.D. degrees awarded 

The following doctoral degrees were 

awarded to CEE students between July 

2008 and June 2009: 

Name: Adrian Burde 

Dissertation Title: A Study on Road Users’ 

Overall Perceptions of Highway 

Maintenance Service Quality and the 

Variables that Define the Highway 

Maintenance Service Quality Domain 

Advisor: Jesus de la Garza 

Name: Amy Cheatham 

Dissertation Title: Responses of 

Nitrifying Bacteria to Aquaculture 

Chemotherapeutic Agents 

Advisor: Gregory Boardman 

Name: D. Bradley Davis 

Dissertation Title: Finite Element Modeling 

for Prediction of Low Frequency Floor 

Vibrations due to Walking 

Advisor: Thomas Murray 

Name: E. Matthew Fiss 

Dissertation Title: The Chlorination of 

Pharmaceuticals and Other Phenolic 

Compounds in the Presence of Iodide 

Advisor: Peter Vikesland 

Name: Kevin Gilmore 

Dissertation Title: Treatment of High- 

Strength Nitrogen Wastewater with a 

Hollow-Fiber Mebrane-Aerated Biofilm 

Reactor - A Comprehensive Evaluation 

Advisor: Nancy Love 

Name: Ann Jeffers 

Dissertation Title: A Fiber-Based Approach 

for Modeling Beam-Columns under Fire 

Loading 

Advisor: Elisa Sotelino 

Name: Chang-Hyun Jo 

Dissertation Title: Oxidation of Disinfection 

Byproducts and Algae-related Odorants 

by UV/H 2 O 2 

Advisor: Andrea Dietrich 

Name: Joshua Joseph 

Dissertation Title: Computational Tools for 

Improved Analysis and Assessment of 

Groundwater Remediation Sites 

Advisor: Mark Widdowson 

Name: Kwang-Sub Lee 

Dissertation Title: Modifying TRANSIMS 

(Transportation Analysis and 

Simulation) to Include Dynamic Value 

Pricing and Departure Time Choice 

Advisor: Antoine Hobeika 

Name: Jianqui Liu 

Dissertation Title: Parametric Model 

for Assessing Factors that Influence 

Highway Bridge Service Life 

Advisor: Michael Garvin 

Name: Qifeng Lu 

Dissertation Title: Bivariate Best First 

Searches to Process Category Based 

Queries in a Graph for Trip Planning 

Applications in Transportation 

Advisor: Kathleen Hancock 

Name: Justin Marshall 

Dissertation Title: Development, Analysis 

and Testing of a Hybrid Passive Control 

Device for Seismic Protection of 

Framed Structures 

Advisor: Finley Charney 

Name: Eduardo Mendez 

Dissertation Title: Natural Attenuation 

Software (NAS): Assessing Remedial 

Strategies and Estimating Timeframes 

Advisor: Mark Widdowson 

Name: Martin Musabyimana 

Dissertation Title: Deammonification 

Process Kinetics and Inhibition 

Evaluation 

Advisor: Nancy Love 

Name: Pinar Omur-Ozbek 

Dissertation Title: Macromolecular 

Reactions and Sensory Perception at 

the Air-Water-Human Interface 


Name: Sangjun Park 

Dissertation Title: High Automobile 

Emissions: Modeling Impacts and 

Developing Solutions 

Advisor: Hesham Rakha 

Name: Andrew Whelton 

Dissertation Title: Advancing Potable 

Water Infrastructure through an 

Improved Understanding of Polymer 

Pipe Oxidation, Polymer Contaminant 

Interactions, and Consumer Perception 

of Taste 


Name: Krista Rule Wigginton 

Dissertation Title: Surface Enhanced 

Raman Spectroscopy as a Tool for 

Waterborne Pathogen Detection 

Advisor: Peter Vikesland 

Name: Robert C. Williams 

Dissertation Title: The Development of 

Mathematical Models for Preliminary 

Prediction of Highway Construction 

Duration 

Advisor: Michael Vorster 

Name: Ying Xu 

Dissertation Title: Emissions of Phthalate 

Plasticizer from Polymeric Building 

Materials 

Advisor: John Little 

Name: Yan Zhang 

Dissertation Title: Nitrification in Premise 

Plumbing and Its Effect on Corrosion 

and Water Quality Degradation 

Advisor: Marc Edwards 


ALUMNI NEWS 

Both the current and the past Civil and Environmental Engineering Advisory Board 

members gather for a group photo at the fall 2009 meeting. 

CEE Alumni Board 

Members (Fall 2009) 

Michael A. Alto 

Clark Construction Group, LLC 

Bethesda, Md. 

David S. Anderson 

Roseland Development Corp. 

Midlothian, Va. 

Bruce R. Bates 

RISA Technologies, LLC 

Foothill Ranch, Calif. 

Courtney A. Beamon 

Delta Airport Consultants, Inc. 

Richmond, Va. 

Gary P. Bowman 

Bowman Consulting 

Chantilly, Va. 

Amy Kohls Buehler (Chair) 

Independent Consultant 

Dallas, Tex. 

Douglas W. Burks 

Retired from Hankins and Anderson, Inc. 

Consulting 

Glen Allen, Va. 

H.D. Campbell, Jr. 

Campbell & Paris Engineering 


Derrick B. Cave 

Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. 

Vero Beach, Fla. 

Raymond G. Curry 

SMC Concrete Construction, Inc. 

Annandale, Va. 

Lisa Decker 

The Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. 

Baltimore, Md. 

Carolyn Dimmick 

HDR, Inc. 

Pittsburgh, Pa. 

Richard M. DiSalvo, Jr. 

Draper Aden Associates 

Blacksburg, Va. 

T.A. Groover 

Wiley & Wilson, Inc. 

Lynchburg, Va. 

Robert F. Jansen (Vice Chair) 

Jansen Land Consulting 

Falls Church, Va. 

Jimmie D. Jenkins 

Department of Public Works and 

Environmental Design 

Fairfax, Va. 

Anthony J. Moraco 

Space & Geospatial Intelligence Business Unit 


Carl W. Pugh, Jr. 

New Millennium Building Systems 

Salem, Va. 

Brian L. Ramaley 

Newport News Waterworks 

Newport News, Va. 

Jack E. Rinker 

Rinker Design Associates 

Manassas, Va. 

Philip A. Shucet 

The Philip A. Shucet Company 

Virginia Beach, Va. 


CEE FACULTY BY PROGRAM AREA 

Vecellio Construction Engineering 

and Management Program 

• Jesus M. de la Garza, Vecellio Professor 

• Michael J. Garvin, Associate Professor * 

• Sunil K. Sinha, Associate Professor and Program 

Coordinator 

• Michael C. Vorster, David Burrows Professor 

• Deborah E. Young-Corbett, Assistant Professor * 

Environmental and Water Resources 

Engineering Program 

• Gregory D. Boardman, Professor 

• William Cox, Assistant Department Head and Professor 

• Andrea M. Dietrich, Professor 

• Panayiotis Diplas, Professor 

• Randel Dymond, Associate Professor 

• Marc A. Edwards, Charles Lunsford Professor 

• Daniel L. Gallagher, Associate Professor 

• Adil N. Godrej, Research Associate Professor (NV) 

• Thomas J. Grizzard, Jr., Professor (NV) 

• Erich T. Hester, Assistant Professor 

• Robert Hoehn, Emeritus Professor 

• David F. Kibler, Emeritus Professor 

• William Knocke, W. Curtis English Professor 

• John C. Little, Professor and Program Coordinator 

• Linsey C. Marr, Associate Professor 

• Glenn E. Moglen, Professor (NV) 

• John T. Novak, Nick Prillaman Professor 

• Amy J. Pruden, Associate Professor 

• Clifford W. Randall, Emeritus Professor 

• Peter J. Vikesland, Associate Professor 

• Mark Widdowson, Assistant Department Head and 

Professor 

Geotechnical Engineering Program 

• Thomas L. Brandon, Associate Professor 

• Joseph E. Dove, Research Assistant Professor 

• J. Michael Duncan, Emeritus Professor 

• George M. Filz, Charles E. Via, Jr. Professor 

• Russell A. Green, Associate Professor and Program 

Coordinator 

• James R. Martin, II, Professor 

• Matthew Mauldon, Associate Professor 

• James K. Mitchell, Emeritus Professor 

Structural Engineering and Materials Program 

• Richard M. Barker, Emeritus Professor 

• Finley A. Charney, Associate Professor 

• Thomas E. Cousins, Professor 

• W. Samuel Easterling, Department Head and 

Montague-Betts Professor of Structural Steel Design 

• Donald A. Garst, Emeritus Professor 

• Siegfried M. Holzer, Emeritus Professor 

• Cristopher D. Moen, Assistant Professor 

• Thomas M. Murray, Emeritus Professor 

• Raymond H. Plaut, Emeritus Professor 

• Carin L. Roberts-Wollmann, Associate Professor 

• Kamal B. Rojiani, Associate Professor and Program 

Coordinator 

• Elisa D. Sotelino, Professor 

• Richard E. Weyers, Charles E. Via, Jr. Professor 

• William J. Wright, Associate Professor 

Transportation Infrastructure and Systems 

Engineering Program 

• Montasir Abbas, Assistant Professor 

• Thomas A. Dingus, Newport News Shipbuilding / 

Tenneco Professor 

• Gerardo W. Flintsch, Associate Professor 

• Kathleen L. Hancock, Associate Professor (NV) 

• Antoine G. Hobeika, Professor 

• Shinya Kikuchi, Charles E. Via, Jr. Professor (NV) 

• Pamela Murray-Tuite, Assistant Professor (NV) 

• Hesham A. Rakha, Professor 

• Dusan Teodorovic, Emeritus Professor (NV) 

• Antonio A. Trani, Professor and Program Coordinator 

• Linbing Wang, Associate Professor 

* — Affiliated through the Myers-Lawson School of 

Construction 

NV — Northern Virginia Program 


PROGRAM AREAS 

VECELLIO CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT 

Lectures highlight eventful year for VCEMP 


The Vecellio Construction Engineering 

and Management Program 

(VCEMP) has had an eventful year. 

The highlights include: the CH2M Hill 

Distinguished Lecture in the spring semester 

presented by Brendan Owens 

(see sidebar story, page 22) of the U.S. 

Green Building Council; the recognition by 

the Construction Industry Institute (CII) as 

the 2009 CII Curriculum Partner, recognizing 

the incorporation of CII research findings 

within curricula; and the 2009 Vecellio 

Distinguished Lecture in the fall semester 

presented by Paul E. Torgersen (see 

sidebar story, page 22). 

Six undergraduate Vecellio Scholarships 

were awarded to highly-qualified 

students who have demonstrated leadership 

potential and an interest in pursuing a 

career in the construction industry. These 

students who were formally recognized 

during the proceedings of the Vecellio 

Distinguished Lecture are: Joseph Arcella, 

Shane Cochran, Arsalan Heydarian, Jeffrey 

Smith, Zachary Stutts, and William 

Tartaglia. 

To help bring all these initiatives to 

fruition, Sandy Simpkins has provided 

essential and extraordinary administrative 

support to the program, students and 

faculty. 

As for news from the VCEMP faculty, 

the following paragraphs showcase their 

activities. 

Jesus M. de la Garza, the Vecellio 

Professor in Construction Engineering 

and Management, received the College of 

Engineering Dean’s Award for Teaching 

Excellence and CII’s Distinguished Professor 

award. 

He is member of the National Research 

Council’s Board on Infrastructure and the 

Constructed Environment (BICE) and just 

published the report on “Sustainable Critical 

Infrastructure Systems: A Framework 

for Meeting 21st Century Imperatives.” 

de la Garza’s research is funded by the 

National Science Foundation (NSF) and 

the Virginia Department of Transportation 

(VDOT) and focuses on highway infrastructure 

maintenance through his leadership 

of the Center for Highway Asset Management 

ProgramS (CHAMPS). 

He traveled to Istanbul, Turkey to present 

his research on RFID technology for 

highway infrastructure to the CIB Task 

Group 78. He also taught three courses, 

namely, construction management, construction 

control techniques, and schedule 

impact analysis. 

de la Garza chairs CII’s Academic 

Committee and is the associate editor of 

ASCE’s Journal of Construction Engineering 

and Management. He serves as the 

faculty advisor to the Construction Management 

Association of America (CMAA) 

student chapter in the Myers-Lawson 

School of Construction. 

Michael J. Garvin was appointed as 

the associate director of the Myers-Lawson 

School of Construction in early summer 

of 2008. (See related article, page 4.) 

In this role, he will focus upon the school’s 

academic and organizational affairs. 

He also was appointed to Federal Highway 

Administration’s (FHWA) Expert Task 

Group on Public-Private Partnerships in 

the spring. 

Garvin taught two courses in common 

core graduate curriculum in the 

Myers-Lawson School of Construction, 

Preconstruction Planning and Facilities 

Integration. He also once again taught 

construction management to nearly 130 

undergraduates in the spring. 

Garvin had another productive year in 

the area of scholarship. He had a book 

chapter accepted for publication, one 

paper published in an archival journal, 

and three papers published in conference 

proceedings. 

He was also the primary author and 

report facilitator for the FHWA/AASHTO 

report entitled “Public-Private Partnerships 

for Highway Infrastructure: Capitalizing on 

International Experience.” 

He made presentations at the AASHTO 

Subcommittee on Construction’s annual 

meeting and TRB’s annual meeting regarding 

the findings from this report. 

He was also a plenary speaker at the 

2008 Specialty Conference on Leadership 

and Management in Construction, sponsored 

by CIB Task Group 64 and ASCE’s 

Construction Research Council. 

Garvin continues his NSF CAREER 

award research efforts to develop decision 

support systems to improve how infrastructure 

projects are programmed, financed, 

and delivered. One Ph.D. student 

and three M.S. students were supported 

by this award graduated this past year. 

He also began a research project with 

VDOT to investigate risk allocation and 

contract provisions in design-build contracts. 

Sunil Sinha’s research group continues 

to develop a national and international 

reputation in the area of sustainable water 

infrastructure management system. 

Sinha is co-director of the Center of 

Excellence (ICE) in Sustainable Water 

Infrastructure Management (SWIM). 

Currently, he has several ongoing 

research projects, funded by the NSF, 

EPA, WERF, and industry and all related 

to the water infrastructure system. 

He is also working closely with 

international research institutions working 

in the areas of water infrastructure such 

as CSIRO, Australia; NRC, Canada; 

University of Birmingham, U.K.; and 

SINTEF, Norway. 

During the past year he taught two 

graduate level courses, Infrastructure 

Asset Management and Information 

Technology (IT) in Construction. 

Sinha’s research group currently 

consists of one post-doc, three doctoral 

and seven master’s students. 

In February 2009, Sinha and his 

graduate student Raj Kola visited 

Washington Suburban Sanitary 

Commission (WSSC) in Laurel, Md., 

to investigate the failure mode and 

mechanism of large diameter water prestressed 

concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP). 

Sinha was featured as an expert 

on water infrastructure on the History 

Channel’s news special on America’s 

Continued on next page

PROGRAM AREAS 


infrastructure crisis --”The Crumbling of 

America. “ He is also the seed behind a 

new PBS documentary that throws light on 

a long-buried problem — America’s aging 

water and sewer infrastructure. Sinha 

hopes that “Liquid Assets: The Story of 

Our Water Infrastructure,” airing on PBS 

across the nation, will spur American cities 

to take action. 

Michael C. Vorster, the David Burrows 

Professor, spent calendar year 2008 on 

research and study leave. 

During this time he completed his work 

on “Construction Equipment Economics,” 

a book designed to serve as a desk reference 

for practitioners responsible for managing 

large fleets of heavy construction 

equipment. Pre publication reviews have 

cited the book, published in September 

of 2009, as “the most comprehensive and 

modern equipment management guide to 

date” and “at last, Mike offers his fans a 

comprehensive work that most certainly 

will become the standard for the equipment 

management professional.” 

Vorster returned to active duty in spring 

2009 when he taught CEE 4017 Estimating, 

Production and Cost Engineering and 

CEE 4074, Construction Engineering, 

Means and Methods. 

He also participated as a member of the 

leadership team for a $25 million research 

proposal submitted to NIOSH for the 

establishment of The National Center for 

Construction Safety and Health at Virginia 

Tech. His specific responsibilities in the 

proposed future center include leadership 

of the Industry Board and participation in 

the Granata Pilot Research program. 

Vorster will retire from Virginia Tech in 

December 2009 after 23 years of service. 

(See related article, page 12.) 

Deborah Young-Corbett, in her second 

year on the faculty, continued to develop 

research, education and scholarship endeavors 

to address health hazards arising 

from the built environment or inherent to 

construction processes. 

Regarding the pursuit of sponsored research, 

she was PI or co-PI on 15 submitted 

grant applications totaling $9,890,993. 

Her personal share on those applications 

is $1,817,514 of which $1,239,334 is still 

pending decision, as of the writing of this 

report. To date, she has received funding 

Deborah Young-Corbett received a grant from NSF to develop a framework for 

managing the environmental health of the nation’s public school infrastructure. 

in the amount of $662,455 (personal share 

$315,002). 

She has been awarded a grant from the 

NSF to develop a framework for managing 

the environmental health of the nation’s 

public school infrastructure. This framework 

will optimize maintenance management 

of asbestos-containing materials and 

lead-based paint in school facilities. 

As a part of the leadership team for 

the Center for Innovation in Construction 

Safety and Health, Young-Corbett participated 

in the preparation of an application 

to the National Institute for Occupational 

Safety and Health for Virginia Tech to 

become a National Research Center for 

Construction Safety and Health. A decision 

on this $25 million center application 

is expected in the fall of 2009. 

Young-Corbett continued her participation 

in the Interdisciplinary Research Team 

for Pervasive Computing. The team was 

awarded an NSF grant to study interdisciplinary 

engineering education and innovation 

in computer engineering. 

In this year, she published two peerreviewed 

journal articles and six conference 

papers. 

Young-Corbett developed three new 

courses in her areas of expertise: Designing 

for Hazard Control in Construction, 

Industrial Engineering of Construction Processes, 

and Indoor Environmental Quality 

and Sustainability. She also continues to 

teach an undergraduate course in Building 

Systems Technology Design. 

In this academic year, she served as 

advisor to one doctoral and five master’s 

students. 

Regarding professional service, she 

was a reviewer for the Journal of Construction 

Management and Economics 

and the Journal of Construction Engineering 

and Management. 

She also served on two committees of 

the American Industrial Hygiene Association: 

Indoor Environmental Quality and 

Computer Applications. 


PROGRAM AREAS 


Torgersen presents Vecellio Distinguished Lecture 

The 2009 Vecellio Distinguished 

Lecture was presented by Paul E. 

Torgersen, president emeritus of Virginia 

Tech and a member of the National 

Academy of Engineering. 

His talk was titled: “The Virginia 

Tech Personal Computer Initiative or 

Walking 20 Miles in the Snow to Catch 

the School Bus.” 

A synopsis of his talk is as follows: 

Twenty-five years ago the College 

of Engineering required of its entering 

freshmen the purchase of a personal 

computer. Virginia Tech was the first 

public university in the nation to do so. 

The machine was described as “portable” 

but weighed over 40 pounds. 

It had all of 256K of memory and a 

9” amber monochrome monitor. By 

standards even a few years later, the 

required machine was primitive. 

The decision to impose this requirement 

upon an entering freshman 

class, the selection of a vendor and a 

machine, and the actual distribution of 

hardware and software were not without 

some interesting moments and just 

a little controversy. 

One faculty member critical of the 

initial recommendation concluded, 

“Whatever you guys are on, you 

TORGERSEN 

should make it available to everyone. It’ll 

solve all the world’s problems.” 

Would this computer requirement and 

added cost impact enrollments Would 

it produce a more marketable graduate 

We knew the answer to the second 

question but not the first. 

The time lapse from the initial recommendation 

to the distribution of 

computers to students was 15 months. 

We were on a fast track. This was 

truly a team effort of some dedicated 

faculty. 

Two comments from the graduating 

class might set this in perspective: 

“The class of ’87 was quite jealous … 

they had to endure FORTRAN programming 

with card decks. We (the 

class of ’88) actually programmed our 

own PC’s, did drafting on our PC’s, 

and wrote papers on our PC’s. And a 

second comment …. “I still have my 

computer and show it to my kids so 

they know what the first ‘laptop’ looked 

like (my version of walking 20 miles in 

the snow to catch the school bus).” 

In hindsight, now 25 years later one 

of the principal players concluded, 

“How little we understood at that time 

how computing would evolve, how 

pervasive it would become in our daily 

lives as well as our engineering work. 

In that sense we were lucky rather 

than enlightened.” 

Owens delivers CH2M Hill Distinguished Lecture 

The CH2M Hill Distinguished Lecture was presented by 

Brendan Owens, vice president for the U.S. Green Building 

Council. His talk was titled: “Mind the Gap: Integrated design, 

construction, operations and maintenance of green buildings.” 

A synopsis of Owens’ lecture is as follows: the design, 

construction, operation and maintenance of high performance 

green buildings is, by many metrics, the fastest growing sector 

of the buildings industry and major initiatives are under way to 

make green buildings the industry standard of care. 

“Green” has become ubiquitous in everyday U.S. life. 

Despite its almost universal application to everything from 

cars to clothes, it has become clear that “green”, while 

understood in a general sense, often describes widely 

varying performance features depending on the perspective 

of the entity applying the label. Understanding the underlying 

technical details of a “green” claim is critical to preventing 

misalignment of performance goals and greenwashing. 

Mind the Gap was a discussion about integrated design, 

construction, operations, maintenance and verification of high 

performance green buildings, green building rating systems 

such as USGBC’s LEED and the role that buildings play as 

part of the power, water and communications infrastructure 

modern society relies on. Gaps exist in making all of these 

systems function as efficiently and effectively as possible. 


PROGRAM AREAS 

ENVIRONMENTAL AND WATER RESOURCES ENGINEERING 

Randy Dymond coordinates the Land Development 

Design Initiative, and is a recipient of a national award 

for connecting education with professional practice. 

Environmental graduate program ranks ninth in the country 

The Environmental and Water Resources 

(EWR) Graduate Program 

Area is again in the Top Ten and 

moving on up! 

EWR was ranked ninth in the nation 

(up from 10th last year) by U.S. News 

and World Report for 2009. In the undergraduate 

program area, U.S. News ranks 

the environmental program 15th in the 

country. 

Well-prepared Virginia Tech Ph.D., M.S. 

and B.S. students are graduating and 

serving the profession. This year, EWR is 

educating 100 students in the graduate 

program alone. 

During the past year, the EWR faculty 

conducted a substantial strategic planning 

exercise and identified three new 

thrust areas in addition to the traditional 

water, wastewater, hydrosystems and air 

activities. The new areas are: water supply 

and reuse; water infrastructure; and 

environmental nanotechnology. Research 

and teaching opportunities are being developed 

and expanded in these areas. 

In Blacksburg, EWR staff continues to 

supervise teaching and research activities 

in five buildings: Patton Hall, Durham Hall, 

Norris Hall, Hancock Hall and the new 

ICTAS building, adjacent to Durham Hall. 

Betty Wingate and Beth Lucas primarily 

provide administrative support to faculty 

and students located in Durham Hall while 

Merry Gayle Moeller covers the faculty 

and students in Patton Hall. Together they 

organize the new students each fall and 

move them through the administrative 

maze until they graduate. 

The Durham, Patton, Hancock, Norris 

Halls and ICTAS laboratories continue to 

be in top-notch and safe working order 

because of Julie Petruska’s and Jody 

Smiley’s dedication to student and faculty 

researchers and the instruments they use. 

EWR is adding liquid chromatographymass 

spectrometry to its extensive collection 

of analytical chemistry instrumentation, 

and just recently an “olfactory gas chromatography” 

was installed so that researchers 

can literally “sniff” the organic compounds 

that elute from the gas chromatography 

column and describe their odors. 

Those who visit the EWR hydrosystems 

area on the second floor of Patton will 

marvel at the renovations. Replacing the 

ping-pong table are high-tech and architecturally 

appealing offices for students 

and faculty, a conference room and the 

newly dedicated G.V. Loganathan Library. 

On your next visit to the department, 

stop by this area and enjoy the books, art 

work, and colleagues. 

Susan Merten, the student services coordinator 

for CEE at the Northern Virginia 

Center, stays busy supporting all of the 

Continued on page 24 


PROGRAM AREAS 



Continued from page 23 

CEE graduate students and faculty in the 

National Capital Region, including those 

in the Transportation Infrastructure Systems, 

EWR, and Geospatial Engineering 

program areas. Merten is leaving Virginia 

Tech soon as her husband accepts a new 

assignment in the Diplomatic Corps. 

Research is at a frenzied pace at the 

Occoquan Water Monitoring Lab in Manassas. 

This past year, Harry Post celebrated 

25 years of service as a research associate 

and supervisor of field operations at 

the Occoquan Laboratory. He has been 

working to advance the automation of 

field monitoring stations in the Occoquan 

Watershed, including transitioning data 

collection to a near-real-time mode by 

uploading information to the GOES II Geosynchronous 

Satellite. 

George “Woody” Underwood completed 

30 years of service and continues to play 

a key leadership role in the operation 

and maintenance of the field monitoring 

network in the Occoquan and Potomac 

Watersheds. 

Phil Spellerberg, Mark Lucas, and Doug 

Holladay serve as the core of the watershed 

and reservoir study field team and 

reliably maintain an automated sampling 

network that is distributed over much of 

the National Capital Region. 

New to the Occoquan Laboratory is 

Dongmei Wang who just completed her 

first year as a research associate and 

laboratory supervisor. Wang has led the 

effort to obtain Environmental Laboratory 

Certification at OWML, and has also 

played a key role in the planning for a major 

renovation of the laboratory spaces at 

the Manassas Facility. 

Joan Wirt and Mike Gaal have had a 

busy year working to accommodate laboratory 

renovations while keeping current 

with the analytical workload of the Occoquan 

Laboratory. They have been instrumental 

in bringing up new instrumentation 

and helping to plan for planned laboratory 

renovations. 

Curt Eskridge, a long-time former employee 

of the Occoquan Laboratory, has 

returned to work this year on a part-time 

basis to help in meeting some of the challenges 

of preparing for lab certification. 

Adam Fleming is a recent graduate of 

Virginia Tech in microbiology, and worked 

as a part-time member of the laboratory 

analytical staff. 

On the administrative side of the laboratory 

operations, Barb Angelotti and Alicia 

Tingen are busy meeting the varied needs 

of the Occoquan Laboratory, particularly 

as the renovation project has proceeded, 

and as the lab is now also hosting David 

Sample from the biological systems 

engineering department who is also an 

adjunct CEE faculty member working with 

CEE faculty to develop a research and 

outreach program in urban stormwater 

management. 

The EWR faculty is active providing 

leadership in teaching, research and 

outreach to the Virginia Tech community, 

the state, the nation, and the world-wide 

education and research community. The 

emeritus faculty are doing well. 

Clifford Randall is frequently in his 

Durham Hall office and continues to interact 

with students, staff, faculty and the 

biological nutrient removal community. 

Robert Hoehn continues to guest 

lecture, particularly on his favorite topic, 

tastes and odors in drinking water. 

David Kibler continues to be a presence 

in the hydrosystems area and is a 

frequent visitor to Patton Hall. A sampling 

of the activities and accomplishments of 

the teaching and research faculty is provided 

below. 

Gregory Boardman, three of his graduate 

students, and colleagues in another 

department (food science and technology 

— G. Flick, D. Kuhn and L. Marsh) performed 

various studies at an inland shrimp 

production facility that uses recirculating 

aquaculture systems (RAS). 

The research projects included evaluations 

of the impact of chemotherapeutic 

agents (e.g., antibiotics) on nitrifying 

bacteria in the RAS, the performance of 

the RAS water treatment operations, the 

effects of ammonia and nitrite on shrimp, 

and the potential benefits of feeding biofloc 

(bacteria, etc.) to shrimp along with 

commercial feed. 

Biofloc was generated through biological 

treatment of effluents from an adjacent 

fish farm (tilapia). The idea that biofloc 

might be a good feed supplement is gaining 

momentum through the success of this 

research and the work of others around 

the world. In fact, Boardman is a member 

of an international working group of the 

Aquacultural Engineering Society (AES) 

that is referred to as “Microbial Controlled 

Aquaculture Systems” and dedicated to 

the uses of biofloc technology. 

Boardman also has a student studying 

the formation of disinfection by-products 

(DBPs) at a local water plant. Laboratory 

tests are now being conducted to try to 

simulate actual field results and to test the 

impact of different water quality variables 

on DBP production. 

In May, 2009, Boardman was appointed 

a fellow of the Department of Energy’s 

National Energy Technology Laboratory 

(NETL) and leader of its water management 

research thrust area. His job will 

be to develop, in cooperation with NETL 

fellows from Virginia Tech and four other 

universities (Carnegie Mellon University, 

the University of Pittsburgh, West Virginia 

University, and Penn State University), 

a research program that will address the 

water quality issues associated with energy 

production systems. Research projects 

are to begin in November, 2009. 

Boardman continues to offer short 

courses and serves as director of the 

Annual Short School for Treatment Plant 

Personnel. Over the past year, Boardman 

worked with Holly McCall-Williams of Virginia 

Tech’s Continuing and Professional 

Education (CPE) to coordinate and offer 

11 short courses. He also works with her 

to organize a televised lecture series (approximately 

eight lectures per year; 14 

Virginia sites) which is sponsored by the 

Virginia Department of Health. 

The lecture series is designed to help 

people in the water industry, and covers 

a variety of topics, such as operation and 

maintenance, security, setting water rates, 

capital improvement plans, grant writing, 

and water chemistry. 

Rounding out Boardman’s outreach 

efforts this past year were the duties as- 

Continued on page 25

PROGRAM AREAS 



sociated with being co-chair of an AES 

Special Issues Forum and as a member 

of the program committee for the 2008 

International Conference on Recirculating 

Aquaculture (ICRA). 

William Cox continued to focus on 

water supply planning and management 

issues in teaching and research. 

Water planning research included 

completion of a project for the Corps of 

Engineers’ Institute for Water Resources 

investigating the potential for shared vision 

planning in Virginia’s James River 

Basin. The water planning and management 

focus involved several activities 

within the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 

(ASCE) Environmental and Water 

Resources Institute, including membership 

on the technical executive committee and 

several other committees. 

Cox’s dominant emphasis during the 

past year was administrative. Since an 

Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology 

(ABET) visit was scheduled in the 

fall to assess the undergraduate program, 

preparation of necessary documents and 

coordination of the preparation of supporting 

materials was a major activity for Cox. 

Another administrative responsibility 

focused on CEE curriculum development. 

These responsibilities included significant 

involvement in the review and revision of 

the undergraduate CEE curriculum that 

was underway throughout the 2008-09 

academic year, assistance with course 

proposal preparation, and other activities 

associated with the undergraduate curriculum. 

Andrea M. Dietrich received the 2008 

American Water Works Association’s 

Golden Spigot Award for service to the 

drinking water community. 

In acknowledgement of her achievements 

in interdisciplinary research over 

the past decade, the College of Engineering 

selected her for a Dean’s Award for 

Excellence in Research. 

In October 2008, Dietrich delivered 

invited keynote addresses in Korea and 

Taiwan at two conferences that attracted 

international experts on drinking water 

quality. 

During the academic year, she taught 

analytical and environmental chemistry to 

the next generation of environmental engineers 

and scientists. 

Her research group had many successes 

this year, including launching into their 

new careers. Ph.D. graduates Chang- 

Hyun Jo, Pinar Omur-Ozbek, and Andrew 

Whelton, and successful masters students 

Andrew Benson, David Clark, Heather 

Johnson, and Ryan Pierce, graduated. 

Back in the lab, interdisciplinary Ph.D. 

student Jose Cerrato is working at the 

nano-interface of chemical and biological 

cycling of manganese. 

Continuing the research started by 

Omur-Ozbek, Ph.D. student Susan Mirlohi 

leads the research effort in metallic tastes 

with the assistance of undergraduates 

Shannon Flynn and Christine Sargent, 

plus master’s student Jia Tang who is also 

developing a model to predict contaminant 

diffusion in distribution system materials. 

Undergraduate researcher Timothy 

Smiley investigated the role antioxidants 

play in performance of polyethylene pipes, 

an extension of Whelton’s dissertation 

research which was also aided by undergraduates 

Stephanie Pluta and Ted Halley. 

Graduate students Andrew Benson, 

David Clark, Heather Johnson, and Ryan 

Pierce all contributed to the betterment 

of distribution system materials with their 

investigations of corrosion and improving 

water quality. 

Chang Jo applied advanced oxidation 

to destroy drinking water odors, while the 

research team of undergraduates Andrew 

Snyder-Beattie and Timothy Byrne, along 

with high school student Conor Gallagher, 

asked volunteers to sip drinking water 

and provide their opinions on the taste of 

minerals. “UmUm Good” was often the 

response. 

The 2009-2010 year looks busy, as 

Dietrich is leading an effort on “Water for 

Health” that involves 11 other interdisciplinary 

faculty at Virginia Tech who represent 

research and teaching from three 

colleges. 

Panos Diplas continued his teaching 

and research activities in the areas of environmental 

and fluvial hydraulics. 

His research efforts focused on numerical 

modeling of river flows for stream 

restoration purposes; determination of the 

effect of fluctuating releases from the Roanoke 

Rapids Dam of the Lower Roanoke 

River, N.C., on bank stability; modeling the 

effects of fluctuating instantaneous forces 

on sediment movement; investigating the 

behavior of flow through wetlands; scour 

around bridge piers; the role of in-stream 

structures on river stability and infrastructure 

protection; and the characteristics of 

tropical rivers. 

The National Science Foundation, 

Dominion Power, the U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, Army Research Office, National 

Cooperative Highway Research Program, 

Virginia Department of Game and 

Inland Fisheries, and Defense Advanced 

Research Projects Agency (DARPA) supported 

these research projects. 

Diplas advised 12 graduate students, 

seven of them pursuing Ph.D.s, and the 

remaining five MS degrees. Three of the 

MS students, David Liu, Derek Spurlock, 

and Ryan Radspinner, graduated and are 

currently employed. John Petrie, a Ph.D. 

candidate, received the Walker Graduate 

Research Fellow Award from the Virginia 

Water Resources Research Center. Papanicolaou, 

a former Ph.D. student and 

currently a professor of the CE department 

at the University of Iowa, received 

the ASCE Walter Huber Research Prize. 

Together with his graduate students 

and collaborators, Diplas published papers 

in Science, Journal of Geophysical 

Research-Earth Science, Journal of Hydraulic 

Engineering, and Environmental 

Science and Technology. He is the guest 

editor of a special issue of the Journal of 

Hydraulic Engineering, ASCE, on Stream 

Restoration Hydrodynamics that will appear 

in 2010. 

He is also a member of the International 

Scientific Committee International Conference 

on Fluvial Hydraulics (River Flow 

2010) that will be held in Germany. 

Randy Dymond has been very active 

in both teaching and research efforts in 

the areas of land development, floodplain 

mapping, urban stormwater, hazard mitigation, 

and geospatial information technology. 

Dymond teaches classes in land de- 



PROGRAM AREAS 




velopment design, water resources, and 

geographic information systems’ applications. 

He was recognized this year with 

two major teaching awards: the College of 

Engineering Certificate of Teaching Excellence 

and the G.V. Loganathan Teaching 

Award. 

This past year, he also coordinated volunteer 

professional engineers in teaching 

an advanced land development design 

course, mentored a new three credit 

course on sustainable land development 

as part of the new curricular effort called 

the Land Development Design Initiative 

(LDDI). 

LDDI is a new effort to involve practitioners 

in promoting the career of land development 

design to CEE undergraduates 

and to expand the learning opportunities 

for students in this area. More information 

is available at www.Iddi.net. 

LDDI was also honored to receive a 

second place award from the National 

Council of Examiner for Engineering and 

Surveying (NCEES) in its contest on “Connecting 

Professional Practice and Education.” 

Dymond completed his sixth and final 

year as the co-director of the Center 

for Geospatial Information Technology 

(CGIT). 

Dymond continues to stay busy with 

numerous research projects such as 

floodplain mapping, urban stormwater 

systems, hazard mitigation planning, and 

infrastructure operations. 

Dymond was involved in three presentations 

at three different conferences 

during the year on floodplain modeling 

techniques and hazard mitigation. One paper 

was published in the Journal of Flood 

Engineering and two other papers are currently 

in review. 

Dymond served as principal investigator 

on two new research proposals on urban 

stormwater management, and he continued 

work on eight previous projects. 

Marc Edwards had a “front-page” year. 

He was the commencement speaker at 

Virginia Tech’s Graduate School Commencement 

in December. He presented 

seven other keynote addresses at national/international 

conferences. 

His research on childhood lead poisoning 

from contaminated drinking water in 

the Washington D.C. area was once again 

front-page news on the web and in print 

media. 

Edwards’ group also continued active 

research projects on concrete, brass, copper 

and lead corrosion, as well as work on 

nitrification, legionella and coagulation. 

In 2009, Edwards received a National 

Association of Corrosion Engineers 

(NACE) technical achievement award. 

Members of Edwards’ research group 

traveled to San Diego for the American 

Water Works Association National Conference 

and made nine presentations. 

Group members making the trip or having 

work presented include Randi Lieberman, 

Jeff Parks, Brandi Clark, Simoni Triantafyllidou, 

Yan Zhang, Carolyn Nguyen, Kendall 

Stone, Ben Custalow, Yaofu Zhang, 

Anusha Kashyup, Emily Sarver and Paolo 

Scardina. The group also continued active 

research projects on concrete, brass, copper 

and lead corrosion, as well as work on 

nitrification, legionella and coagulation. 

For nearly a decade, Dan Gallagher 

and his students have modeled microbial 

growth in food products from farm to fork 

with funding from the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture (USDA). 

In the past year, Gallagher made many 

trips to Washington, D.C., to inform regulators, 

policymakers, and industry how 

best to implement these models and associated 

monitoring programs. 

This year, graduate student Sarah Endrikat 

and undergraduate Owen Gallagher 

assisted him. 

Most recently, he has begun development 

of a bacterial cross contamination 

model for retail grocery stores as part of a 

joint USDA/Food and Drug Administration 

project. 

In the drinking water arena of his research 

program, graduate student James 

Newbold modeled contaminant transport 

in distribution systems and Gallagher travelled 

to Korea for a presentation on statistical 

analyses of customer complaint data. 

Adil Godrej’s research work on the Occoquan 

model continued this year, with 

his Ph.D. student Yingmei Liu working on 

the completion of the last update period 

(2002-07). Some predictive runs, using 

models of previous periods, have been 

made. 

Liu is also working on a protocol for a 

sensitivity analysis of the linked model, 

as part of her research work on BMP and 

agricultural chemical usage in the Lake 

Manassas subwatershed model. 

Another Ph.D. student, whom Godrej 

is co-advising with Tom Grizzard, will be 

working on a web application of the model 

(or a neural network version of it). 

Niffy Saji, Godrej’s masters student, 

graduated after finishing her work on lake 

zonation, and now works for Fairfax Water. 

Godrej continued his work on various 

regional and local committees that deal 

with water and watershed issues. 

Tom Grizzard continued as director 

of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring 

Laboratory (OWML), and also began his 

35th year of service to Virginia Tech. 

Along with his regular teaching activities 

in the EWR program in Northern Virginia, 

he continued with a number of University 

service roles in the Northern Capitol region. 

With colleagues, Grizzard continued 

his research activities in wastewater reclamation, 

source water management, and 

management of surface water quality in 

urbanizing watersheds. Together with Adil 

Godrej, this accounts for nearly $2 million 

in funding in 2009. 

Through an inter-departmental cooperative 

agreement, a biological systems engineering 

(BSE) faculty member is hosted 

at OWML. This agreement and expanded 

research activities created a need for additional 

laboratory and office space in the 

Manassas facility. In response, Grizzard 

took charge of constructing a 25 percent 

space increase addition and refurbishment 

to the lab and office space, including faculty 

and graduate student research areas 

at the OWML. 

Through a new agreement between 

Virginia Tech and the French Engineering 

Graduate School École des Mine de 

St. Etienne, Grizzard hosted a French 

student for the summer term, and an environmental 

engineering professor in the 

fall semester. Also in the vein of international 

collaboration, Grizzard participated 

in hosting delegations visiting the U.S. to 


PROGRAM AREAS 


Adil Godrej works with his colleagues at 

CEE’s Occoquan Watershed Monitoring 

Laboratory. He serves on a number of 

regional and local committees. 


learn about research and indirect potable 

reuse practice, including several groups 

from Australia and a Romanian study tour. 

Grizzard continued in a sixth year of 

service as a member of an advisory panel 

to the Public Utility Board (PUB) of the 

Republic of Singapore, advising the Singaporean 

government on a range of issues 

related to the management of critical 

water resources, including indirect potable 

reuse and stormwater harvesting. 

He also completed eight years of service 

on the scientific and technical advisory 

committee to the U.S. EPA Chesapeake 

Bay Program where he made policy 

recommendations for restoration of the 

world’s most productive estuary. 

In 2008, Grizzard was appointed to the 

technical advisory committee for the Syracuse 

University EPA Center of Excellence 

on Energy and Environment. 

Beginning this year, he has worked with 

the Virginia Department of Environmental 

Quality, developing regulatory guidance 

for the practice of indirect potable reuse in 

Virginia. 

The unique experience of the Occoquan 

Watershed has provided a model for the 

development of a successful policy to 

address future projects in the Commonwealth. 

Erich Hester’s research focuses on 

how hydrology, hydraulics, and geomorphology 

influence ecological health in 

stream, river, and wetland systems. 

Hester completed his Ph.D. in ecology 

at the University of North Carolina in August 

2008 and joined the EWR faculty in 

January 2009. 

Work from his recent dissertation continues 

to be presented in conferences and 

journals. For example, his field experiments 

evaluating the impact of surfacegroundwater 

(hyporheic) exchange induced 

by in-stream geomorphic structures 

on stream temperature was published in 

Limnology and Oceanography in January. 

In addition, he presented his metaanalysis 

of biological sensitivity of stream 

and river organisms to anthropogenic temperature 

change at the North American 

Benthological Society Annual Meeting in 

May, and submitted a manuscript on this 

topic to a peer-reviewed journal. 

Hester has also pursued new research 

directions. For example, in January 

he submitted a manuscript for an invited 

chapter on hyporheic restoration in 

streams and rivers that will become part 

of an American Geophysical Union (AGU) 

book on Stream Restoration in 2010. 

Finally, he is preparing for research in 

2009-2010 in several ways. He successfully 

recruited Garrett Menichino (direct 

Ph.D.) and Elizabeth Cranmer (M.S.) who 

will be joining his new research group in 

the fall. 

His summer 2009 research focused on 

impacts of stream restoration on hyporheic 

exchange, impact of heated runoff 



PROGRAM AREAS 



from parking lots during thunderstorms on 

temperatures in receiving water bodies, 

and effects of bathymetry and vegetation 

on thermal heterogeneity in streams and 

rivers. 

William Knocke stepped down as CEE 

department head in August 2009 after 15 

years of service in this position. 

He was on research leave during the 

fall semester 2009, and then will be welcomed 

back to the EWR program as a fulltime 

faculty member beginning in January 

2010. 

Over the past year he was named the 

Outstanding Civil Engineer of the Year by 

the Virginia Section of the American Society 

of Civil Engineers and received the 

2009 ASCE ExCEEd Leadership Award 

from ASCE national. 

He and his EWR colleagues look forward 

to a return to the more traditional 

faculty role within the group in the year to 

come! 

During the past year, John Little developed 

and taught a new 4000-level class 

titled “Environmental Sustainability.” 

He was elected to the International 

Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate 

(ISIAQ) Academy of Fellows and was 

invited by the Indoor Air Institute to cochair 

a series of highly interdisciplinary 

workshops on semi-volatile organic compounds 

(SVOC) such as plasticizers and 

flame retardants in the residential environment. 

Little was also invited to be a keynote 

speaker at the Fifth International Workshop 

on Energy and Environment of 

Residential Buildings and the Third International 

Conference on Built Environment 

and Public Health (EERB-BEPH 2009), 

Guilin, Guangxi, China. 

Little is also chair of a newly formed 

IWA specialist group on lake and reservoir 

management. 

Lee Bryant, a Ph.D. student in Little’s 

lake and reservoir management group, 

received a two-year NSF earth sciences 

postdoctoral fellowship to continue her 

research on the biogeochemical cycling 

of manganese, and its effect on drinking 

water. 

Little was also the lead technical expert 


on a large consulting project for Atlanta 

entitled “Optimizing Water Quality at the 

Conceptual Design Stage: Bellwood Quarry 

Reservoir.” Vickie Singleton, a former 

Ph.D. student in Little’s lake and reservoir 

management group, played a central role 

in the project. 

Ying Xu, a Ph.D. student in Little’s indoor 

air group, accepted a faculty position 

in the Department of Civil, Architectural 

and Environmental Engineering at the 

University of Texas, Austin. 

Little remains coordinator of the EWR 

program. 

Linsey Marr’s research in air quality 

engineering focuses on improved quantification 

of emissions, characterization of 

airborne nanoparticles, and prediction of 

the fate and transport of air pollutants. 

Ph.D. student Tim Moore graduated 

this year. His paper describing development 

and testing of the Flux Lab for the 

Atmospheric Measurement of Emissions 

(FLAME) appeared on the cover of the 

Journal of Environmental Quality. 

Andrea Tiwari successfully defended 

her M.S., received an NSF IGERT EIGER 

fellowship, and is now pursuing doctoral 

research on chemical transformations of 

fullerene nanoparticles in the atmosphere. 

Ph.D. student Marina Eller Quadros 

reviewed the environmental risks of airborne 

silver nanoparticles and is quantifying 

emissions of such particles from consumer 

products. 

Post-doctoral researchers Amara Holder 

and Jennifer Benning joined the group 

from UC Berkeley and the University of 

Alaska, respectively, to study the interactions 

of nanoparticles with lung cells and 

the interactions of endocrine-disrupting 

chemicals emitted by vinyl flooring with 

particles. 

Two new Ph.D. students, Mike Klapmeyer 

and Wan Yang, joined the group 

this fall. 

Currently on sabbatical in-house, Marr 

is exploring new research directions in 

the airborne transmission of disease while 

also finalizing a backlog of results for publication. 

Glenn Moglen spent the year settling 

into his position with new efforts in teaching, 

research, and service/outreach. 

Moglen’s first forays into distance 

teaching included developing new versions 

of existing graduate courses: CEE 

5324: advanced hydrology, and CEE 

5734: urban hydrology and stormwater 

management. 

In the fall, he taught his first undergraduate 

course in CEE 4304: hydrology. Part 

of his preparation included working closely 

with the campus’ Institute for Distance and 

Distributed Learning to bring digital whiteboard 

technology to Virginia Tech in time 

for this course. 

In research, he had a productive year 

with four to five journal publications on 

topics ranging from climate/land use 

change effects on flow duration, spurious 

correlation associated with EPA TMDL 

methods, optimization of land development 

patterns for flood control, and effects 

of climate/land use change on stream 

ecology. 

He is the lead-principal investigator on 

recent funding from ICTAS that will support 

the studies of several students and 

colleagues in Northern Virginia with a 

focus on water supply in the Washington, 

D.C., metropolitan region in the face of 

changing climate and land use. 

Moglen reports recent growth in his research 

group. Suzanne Ciavola (MS), Phil 

Maldonado (MS), and Jim Stagge (Ph.D.) 

are commencing their studies presently. 

In the area of service and outreach, 

Moglen guest edited the April 2009 issue 

of ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering 

that focused on “Impervious Areas and 

Hydrology.” 

He also assumed chairmanship of the 

ASCE Watershed Management technical 

committee in October, 2008. 

Moglen now serves as the engineering 

faculty organization representative for engineering 

from the National Capital Region 

(NCR). He also became president-elect of 

the NCR Faculty Association. 

Finally, Moglen enjoyed a trip last fall to 

Berlin, Germany as part of a NSF-sponsored 

joint U.S.-German conference on 

land use decision making under a changing 

climate. 

John Novak and his students continued 

their research in wastewater, biore- 


PROGRAM AREAS 



mediation and solid waste management. 

His students, Jongmin Kim and Chul 

Park, presented two papers at the annual 

Water Environment Federation meeting in 

Chicago. Another student, Chris Wilson, 

was a coauthor on another paper presented 

at this conference. 

Wilson also presented a paper at the 

Residuals and Biosolids Management 

Conference in Portland, Ore. 

Vijesh Karatt presented a paper at the 

New York Water Environment Association 

on solid waste management. 

Research continued with projects supported 

by Siemens Corporation, DC Water 

& Sewer Authority, CH2M-HILL and Waste 

Management, Inc. 

In addition, a project with the Mid Atlantic 

Biosolids Association continued. Four 

papers were published in research journals 

and seven papers were included in 

conference proceeding. 

Novak served as the advisor for 10 

graduate students this past year. 

He also continued his service as an associate 

editor for the journal Water Environment 

Research. 

Amy Pruden has had an exciting and 

busy first year at Virginia Tech, coming 

to Blacksburg after six years at Colorado 

State University. 

The year kicked off with a Discovery 

Channel interview for its new series: “Sci 

Trek: Killer Germs” in which she explored 

the environmental pathways of antibiotic 

resistance. 

Two months later, she was selected to 

attend the National Academy of Engineering 

Frontiers Symposium in Albuquerque, 

N.M., where she sat alongside some of 

the nation’s brightest engineers between 

the ages of 30-45, and learned about the 

cutting edge in homeland security, drug 

delivery, and cognitive engineering. 

Pruden taught two courses this year, 

CEE 5194 Environmental Engineering 

Microbiology and CEE 3104 Introduction 

to Environmental Engineering. 

Her graduate students also had a busy 

year. 

Chad McKinney helped Pruden set up 

the laboratories in Hancock for new research 

projects, and began experiments 

on disinfection of antibiotic resistance 

genes. 

Two other Ph.D. students joined her 

research group. Yanjun (Becky) Ma will 

be examining persistence of antibiotic 

resistance in soils, while Hong Wang is 

developing methods for quantification of 

water-borne pathogens using molecular 

biological techniques. 

She also started a new project with 

Mark Widdowson in which they will advise 

Ph.D. student Nicole Fahrenfeld in demonstrating 

the feasibility of TNT bioremediation 

in anaerobic aquifer sediments. 

In the spring Pruden had the honor of 

giving two invited lectures in the UK, one 

at the Society of General Microbiology in 

Harrogate and the second at the University 

of Newcastle Upon Tyne. 

Finally, she is happy to see her first 

book come into print, “Hormones and 

Pharmaceuticals Generated from Concentrated 

Animal Feeding Operations: 

Transport in Water and Soil,” which she 

co-edited with Laurence Shore through 

Springer publishing. 

This past year was a busy, yet highly 

successful one for Peter Vikesland’s research 

group. 

During the year, two Ph.D. students, 

Krista Rule Wigginton and E. Matthew 

Fiss, completed their dissertations. They 

were the first two Ph.D. students to complete 

their doctoral studies in the Vikesland 

group and have set the bar high for 

future doctoral students. Wigginton is currently 

employed as a postdoctoral scholar 

at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de 

Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, 

and Fiss is working as a consultant 

in Charlotte, N.C. 

Two M.S. students, Komgrit Kotcharaksa 

(K2) and John Templeton, also finished 

their theses during this past year. 

His remaining graduate group now 

consists of four Ph.D. students, Xiaojun 

Chang, Rebecca Halvorson, Matthew Hull, 

and Robert Rebodos, one M.S. student, 

Lisa DeGrazia, one postdoctoral scholar, 

Andrew Whelton, and one research scientist, 

Weinan Leng. 

Travel to foreign countries was a general 

theme for the year with Vikesland 

attending conferences in both Aix-en- 

Provence, France and Singapore and 

three students undertaking research experiences 

abroad. 

In the summer of 2008, Wigginton 

worked for three months at EPFL. In the 

summer of 2009, Halvorson worked at 

Nanyang Technological University in Singapore 

and DeGrazia was a summer intern 

with the non-government organization 

DAI in Cambodia. 

In the fall, Vikesland spent four months 

at the Le Centre Européen de Recherche 

et d¹Enseignement des Géosciences de 

l’Environnement (CEREGE) in Aix-en- 

Provence. At the CEREGE, Vikesland 

continued his work examining engineered 

and natural nanomaterial fate in the environment. 

Mark Widdowson and his colleagues 

initiated two new projects funded by the 

Environmental Security Technology Certification 

Program (ESTCP). ESTCP is a 

Department of Defense (DoD) program 

that promotes innovative, cost-effective 

environmental technologies through demonstration 

and validation at DoD sites. 

The aim of one project is to validate a 

methodology for assessing the long-term 

sustainability of biodegradation-based 

remedial action plans at chlorinated solvent 

sites. The second project involves 

the performance and analysis field-scale 

mass-transfer tests at the former Williams 

Air Force Base where a source zone 

remediation pilot test, using terminal enhanced 

extraction, is underway. 

Widdowson and his students presented 

papers at the tenth International In Situ 

and On-Site Bioremediation Symposium 

and other conferences. 

Widdowson presented an invited paper 

on the subject of remedial timeframes at 

sites contaminated with polycyclic aromatic 

compounds (PAHs) at an EPA workshop 

on the remediation of manufactured gas 

plants in May 2009. 

He presented short courses on groundwater 

remediation to the National Ground 

Water Association and the Environmental 

Professionals Organizations of Connecticut. 

Last year, Widdowson ended a five-year 

term as coordinator of the EWR graduate 

program. 


PROGRAM AREAS 

GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING 

Russell Greene is working on several 

NSF earthquake engineering projects. 

Geotechnical expertise solves a myriad of pressing issues 

Faculty, staff, and students within the 

Geotechnical Engineering Program 

continued to excel in teaching and 

research, and have applied their technical 

expertise in solving pressing national and 

international issues. 

Brief descriptions of each faculty member’s 

activities over the past year are presented 

below. 

Adrian Rodriguez-Marek will join the 

group as an associate professor in August 

2010. He has expertise in the areas of 

seismic hazard analysis, site response 

analysis, soil-structure interaction and 

post-earthquake field reconnaissance. 

Tom Brandon has continued focusing 

both his research and professional efforts 

on projects dealing with the U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers. 

He currently has research projects with 

the New Orleans District and the Engineering 

Research and Development Center 

(ERDC) investigating the interpretation 

of cone penetration tests in organic clays, 

methods of underseepage analysis for 

levees, behavior of organic-rich fills, and 

undrained strength interpretation for stability 

assessment. 

He also was involved in training ERDC 

technicians regarding automated consolidation, 

direct shear, and triaxial testing. 

Brandon is a member of the Mississippi 

Valley Division’s Geotechnical and Construction 

QA Teams, and a member of the 

Geotechnical Criteria Application Team. 

With Mike Duncan, he taught a two-day 

short course at Virginia Tech sponsored 

by the CGPR in December on shear 

strength and slope stability. 

Joe Dove continued his emphasis on 

multidisciplinary research to develop and 

deploy technologies that improve productivity 

while promoting sustainability and 

adding value to professional services. 

He is collaborating with Patricia Dove, 

professor of geosciences, and Adam 

Wallace, a post doctoral fellow in geosciences, 

Craig Shillaber and Kyle Blakley, 

both Via fellows, to develop a novel, biologically 

inspired method to improve the 

engineering behavior of soil. 

Dove is also working with software engineer 

Brian Badillo using National Science 

Foundation (NSF) support to further develop 

the software package geotechnical 

Visualization Tools (gVT). This software 

allows extraction of engineering data from 

terrestrial LiDAR equipment scans and is 

being used by a major contracting company 

for mapping and monitoring of tunnel 

excavations. 

Other areas of active research include 



PROGRAM AREAS 



the application of advanced field-based 

sensing techniques to identify swelling 

soils, engineering for sustainable sites, 

and bio-inspired materials. 

Teaching activities included instructing 

about 265 undergraduates and launching 

the new course “Geotechnics for Land 

Development.” 

Dove has also served as the geotechnical 

program coordinator for the past three 

years, served the department as one of 

the academic advisors for undergraduate 

majors, and was the program’s representative 

to the curriculum committee. 

Mike Duncan and Ph.D. student Matthew 

Sleep continued their study of levee 

safety, focusing on underseepage, erosion 

and stability. They are working with 

Tom Brandon, who is a co-supervisor of 

Sleep’s Ph.D. research. 

Duncan continues his work with George 

Filz, CEE professor, managing the Center 

for Geotechnical Practice and Research 

(CGPR). 

Duncan and Sleep wrote a CGPR report 

on new and emerging seepage monitoring 

techniques and practices for dams 

and levees. 

Duncan and master’s student Thomas 

Moore completed a CGPR report entitled 

“Guide for Best Practices in Geotechnical 

Site and Soil Characterization.” 

Working with Sleep, Heather Hickerson, 

and Kevin Ritter, Duncan completed 

a study of organic soils and peats, and 

methods of remediating the problems associated 

with them. 

Working with Ritter, he completed a 

literature review report on geophysical 

methods for detection of underground 

cavities. 

In April, ASCE honored Duncan with an 

Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) 

award for lifetime achievement in education. 

Only one OPAL award for education 

is awarded to civil engineering faculty in 

the United States each year. Virginia Tech 

colleague Jim Mitchell won the same 

award three years earlier, making Virginia 

Tech the only university with two faculty 

members who have been accorded this 

prestigious honor. 

George Filz is working with Jim 

Mitchell, Vern Schaefer (a Virginia Tech 

graduate who is a professor at Iowa State 

University), and others on a research 

project sponsored by the Strategic Highway 

Research Program to enable more 

widespread use of soil improvement technologies 

for transportation infrastructure 

renewal. 

Filz continues his work for the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration 

(NASA) to evaluate the mobility and stability 

of NASA’s rocket transporter as it 

travels from the Vehicle Assembly Building 

to the launch pad under a 25 million 

pound load from the next-generation Ares 

V rocket. 

Filz also continues his work with John 

Little, Mitchell, and others across the 

university on a large NSF-funded study of 

interfaces in nature, including interfaces 

between soil particles, and to develop new 

approaches for integrating education and 

research for doctoral students. 

With Mike Duncan, Filz is investigating 

the interactions of integral bridge abutments 

and MSE wall backfill, under sponsorship 

from the Virginia Transportation 

Research Council. 

Funding from Virginia Tech’s CGPR 

supports projects on over-excavation and 

replacement, load and resistance factor 

design, quality control and quality assurance 

for deep mixing, and sustainability in 

geotechnical engineering. These projects 

permit Filz to work with many outstanding 

students, including Tiffany Adams, Alfredo 

Arenas, Eric Backlund, Amanda Barngrover, 

Kolleen Carlson, Micah Hatch, Laura 

Kosoglu, Mike McGuire, Kurt Schimpke, 

Jesse Siegel, Joel Sloan, Lee Vanzler, 

and Chadd Yeats, as well as visiting 

scholar Xin Lu. 

Filz and his students made presentations 

of their research results in Charlotte, 

Kansas City, Nanjing, New Orleans, Okinawa, 

Orlando, and Sligo. 

Together with Duncan, Filz directs Virginia 

Tech’s CGPR. 

He recently completed several years 

of service as chairman of the CEE curriculum 

committee, and he is a member of 

VDOT’s Geotechnical Research Advisory 

Committee, the ASCE Geo-Institute Soil 

Improvement Committee, and the editorial 

board of the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical 

and Geoenvironmental Engineering. 

Filz also continues his consulting work 

on projects involving the deep mixing 

method and other geotechnical construction. 

He is assisting the U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers with design of levee repairs and 

improvements in Louisiana. 

This past year was Russell Green’s 

first academic year at Virginia Tech as a 

faculty member. Previously, Green was on 

the faculty at the University of Michigan. 

Consequently, the year has largely 

been one of transition, with two of his 

Ph.D. students at the University of Michigan 

successfully defending their research 

in the spring 2009 semester and two more 

making progress towards completion. 

Over the past year, Green continued 

his involvement in three major funded 

research projects that include two NSF 

Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation 

Research (NEESR) projects, one 

of which Green is the lead principal investigator 

(PI), and an NSF Faculty Early 

Career Development (CAREER) Program 

project, for which he is the sole PI. 

One of the NEESR projects focuses 

on the phenomenon of “sand aging,” with 

other participants on the project being 

Roman Hryciw (University of Michigan), 

Christopher Baxter (University of Rhode 

Island), James Mitchell (Virginia Tech), 

and Ph.D. candidate David Saftner (University 

of Michigan) and former Ph.D. 

student Thaweesak Jirathanathworn (University 

of Michigan). 

The second NEESR project focuses on 

the health monitoring of buried pipelines. 

Other participants on this project include 

Radoslaw Michalowski (University of 

Michigan), Jerome Lynch (University of 

Michigan), Jason Weiss (Purdue University), 

and Aaron Bradshaw (Merrimack College), 

and graduate students Junhee Kim 

(University of Michigan), Srinivasa Nadukuru 

(University of Michigan), and Mohammad 

Pour-Ghaz (Purdue University). 

The CAREER project focuses on the 



PROGRAM AREAS 



use of paleoliquefaction techniques for 

determining performance-based seismic 

design parameters for the central-eastern 

U.S. 

Other participants on this project include 

Scott Olson (University of Illinois) 

and Patrick Munson (University of Indiana, 

emeritus), Stephen Obermeier (U.S. Geological 

Survey, emeritus), and Ph.D. student 

Kathryn Gunberg (Virginia Tech). 

Other students who Green has worked 

with over the past year on various projects 

include Rachel Finch, Stephen Gyurisin, 

Kevin Foster, and Sam Lasley, as well 

as the post-doctoral researcher Jongwon 

Lee. 

Earlier in the year Green completed his 

term as the interim chair of the research 

committee for the U.S. Universities Council 

for Geotechnical Education and Research 

(USUCGER) and became an editorial 

board member for ASCE’s Journal 

of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental 


Additionally, he gave invited lectures or 

presentations in California, Beijing, China, 

and Tokyo, Japan. 

Jimmy Martin remains active in teaching, 

research, and professional service. 

A significant portion of the year involved 

work as director of the Institute for Disaster 

Risk Management at Virginia Tech 

(DRM@VT), a university research center. 

Under Martin’s leadership, DRM@VT developed 

19 proposals to funding agencies 

and organizations. 

Most proposals were in excess of $2 

million and involved natural disaster-related 

research. Proposals were funded in the 

area of geothermal energy where foundation 

piles are used as heat exchangers 

via heat pumps to more efficiently heat or 

cool buildings. The Department of Energy 

and NSF are sponsoring this work. (See 

related story, page 2.) 

Funding was also secured for landslide 

analysis, modeling, and disaster risk mitigation 

in Romania. 

Martin and his colleague Guney Olgun 

also secured funding to develop a levee 

monitoring system for New Orleans using 

plane- and satellite-based remote sensing 


technology. This innovative work closely 

integrates sensing, advanced modeling, 

and decision-making in an attempt to 

establish a new paradigm for long-term 

infrastructure management. 

If successful, this work will be expanded 

to other major levee districts, such as Sacramento, 

Calif., and be implemented for 

other types of infrastructure systems. 

Importantly, based on this work and 

his discussions with leaders at ASCE, 

Martin was one of 30 national experts that 

participated in ASCE’s Critical Infrastructure 

Summit that developed guidance for 

President Obama’s stimulus package for 

infrastructure-related projects. 

Martin made numerous international 

trips to perform research studies, conduct 

training and outreach, teach courses, and 

present the results of his work. Travel during 

the past year involved Japan, Turkey, 

Romania, Switzerland, and Italy. 

Findings of his work were developed 

into several refereed publications, including 

a special issue of the Journal of Emergency 

Management in which he served as 

co-editor. 

He presented several professional engineering 

short courses and seminars for 

ASCE, FERC, and other regional groups, 

such as the New Jersey Chapter of the 

Geo-institute. 

He served on a number of large consulting 

projects including serving as lead 

seismic consultant on the Pevari Dam 

in southeastern Turkey, and the foundation 

and seismic retrofit of historic Grace 

Church in Charleston, S.C. 

Matthew Mauldon’s research activities 

for the last year included semi-automated 

processing of LiDaR data to extract statistical 

engineering parameters for rock 

masses (with M.S. student K. Chaturvedela), 

and a study of the relationship between 

damage areas and shear strength 

on sheared bedding planes. 

Undergraduate Seth Martin applied image 

processing techniques to delineation 

and measurement of the damage suffered 

during shear. 

Mauldon presented papers on these 

topics at the 43rd U.S. Rock Mechanics 

Symposium in July. 

Mauldon continues to explore geoengineering 

research opportunities at DUSEL 

together with colleagues at other institutions. 

New initiatives include a study of 

erodibility of fractured rock. 

He served this year on the organizing 

committee for the 43rd US Rock Mechanics 

Symposium and Fourth U.S.-Canada 

Rock Mechanics Symposium. 

He serves on the editorial board of 

Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering. 

Emeritus Professor Jim Mitchell continues 

to serve as the chair of the advisory 

committee for the interdisciplinary 

NSF IGERT at Virginia Tech on Exploring 

Interfaces in Graduate Education and 

Research. 

He is a member of the research team 

for the Transportation Research Board’s 

Strategic Highway Research Program 2 

project on Geotechnical Solutions for Soil 

Improvement, Rapid Embankment Construction, 

and Stabilization of the Pavement 

Working Platform. 

He delivered nine invited lectures, 

including the 2008 Stanley D. Wilson 

Memorial Lecture in Seattle and the 2008 

Mueser-Rutledge Consulting Engineers 

Lecture in New York City. 

He was the honoree at the “Sixth International 

Conference on Case Histories 

in Geotechnical Engineering and Symposium 

in Honor of Professor James K. 

Mitchell,” Arlington, Va., in August 2008. 

Mitchell’s professional service activities 

included membership on the nominating 

committee of the National Academy 

of Engineering and the Civil Engineering 

Academic Advisory Board of Rensselaer 

Polytechnic Institute. 

His current consulting activities include 

advisory panels on seismic remediation 

studies for four embankment dams in California 

and the Seismic Peer Review Panel 

for the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, 

membership, along with Mike Duncan, on 

the Blue Ribbon Panel for review of the 

Eastward Expansion of Craney Island for 

the Port of Virginia’s new Craney Island 

Marine Terminal, and evaluation of mattress 

rock densification problems at the 

Deltaport Berth 3 Marineworks in Vancouver, 

British Columbia.

PROGRAM AREAS 

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS 

Finley Charney is pursuing formal relationships 

between universities in the U.S. and in India, 

allowing for a variety of cooperative activities. 

SEM program 

highlights 

research and 

travel 

The highlights of the Structural and 

Materials (SEM) Program for the 

past include the following: Sam 

Easterling was appointed CEE department 

head; William Wright joined the 

faculty in spring 2009; Carin Roberts- 

Wollmann received the Alumni Teaching 

Excellence Award; and four faculty members, 

Roberts-Wollmann, Tommy Cousins, 

Elisa Sotelino, and Richard Weyers 

are working on a multi-year, multi-million 

research project known as the Long Term 

Bridge Performance (LTBP) program. 

Summaries of each SEM faculty member’s 

activities for the past year are presented 

in the paragraphs below. 

Finley Charney continues to perform 

research in analysis, behavior, and design 

of building structures. Focus areas include 

nonlinear dynamic analysis, innovative 

structural system development, and structural 

damping. 

Several new projects have been initiated 

over the past year. Examples include 

the development of new “hybrid” structural 

systems for earthquake resistant design, 

wind drift analysis and design methodologies 

for metal buildings (with Cris Moen 

as co-principal investigator), and a major 

update to the earthquake engineering 

computer programs NONLIN and EQ- 

Tools. 

Charney has traveled extensively over 

the past year, with trips to China, Europe, 

India, and Central America. The visit to 

India was of particular interest because 

one of the goals of this trip was to establish 

formal relationships between universities 

in the U.S. and India. Thus, as part 

of the India trip, Charney visited several 

universities, including Mumbai University, 



PROGRAM AREAS 



IIT Bombay and IIT Kanpur. Over the next 

year Charney will seek to establish memorandums 

of understanding with these universities, 

allowing for a variety of cooperative 

research and teaching activities. 

Charney has developed a new twoday 

continuing education seminar titled 

A Guide to the ASCE 7-05 Seismic Load 

Provisions for Buildings and other Structures. 

This seminar is based on his new 

book, with a similar title, published in 

2009 by ASCE Press. The seminar is presented 

several times a year in major cities 

throughout the United States. 

Tommy Cousins continues to offer 

prestressed concrete and bridge design 

courses and to focus his research efforts 

on challenges associated with bridge performance 

and longevity. 

He has concentrated his research efforts 

on the projects described below 

which are all related to the development 

and use of high performance materials in 

bridges. 

Cousins is co-principal investigator (PI) 

with Roberts-Wollmann on a National 

Cooperative Highway Research Program 

(NCHRP) project that involves a comprehensive 

investigation of lightweight, high 

performance concrete for bridges. This 

project is approximately 50 percent complete 

(total contract length is 36 months), 

involves extensive material and structural 

testing, and will develop changes to the 

AASHTO LRFD bridge design specification 

that take advantage of the material 

properties of lightweight, high performance 

concrete. 

The Virginia Transportation Research 

Council (VTRC) is a sub-contractor on the 

project and as such will aid in development 

of mix designs, material property 

testing, and code development. 

Of special importance to the bridge 

engineering community is the casting 

and testing of six full sized prestressed 

concrete bridge girders. These girders 

will be cast at a local prestressing plant 

and tested in the structures and materials 

laboratory. 

In a $25 million project, The Federal 

Highway Administration (FHA) has con- 


tracted with researchers at the Center for 

Advanced Infrastructure & Transportation 

(at Rutgers University) to undertake a 

five-year project to investigate the longterm 

performance of bridges. The LTBP 

program will be the basis for future bridge 

condition assessment and asset management 

programs that will be used to assist 

managers of the nation’s highway infrastructure 

in making better decisions in the 

stewardship of highway assets. 

Researchers from VTRC and Virginia 

Tech are subcontractors to Rutgers for 

this project. The Virginia Tech research 

team is being lead by Roberts-Wollmann 

with Cousins and Sotelino serving as coinvestigators. 

The first year of the project has been 

completed. To date, the main accomplishment 

was developing a list of national 

needs for bridge condition assessment by 

polling a representative sample of state 

transportation agencies. 

Virginia Tech along with partner researchers 

from VTRC and Utah State University 

are presently planning the periodic 

and long-term monitoring of several pilot 

bridges. Instrumentation and testing of the 

first of two of these pilot bridges should 

begin during the summer of 2009. 

Cris Moen has split time in his first year 

at Virginia Tech between developing his 

“teaching style” and building a strong research 

group. He is very active in structural 

stability research, especially the design 

and behavior of cold-formed steel (CFS) 

structural components. 

M.S. graduate Ryan Bowen, the first 

alumnus of Moen’s research group, produced 

compelling experimental results 

that directly quantified manufacturing residual 

stresses in cold-formed steel. 

Moen and his M.S. student Karthik Ganesan 

are conducting a research study 

for the American Iron and Steel Institute 

(AISI) to improve the LRFD design method 

for CFS compression members, which 

will make CFS more competitive with low 

and midrise hot-rolled steel structural systems. 

Moen and M.S. student Rakesh Naik 

are working on a new design approach for 

CFS joists subjected to high shear loads. 

M.S. student Behrooz Soroori Rad is 

completing experimental work on coldformed 

steel joists with web holes (the 

holes are needed to accommodate utilities 

in the ceilings of buildings). This research 

will support a new design method for CFS 

members with holes (developed by Moen 

and his Ph.D. advisor) currently being incorporated 

into the AISI CFS North American 

Specification. 

Moen’s research on steel thin-walled 

components is expanding to ultra-high 

performance concrete (UHPC) with a recent 

grant from Virginia Tech’s Institute for 

Critical Technology and Applied Science 

(ICTAS). 

Ph.D. student and former Fulbright 

Scholar Vathana Poev will start work in 

the fall to develop new design tools and 

methods encouraging UHPC use in buildings 

and transportation structures. 

M.S. student Gokul Kamath presented 

his work on automated strut-and-tie models 

for reinforced concrete with topology 

optimization at the 2009 ASCE Conference 

on Mechanics and Materials. (This 

research is a collaboration with Jamie 

Guest at Johns Hopkins University.) 

Moen is also working on several research 

studies with industry, including a 

collaborative effort with Charney to improve 

lateral drift design procedures for 

metal buildings. This project entails pulling 

on an existing building (yes, that’s correct, 

pulling on a building!) in Christiansburg to 

evaluate the influence of cladding on lateral 

frame stiffness. 

Moen and Ph.D. student Tian Gao are 

helping to improve the design of industrial 

roll up garage doors subjected to hurricane-force 

winds. 

M.S. student Kalyani Tipnis recently 

completed a test on an innovative glassfiber 

reinforced concrete panel for a 

start-up company in Northern Virginia, the 

Diamond Panel Corporation, looking to 

compete worldwide with precast concrete 

planks used for sounds walls and building 

facades. 

Stop by Moen’s website to read the latest 

news from his research group, www. 

moen.cee.vt.edu. 


PROGRAM AREAS 



Kamal Rojiani’s primary contribution 

was in the area of teaching due to an unusually 

heavy teaching load. In fall 2008 

he taught Theory of Structures, Reinforced 

Concrete Design, Computer Applications 

for CEE, a small group section of 

Intro to CEE, and the SEM graduate seminar. 

In spring 2009 he taught Reinforced 

Concrete Design, Reliability Methods for 

Structures and Mechanics and the SEM 

graduate seminar. He also taught Theory 

of Structures and Computer Applications 

for CEE in the first summer session of 

2009. 

Rojiani performs several service activities. 

He is one of the CEE department 

advisors with responsibility for advising 

approximately 100 undergraduate students. 

He is also a member of the CEE 

Curriculum Committee. Rojiani assumed 

the role of SEM program area coordinator 

in June. 

Rojiani’s research interests include 

structural safety and reliability, risk analysis, 

code calibration, computer applications 

in civil and structural engineering, 

programming methodologies and software 

development. He is currently working on 

several books on programming and numerical 

applications. 

Elisa Sotelino continued her research 

on finite element analysis and modeling of 

structures and on the development of new 

numerical algorithms for high performance 

computing. 

She is currently collaborating with 

Cousins and Roberts-Wollmann and the 

Virginia Transportation Research Council 

(VTRC) on a multimillion dollar project on 

Long-Term Bridge Performance Program 

(LTBPP). The team is responsible for 

the instrumentation and monitoring of 10 

bridges in the eastern part of the United 

States. Sotelino is responsible for modeling 

and analyzing the bridges selected for 

monitoring. 

Other current collaborative research 

activities with Roberts-Wollman and Cousins 

in the bridge area include: the application 

of ultra-high performance concrete on 

bridge decks and girders, long-term bridge 

performance, and investigation the dynamic 

behavior of bridges with lightweight 

decks. The Federal Highway Administration 

(FHWA) and VTRC are the sponsors. 

On another current research project, 

Sotelino is collaborating with Linbing 

Wang of Virginia Tech and Marte Gutierrez 

of the Colorado School of Mines on a 

“Unified Approach for Multiscale Characterization, 

Modeling, and Simulation for 

Stone- Based Infrastructure Materials,” 

sponsored by the National Science Foundation 

(NSF). 

Finally, she is leading a research project 

on the behavior of structures under fire 

loading. 

Sotelino continues to perform numerous 

service activities on behalf of the CEE department, 

Virginia Tech, and professional 

organizations. She has served as the 

SEM program area coordinator for the last 

four years. She has also served as one 

of the CEE department representatives in 

the university’s faculty senate, a member 

of the College of Engineering Diversity 

Committee, the faculty senate representative 

on the Commission for Equal Opportunity 

and Diversity, and a member of the 

Provost-chaired Taskforce on Race and 

the Institution. 

Sotelino continues to be active in the 

profession. She is finishing a seven-year 

term as associate editor for the ASCE 

Journal of Structural Engineering. She is 

also a member of the International Advisory 

Board for COMPDYN 2009, a thematic 

conference sponsored by the European 

Community on Computational Methods in 

Applied Sciences. 

Richard Weyers completed research 

on the volume changes of Portland cement 

concrete overlay mixtures for VTRC/ 

VDOT. The project provides shrinkage 

limits and a test method for the implementation 

of specifications for latex modified 

concrete, shrinkage compensating concrete, 

ternary pozzolanic concrete, and 

latex modified rapid set concrete. Implementation 

of results will minimize cracking 

in bridge deck overlays and thus increase 

service life performance. 

Weyers joined the LTBP research team 

in the spring. His prime responsibilities are 

to evaluate the performance of untreated 

and treated bridge decks. He will also assist 

Mike Brown of the VTRC in evaluating 

decks built with reinforcement other than 

black steel and epoxy coated steel including 

galvanized, and corrosion resistant 

alloyed steels. 

In April 2009 a 3-foot-by-3-foot section 

of a closure pour in a reinforced concrete 

deck on Interstate 81 punched through 

the deck. The deck was cast in two sections 

in 1992 during a deck replacement 

project. The closure pour connected the 

two new deck sections. The deck sections 

and closure pour were built with epoxycoated 

reinforcement. Weyers is assisting 

Michael Sprinkel of VTRC in investigating 

the cause of the failure. A presentation of 

the failure and results to date is planned 

for the 2010 TRB meeting in Washington, 

D.C. 

Carin Roberts-Wollmann focuses her 

research on methods for improving bridge 

durability and performance, and reducing 

bridge construction time. 

This year she is collaborating with 

Cousins and Sotelino on several bridge 

research projects. She and Cousins are in 

the third year of a project for the National 

Cooperative Highway Research Program 

(NCHRP) to investigate the use of High- 

Performance/High Strength Lightweight 

Concrete for Bridge Girders and Decks. 

The final two years of the project have 

involved extensive laboratory testing to investigate 

development length of prestress 

strand, shear strength and horizontal 

shear transfer behavior in lightweight girders 

and decks. 

Cousins, Sotelino and Roberts-Wollmann, 

along with Weyers, are investigating 

the long-term performance of bridges. 

This project is sponsored by the FHA 

and will involve extensive field testing of 

bridges. 

Roberts-Wollmann also has ongoing 

projects investigating full-depth precast 

deck panels, ultra-high performance concrete 

bridge deck panels, stress increases 

in unbonded tendons in continuous members, 

specialized lifting devices for precast 

double-tees, and anchorage zones in 

post-tensioned concrete. 



PROGRAM AREAS 



Roberts-Wollmann continues to teach 

undergraduate and graduate classes in 

reinforced and prestressed concrete, and 

remains active in advising the ASCE Concrete 

Canoe team and Concrete for Kids 

committee, as well as the PCI Big Beam 

Competition Team. 

She continues in her role as the secretary 

of the Prestressed Concrete Committee 

of the American Concrete Institute 

(ACI) and was recently appointed the 

chair of the TRB Committee AFF30 – Concrete 

Bridges. 

She also continues to serve on other 

technical and board appointed committees 

of ACI, TRB and the Precast/Prestressed 

Concrete Institute (PCI). 

William Wright joined the SEM faculty 

in January after a 20-year career with 

the FHA. He has a strong background in 

experimental structural research, having 

served as director of the FHWA Structures 

Laboratory in McLean, Va., for most of his 

career. 

Wright is a nationally recognized expert 

in steel bridge structures, particularly in 

the specialty areas of fatigue and fracture. 

He is actively involved in the work of the 

AASHTO Steel Bridge Subcommittee as 

well as other TRB, ASCE, and AISC committees 

involving structural steel. 

While at the FHWA, Wright led a major 

experimental study to evaluate behavior 

of horizontally curved steel girder bridges, 

resulting in a major re-write of the AASH- 

TO LRFD Steel Bridge Design Specifications. 

This project culminated in a major 

laboratory test of a full-scale, curved 

girder bridge. 

Wright has performed numerous other 

experimental studies involving fatigue, 

fracture, and behavior of steel bridge 

structures, and led the highly successful 

program to develop high performance 

steels to improve bridge construction. 

During the spring semester, Wright 

taught a new version of the Topics in 

Bridge Engineering course focused on 

steel bridge design. 

In the fall he is teaching Topics in Structural 

Steel Design and Introduction to Civil 


Wright has a keen interest in forensic 

engineering and was part of the NTSB 

forensic team that investigated the catastrophic 

collapse of the I-35W truss bridge 

in Minneapolis. 

While still with the FHWA, he initiated 

a major experimental project to developed 

refined procedures to evaluate the 

connection gusset plates in other truss 

bridges that are still in service. Wright is 

currently continuing work on this project 

and the hope is to develop design and 

bridge rating procedures that prevent unnecessary 

retrofit work on truss bridges 

while still ensuring bridge safety. 

He currently is advising one M.S. student 

working on this project and plans 

to engage other students as the project 

progresses. 

Over his career, Wright has been 

involved in a number of forensic investigations 

involving fatigue and fracture 

cracking of steel bridges, including the 

near-collapse of the I-89 bridge over the 

Milwaukee River. 

Wright plans to continue to perform 

forensic work with a special emphasis on 

bridge problems in Virginia. 

Knocke continued from page 13 

the systems he put in place, the excellent 

team he assembled, and his skillful 

advocacy on behalf of all in the CEE 

department.” 

Outsiders also recognized Knocke’s 

achievements. In 2008, the American 

Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Virginia 

section, awarded him the 2008 Virginia 

Outstanding Civil Engineer Award. 

According to the ASCE announcement, 

Knocke was presented with the award 

for his 29 years of research focusing 

on the physical and chemical treatment 

of water and wastewater, chemistry of 

aquatic systems, sludge treatment and 

disposal, and hazardous waste assessment 

and treatment. ASCE also cited 

Knocke’s contributions to an improved 

environment and quality of life for all 

Virginia residents. 

And alumni such as John DeBell, 

a former member of the CEE Advisory 

Board and former alumni head of the Virginia 

Tech Foundation Board, recognized 

Knocke for “always being interested in 

alumni input on the key issues facing the 

department and the profession.” 

Leaving his position as department head 

to return to the environmental and water 

resources program area of CEE, Knocke 

took a well-deserved sabbatical with the 

intent to restart his research program. External 

research funding quadrupled under 

Knocke’s leadership, placing the department 

among the top three on the Virginia 

Tech campus. 

Knocke leaves the prestigious CEE department 

headship in the capable hands of 

Sam Easterling. He inherits a department 

that now has a total of six Outstanding 

Faculty Awards from SCHEV and 15 NSF 

Faculty Early Career Development (CA- 

REER) awards, a unique number within 

Virginia universities. 

His former administrative assistant, 

Sheila Collins, described Knocke as a 

“fair man” who “always had the utmost 

respect for all members of the department, 

whether they be faculty, staff or 

students. No matter the tough decisions 

he had to make day after day as department 

head, he always did what he 

thought was best for the department as 

a whole.” 

Knocke may now have more time for 

one of his favorite pastimes, golf, which 

he plays both locally and with alumni 

around the state. Mitchell is one of his 

partners and he laughingly said that 

Knocke told him one of his new goals is 

to ‘teach Jim how to hit properly out of 

a sand trap. I wish him every success in 

that endeavor!” 


PROGRAM AREAS 

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING 

Shinya Kikuchi has funded research projects that 

include aspects of public transportation systems, mode 

integration, data management, and artificial intelligence. 

Implementing positive transportation changes is program goal 

The Transportation Infrastructure 

and Systems Engineering Program 

(TISE) conducted a retreat, organized 

two student recruitment activities, 

and arranged travel for all TISE students 

to the Transportation Research Board’s 

annual meeting in Washington D.C. 

The group continued to provide highest 

quality education in a wide range of 

transportation fields; to create an excellent 

environment for students to learn transportation 

engineering, systems concepts, 

and develop critical thinking; to advance 

knowledge about transportation infrastructure 

and systems that sustains its global 

leadership in research and technology 

development; and to conduct outreach 

and service activities to disseminate 

knowledge and implement practical positive 

transportation changes. 

The Alliance of Transportation Engineering 

Students (ATES) has continued to 

be active and several students obtained 

awards and recognitions. The ATES organized 

technical and social events, participated 

in conferences, and organized a 

technical visit to Washington DC. 

This past year, Montasir Abbas published 

five peer-reviewed journal papers, 

nine peer-reviewed conference proceedings, 

and one report. Abbas currently supervises 

three graduate students, and one 



PROGRAM AREAS 



international visiting scholar. 

He successfully completed a VTRCfunded 

research project on traffic responsive 

control. The research findings 

(guidelines on traffic responsive control 

implementations) have received significant 

interest from the Northern Region Operations 

Office of the Virginia Department 

of Transportation (VDOT), which in turn 

decided to publicize this effort and implement 

the guidelines this fall. 

Abbas is currently working on providing 

VDOT with guidelines for their implementation 

of the next generation control 

system. He is also working on developing 

strategies for operating signal systems 

in oversaturated conditions in collaboration 

with other researchers at the national 

level. 

Abbas continues to serve as the chair 

on an Institute of Transportation Engineers 

(ITE) traffic engineering council committee 

on traffic responsive control and as a 

member of the Transportation Research 

Board (TRB) Traffic Signal Systems committee, 

Artificial Intelligence and Advanced 

Computing Applications committee, and 

the joint subcommittee on intersection. Abbas 

also serves as a member on several 

NCHRP panels. 

Thomas Dingus, Newport News Shipbuilding 

Professor and human factors and 

safety transportation researcher, continues 

to direct the Virginia Tech Transportation 

Institute (VTTI), comprised of six 

transportation research centers. 

VTTI continues to be the largest university-level 

research center at Virginia Tech 

with over $20.5 million in total expenditures 

for FY 2009. VTTI has grown to almost 

300 faculty, staff, and students with a 

total budget that will exceed $34,000,000 

next year. 

VTTI continues to operate and manage 

the Smart Road research facility, a closed 

test-bed track built to state and federal 

highway specifications and designed specifically 

for transportation research. 

This year represents the third year that 

VTTI conducted research as the National 

Surface Transportation Safety Center for 

Excellence (NSTSCE), tasked with using 


research to improve driver safety in both 

rural and urban communities. 

This year, new NSTSCE projects, such 

as a study on Roadway Lighting Design 

and Safety and Naturalistic Observation of 

Motorcycle Riders, are underway. 

VTTI continues to be recognized as a 

world leader for offering a “one-stop shop” 

for transportation-related research and 

testing both on Virginia’s Smart Road as 

well as in the growing field of naturalistic 

driving research. 

Gerardo Flintsch, associate professor 

and director of the Center for Sustainable 

Transportation Infrastructure (CSTI) at the 

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, has 

been appointed a chair of the infrastructure 

systems committee of the American 

Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). 

With his research group, integrated by 

Edgar de Leon, Billy Hobbs, Samer Katicha, 

and students Mario Candia, Ryland 

Musick, Mohammad Dehghani, Stacey 

Diefenderfer, Oscar Gonzalez, Julio Roa, 

Sameer Shetty, Jack Verhoeven, Crysta 

Highfield, Shahriar Najafi, and Jae In, he 

has continued to grow CSTI’s pavement 

engineering and transportation asset management 

programs. 

His two ongoing collaborative efforts 

with the Virginia Transportation Research 

Council, the Pavement Surface Properties 

Consortium and the Virginia Sustainable 

Pavement Research Consortium (VA- 

SPRC) continued developing solutions 

in the pavement engineering field, and 

training students in this critical field for 

supporting sustainable economic growth. 

Collaboration between the VA-SPRC, and 

the Transport Research Laboratory and 

University of Nottingham in the U.K. has 

resulted in two federal research contracts 

to develop “splash and spray” assessment 

tools and continuous measuring deflection 

devices, funded by the Federal Highway 

Administration and the National Academy 

of Sciences, respectively. 

Flintsch and his students published six 

journal papers, 14 peer-reviewed conference 

papers, four other conference 

papers, and two research reports and delivered 

many presentations at national and 

international conferences. 

Two students completed their degrees 

and two received awards and recognitions 

this year. Roa received an International 

Road Federation Fellowship, and Highfield, 

a Via Fellowship recipient, received 

a SAIC Fellowship and a Dwight David 

Eisenhower Transportation Program Grant 

for Research Fellowship. 

Flintsch taught classes on civil engineering 

materials, pavement design and 

management, and advanced pavement 

design and delivered a workshop on Introduction 

to Mechanistic Empiric Design of 

Flexible Pavements, in Monterrey Mexico 

and a short course on Quality Control of 

Pavement Condition Data Collection via 

internet in Bucaramanga, Colombia. 

Flintsch also integrated the steering 

committees for four large national and 

international conferences, organized/ 

chaired sessions at national and international 

conferences and meetings, and has 

continued to develop international collaborations 

between the CSTI and the Politecnico 

di Milano, Italy, Universidad Católica, 

Chile, and Technische Universität Darmstadt, 

Germany, and the Universidad Javeriana 

and CORSFALTOS, Colombia. 

Kathleen Hancock continues her research 

in geospatially enabling solutions 

to transportation problems for freight planning 

and operations, response planning 

for hazardous materials incidents, urban 

micro-simulation of traffic, and transportation 

right-of-way information management. 

She also continues as the co-director 

for the Center for Geospatial Information 

Technology in the National Capital Region 

which is expanding into Geospatial Intelligence 

and Health GIT (geospatial information 

technology). 

In partnership with her recently graduated 

doctoral student, Qifeng Lu, she 

has submitted patent applications for two 

advanced bivariate best first search algorithms. 

Hancock is initiating a new master of 

engineering degree in the National Capital 

Region focused on geospatial engineering. 

It is designed to educate professionals 

and recent graduates in bringing the 

power of geospatially reference informa- 


PROGRAM AREAS 



tion to the problems and decisions of 

today. The program will begin in the fall 

2009 and has a rolling enrollment. 

She continues to remain active in TRB 

and is on the Research Advisory Council 

for the American Transportation Research 

Institute. 

She is also active with the United States 

Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (US- 

GIF), Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level 

Data Working Group (HIFLD), 

and University Consortium for Geographic 

Information Sciences (UCGIS). 

Bryan Katz continued his adjunct faculty 

position with the TISE group while working 

for Science Applications International 

Corporation (SAIC) as a transportation 

researcher in Blacksburg. 

Katz taught two sections of the Introduction 

to Transportation Engineering 

course, taught a section of the Introduction 

to Civil Engineering small groups, and 

also led several undergraduate research 

efforts this year. 

Katz, Peter Coffey (CEE ’08), and 

Hesham Rakha presented a paper on the 

effects of DWI enforcement on traffic operations 

that was accepted for publication by 

the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 

and also was a finalist from the College of 

Engineering for the ACC Meeting of the 

Minds competition featuring undergraduate 

research efforts. 

Additionally, Katz and Rakha submitted 

a successful proposal to the TRB and are 

working together on a research effort on 

looking at ways to modify driver behavior 

to reduce non-recurring congestion. 

Katz worked on undergraduate research 

projects with civil and environmental 

engineering students Anthony Christian, 

Tavia Cawley, Tre Hall, Billy Brubaker, and 

Michael Hage on various research efforts 

and also worked with industrial systems 

engineering student Charlie Dickinson as 

well on a human factors-related research 

project. 

Katz also was the proud recipient of 

one of the CEE department’s Outstanding 

Young Alumni Awards this year. 

Shinya Kikuchi, the Charles E. Via 

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 

is a member of the TISE program 

in the National Capital Region (NCR). He 

is also the program director of the CEE 

department in the NCR, and, during 2008- 

09, he was the chair of the executive committee 

of the NCR College of Engineering. 

Kikuchi’s interest is in urban transportation 

systems analysis, including the 

subjects of public transportation systems, 

mode integration, reason building under 

uncertainty in planning, data management, 

safety, and application of artificial 

intelligence techniques. 

His funded research projects in the 

past year were citizen participation in 

long range public transportation projects, 

dynamic airspace allocation, and operations 

of unmanned vehicles. He has also 

developed an agent-based multi-objective 

optimization algorithm and applied it to the 

problems of conflict resolution, resource 

allocation, adjustment of measurement, 

and OD table estimation. 

Kikuchi is the chair of TRB’s Artificial 

Intelligence and Advanced Computing Application 

Committee. He has co-organized 

the Helsinki Summer School of Transportation 

in Finland last three years. 

Pamela Murray-Tuite has expanded 

her work in evacuation, traffic incident effects, 

transportation resilience, risk, and 

network analysis. 

She has received funding from the 

National Science Foundation, the Virginia 

Transportation Research Council, NSF/ 

AdvanceVT, the Mid-Atlantic University 

Transportation Center/VTTI, and Virginia 

Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and 

Applied Science (ICTAS). 

In the past year, she and her students 

have developed a simulation model to 

estimate incident related travel time on 

I-66, developed optimization models to 

improve evacuation strategies, and developed 

a method to update and examine 

transportation network risk as a result of 

intelligence information. 

On-going work includes integrating 

household decision making and behavior 

with transportation simulation models 

for both no-notice and hurricane events, 

analyzing the relationships among links in 

a network when an incident occurs, analyzing 

the transportation network during 

floods, and examining the applicability of 

various k-shortest path algorithms to different 

disaster types. 

Her work has been presented at conferences 

and published in journals and conference 

proceedings. 

She is the chair of the Transportation 

Research Board’s Subcommittee on Critical 

Transport System Protection Analysis, 

Integration and Operations Planning and 

Management. She is also on the executive 

editorial board for the Journal of Transportation 

Security and continues to review papers 

for multiple journals and conferences. 

Murray-Tuite taught classes on transportation 

networks analysis, transportation 

planning, and risk, reliability, and security. 

In the past year, she graduated one 

full time master’s student. She currently 

supervises one full time Ph.D. student and 

two full time master’s students. 

Finally, last summer, Murray-Tuite established 

a research internship for rising 

junior and senior high school students that 

had five participants, at least one of whom 

will be attending Virginia Tech next fall. 

Hesham Rakha, the research faculty, 

and students at the Center for Sustainable 

Mobility (CSM) continued work on various 

national-level projects including an FHWAsponsored 

project studying the impact 

of inclement weather on driver behavior, 

a NHTSA-sponsored project quantifying 

the safety impacts of a forward-collision 

warning system on trucks, a NAVTEQsponsored 

project developing fuel-efficient 

adaptive cruise control systems, a VDOTsponsored 

project studying driver behavior 

at the onset of a traffic signal yellow 

indication for the design of yellow timings; 

a NHTSA-sponsored project evaluating 

emerging technologies to reduce truck 

rollovers; and a SHRP2 project studying 

the feasibility of using in-vehicle video 

data to explore how to modify driver behavior 

and reduce non-recurring congestion. 

Other research activities that the CSM 

are conducting include developing vehicle 

energy and emission models to quantify 

the energy and environmental impacts of 



PROGRAM AREAS 



Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) 

applications; studying the causes of traffic 

congestion and developing techniques to 

mitigate traffic congestion; studying driver 

route choice behavior; and developing a 

web-based parking system for Virginia 

Tech visitors. 

In collaboration with the CSM research 

faculty and students, over the past year 

Rakha published seven peer-reviewed 

journal publications, three book chapters, 

had eight peer-reviewed journal publications 

accepted for publication, published 

nine peer-reviewed conference proceeding 

publications and three reports. 

Rakha also served an associate editor 

for the IEEE Transactions on ITS, an 

associate editor for the Journal of ITS, 

as a member of the editorial board of the 

Transportation Letters: The International 

Journal of Transportation Research, and a 

member of the TRB committee on Traffic 

Flow Theory and Characteristics. 

Rakha was also invited to make a presentation 

at the “Symposium on the Fundamental 

Diagram: 75 Years” and offered 

a three-day workshop on traffic modeling 

at the International Islamic University of 

Malaysia. 

Sam Tignor, adjunct professor, has 

continued to provide leadership in developing 

the NCHRP Report 600 “The 

Human Factors Guidelines for Road 

Systems: Design and Operational Considerations 

for the Road User.” Tignor is 

developing a January 2010 TRB workshop 

on how to use the guideline. This will be 

the second workshop associated with the 

guideline development. 

NCHRP Report 600, which was recently 

published, is intended to provide human 

factors principles and findings to the highway 

designer and traffic engineer. 

Tignor teaches the “Highway Transportation 

Safety” and “Applied Traffic Engineering 

Analysis” graduate courses. 

In the past year, the Air Transportation 

Systems Laboratory (ATSL) at Virginia 

Tech has conducted research studies for 

SAIC, the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration (NASA) and the Federal 

Aviation Administration (FAA). 

Antonio A. Trani, professor, and his 

colleagues Nick Hinze (senior research 

associate), Howard Swingle (senior scientist), 

and graduate students Alan Mc- 

Donald, Nola Shen, Doug Swol, and Dong 

Sohn perform large-scale aviation studies. 

One of the studies for SAIC involves 

modeling and simulating civilian and 

military traffic in the Gulf of Mexico to understand 

the impact of deployment of the 

Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). This study will 

help Air Force, Navy and Marine planners 

to better utilize the airspace resources 

available at 13 airfields near Eglin Air 

Force Base (located at Valparaiso Airport) 

once new aircraft deployments occur in 

the next decade. The study is using a sophisticated 

three-dimensional simulation 

model called TAAM – the Total Airspace 

and Airport Model and ATSL developed 

tools. 

Another project for NASA is described 

in a separate article on page 8. 


MEET THE VIA SCHOLARS 

The following pages highlight some of the country’s 

most exceptional students and alumni, the Via 

Scholars. The motivation and aspirations of 

this group reflect a profound curiosity and desire to 

improve the quality of life around the world — from 

helping municipalities manage growth, to the aesthetics 

of structures, the quality of water, and international 

development. 

The Via scholarships are made possible through the 

generosity of the late Mrs. Marion Bradley Via of Roanoke, 

Va., and her family. In 1987, Mrs. Via contributed $5 million 

each to the Departments of Electrical and Computer 

Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering. 

Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors subsequently named the 

ECE department in honor of Mrs. Via’s deceased father, 

Harry Lynde Bradley, and the CEE department in honor of 

her late husband, Charles E. Via, Jr. Mrs. Via died in 1993. 

Both departments use a portion of the endowment 

to award scholarships to qualifying students. These 

scholarships are among the most competitive in the country. 

The Via endowment is now worth more than $15 million. 

44 | VIA REPORT | 2008 


VIA SCHOLARS 

UNDERGRADUATE 

MASTER’S STUDENTS 

Claire N. McKenzie 

Amanda Barngrover 

Kyle Blakley 

Hometown: Midlothian, Va. 

Academic Level: Junior 

Awards and Recognitions: Chi Epsilon; 

Phi Kappa Phi; Eleanor Davenport 

Leadership Scholarship; Pamplin 

Leader; Robert A. Belz Scholarship; 

Charles Sheffield Scholarship; High 

School Valedictorian. 

Primary Area of Interest: Land 

Development 

Outside Work Experience: Dewberry – 

Water Resources; Timmons Group – 

Economic Development 

Career Goals: Having grown up in a 

rapidly expanding suburban community 

near Richmond, my goal is to be 

involved in the planning processes 

for areas like this in order to make 

the area more accommodating and 

appealing to its residents. 

Hometown: Arvada, Col. 

Location of Undergraduate Studies: Colorado 

School of Mines 

Awards and Recognitions: Dean’s List all 

semesters during undergraduate degree; 

Colorado School of Mines President’s 

Scholarship; Colorado School of 

Mines Alumni Association Scholarship; 

Member of Tau Beta Pi; Certificate in 

McBride Honors Program in Public 

Affairs 

Primary Area of Interest: Geotechnical 

Outside Work Experience: Colorado Department 

of Transportation, June-August 

2005; Lockheed Martin Technical 

Operations, May-August 2006; Hatch 

Mott MacDonald, June 2007–July 2009 

as Junior Tunnel Engineer 

Career Goals: I would like to obtain my 

P.E. while working for a large, multidisciplinary 

consulting firm. 

Hometown: Oxford, Ohio 

Location of Undergraduate Studies: 

University of Cincinnati 

Awards and Recognitions: Graduated 

Summa Cum Laude from the University 

Honors Program at UC; Awarded an 

Ohio Academic Scholarship; American 

FFA Degree Recipient. 


Outside Work Experience: Fuller, 

Mossbarger, Scott, and May Engineers 

– Cincinnati, OH, Engineering Co-op, 

December 2005 – September 2007; 

Butler County Engineer’s Office – 

Hamilton, OH, Engineering Co-op, 

December 2004 – September 2005 

Career Goals: I would like to complete my 

master’s degree and begin a career 

in the geotechnical engineering field. 

When eligible, I will obtain my PE 

license and continue working toward 

being a successful engineer. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Suzanne Ciavola 

Kelly M. Donoughe 

Rachel T. Finch 

Hometown: Newtown Square, Penn. 

Location of Undergraduate Studies: The 

Pennsylvania State University 

Awards and Recognitions: Department of 

Civil and Environmental Engineering 

Undergraduate Student Award for 

Excellence in Water Resources 

Engineering; Chi Epsilon; Academic 

Excellence Scholarship; Schreyer 

Honors College Summer Research 

Grant; Schreyer Ambassador Travel 

Grant; President of the Penn State 

Waste Not Club 

Primary Area of Interest: Environmental & 

Water Resources 

Outside Work Experience: Borton- 

Lawson Engineering, Wilkes-Barre, 

Penn. as a civil designer working 

mostly in land development. 

Career Goals: After earning my master’s 

degree, I would like get more 

experience in the engineering field, 

using my training in water resources 

and hydrology and become a 

professional engineer. 

Hometown: Lake Mary, Fla. 


Florida State University 

Awards and Recognitions: Tau Beta Pi 

president; Institute of Transportation 

Engineers Scholarship winner; Rosen 

Scholar; graduated Magna Cum Laude 

in civil engineering 

Primary Area of Interest: Transportation 

and Infrastructure Systems 

Outside Work Experience: Intern at 

Avcon, Inc. where I got experience in 

roadway design, land development 

and structural assessments of bridges; 

research assistant at FAMU-FSU 

College of Engineering where I studied 

the structural integrity of small buses; 

Odyssey of the Mind Regional Problem 

Captain and Head Judge for four 

years where I worked with children to 

creatively solve structural engineering 

problems and coordinated a portion of 

the regional competition. 

Career Goals: Upon completion of my 

master’s, I plan to immediately continue 

on to earn my Ph.D. in transportation 

systems. With my Ph.D., I wish to 

obtain a teaching and research position 

at a well-known university. I strive 

to motivate and inspire the future 

generations of engineers by sharing my 

love of transportation through teaching 

and mentoring. In my research, I hope 

to work with vehicle safety technology 

to help make the roadway a safer place 

to be. 

Hometown: Talking Rock, Georgia 


Georgia Institute of Technology 

Awards and Recognitions: ACEC/G R. 

Berl Elder Memorial Scholarship; 

George S. Mooney Memorial 

Scholarship; Women in Engineering 

Geosyntec Scholarship; GEF 

Geosyntec Scholarship; Jordan Jones 

& Goulding Scholarship; ADSC Industry 

Advancement Fund Scholarship 


Outside Work Experience: Engineering 

co-op at Geosyntec Consultants in 

Kennesaw, Georgia; 2004-2008 

Career Goals: I plan to obtain my 

PE license and practice in either 

geotechnical consulting or construction 

upon completion of my education. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Shannon P. Hapuarachy 


Peter D. Kauffmann 

Hometown: Beckley, W.Va. 

Location of Undergraduate Studies: West 

Virginia University 

Awards and Recognitions: Chi Epsilon 

president; co-founder of Sigma 

Alpha Epsilon fraternity at WVU; Civil 

Engineering Outstanding Senior; 

graduated Summa Cum Laude in civil 

engineering 

Primary Area of Interest: Construction 

Outside Work Experience: S.M.H. 

Construction as a junior estimator. 

Career Goals: I wish to obtain my P.E. 

and work at my father’s construction 

company. 

Hometown: Fredericksburg, Va. 


Virginia Tech 


Summa Cum Laude and 

Commonwealth Scholar; member of 

Tau Beta Pi, Chi Epsilon, and Phi Beta 

Kappa honor fraternities; dean’s list all 

semesters of undergraduate study. 



Outside Work Experience: Research 

assistantship, geotechnical 

engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, 

Va., January 2007-May 2008; NSF 

research assistantship, geotechnical 

engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, 

VA May 2006-August 2006; intern, 

Turner Construction Company, Howard 

Hughes Medical Institute site, Ashburn, 

Va., May 2005-August 2005. 

Career Goals: I would like to work in 

developing countries, helping to bring 

about the effective and sustainable 

design and engineering of road and 

highway systems. By taking part in 

collaboration between professionals 

from highly developed countries and 

currently developing countries I hope 

to help bring about positive and lasting 

change in the quality of engineering 

that can be achieved by all parties. 

After gaining industry experience I am 

interested in earning my Ph.D. and 

continuing to participate in outreach 

programs as a professor. 

Hometown: Richmond, Va. 


Virginia Tech 


Summa Cum Laude and honors 

scholar; Civil Engineering Outstanding 

Senior; 2008 VT ASCE president; 

2009 Dexter C. Jameson National Chi 

Epsilon Scholarship; Tau Beta Pi; Eagle 

Scout. 



Outside Work Experience: AECOM, 

roadway design; Wiley & Wilson, civil 

site design; Draper Aden Associates, 

site planning. 

Career Goals: I believe that the 

transportation infrastructure network in 

this country is unsustainable in terms 

of energy use and congestion delays. 

I want to develop and implement 

solutions to these problems that 

include integrated, efficient mass transit 

systems. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Ronald D. Kent 

Samuel Lasley 

Kurt J. Schimpke 

Hometown: Omaha, Neb. 


Brigham Young University 

Awards and Recognitions: Member 

of Tau Beta Pi; Edwin S. Hinckley 

Scholar; recipient of Brigham Young 

Scholarship three years in a row; 

graduated Magna Cum Laude 

Primary Area of Interest: Environmental 

and Water Resources 

Outside Work Experience: Aquaveo, 

LLC, Sept. 2007 – Apr. 2009, provided 

technical support for users of the 

Watershed Modeling System (WMS), 

Groundwater Modeling System (GMS), 

and Surface Water Modeling System 

(SMS); Brigham Young University, 

June 2008 – June 2009, worked as a 

research assistant on a water quality 

study of Deer Creek Reservoir in Utah. 

Career Goals: After I graduate, I am going 

to obtain my PE license and work for a 

consulting firm in the water/wastewater 

industry. 

Hometown: Chillicothe, Iowa 


Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 

Awards and Recognitions: BYU Heritage 

Scholar, Tau Beta Pi, BYU Cum Laude 


Outside Work Experience: Internship with 

Terracon Consultants, Inc. 

Career Goals: I want to practice sound 

engineering, serve the greater good, 

contribute to the knowledge in my 

field, be an inspiring mentor for 

younger engineers, become a trusted 

and valuable source of advice for my 

colleagues, and have an office I rarely 

inhabit. 

Hometown: Maple City, Mich. 


Michigan Technological University 

Awards and Recognitions: ADSC 

scholarship recipient; MTU CEE 

department Academic Achievement 

Award; MTU Summa Cum Laude; 

MTU Scholar Award; MTU Tau Beta Pi 

Engineering Achievement Award 


Work Experience: City of Plymouth, Minn., 

May–August 2007 and May-July 2008; 

Otwell Mawby, P.C., May–November 

2004, May-August 2005 and May– 

August 2006. 

Career Goals: I wish to develop into a 

successful engineer who is an asset to 

my firm and the profession as a whole. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


DOCTORAL STUDENTS 

Craig M. Shillaber 

Elizabeth A. Skvarenina 

Zaeinulabddin M. Adam 

Hometown: Deerfield, N.H. 

Location of Previous Studies: University 

of New Hampshire 

Awards and Recognitions: University 

of New Hampshire Presidential 

Scholar; Tau Beta Pi; University of 

New Hampshire Alumni Association 

Legacy Scholar; University of New 

Hampshire Civil Engineering Graduate 

Achievement Award 


Work Experience: Internship at Appledore 

Engineering, Inc.; lab assistant at the 

University of New Hampshire 

Career Goals: I plan to progress toward 

professional licensure by spending 

a few years working in geotechnical 

engineering consulting and design. 

Later, I hope to pursue a doctorate and 

possibly become a professor. 

Hometown: West Lafayette, In. 


Purdue University 

Awards and Recognitions: National Merit 

Scholarship winner for undergraduates; 

member of Chi Epsilon and Tau Beta 

Pi. 



Outside Work Experience: Summer 2005, 

Summer undergraduate research 

fellowship at Purdue, worked with 

faculty and graduate student mentors 

doing research on the Assessment of 

Surfactants Biodegradability During 

Graywater Recycling for Advanced 

Life Support Applications; 2005- 

2007, worked as an undergraduate 

researcher assisting in various projects 

and tasks in the laboratory. 

Career Goals: I wish to obtain a position 

related to water or wastewater 

treatment. 

Hometown: Khartoum, Sudan 


University of Khartoum, Sudan 

Location of Master’s Studies: Utah State 

University, Logan, Utah 

Awards and Recognitions: Dean’s lists. 



Outside Work Experience: Project 

engineer, George Butler Associates, 

Inc. Kansas City, Kan.; project 

manager, Engineering Airwaves, 

Khartoum, Sudan. 

Career Goals: I plan to pursue a career in 

academia besides doing consulting in 

the area of infrastructures and transport 

engineering. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Tiffany E. Adams 

Adam G. Bowland 

Lee D. Bryant 

Hometown: Portland, Ore. 


Oregon State University 

Location of Master’s Studies: Virginia 

Tech 

Awards and Recognitions: EIGER 

Fellowship; ASCE J. James R. Croes 

Medal, 2006; Oregon State University 

Council of Early Career Engineers; 

ASCE Edmund Friedman Young 

Engineer Award for Professional 

Achievement, 2004; registered 

professional engineer, (Washington 

and Colorado). 



geotechnical engineer, PanGEO, 

Inc, Seattle, Wash., 2001-2005; 

geotechnical engineer URS Corp., 

Denver, Col., 1997-2001. 

Career Goals: I plan to pursue a career 

in consulting or academia focused on 

improving our understanding of how 

human influences affect our design 

process and improving our ability to 

achieve safe and successful outcomes 

for communities living with engineered 

systems. 

Hometown: Oak Hill, W.Va. 


Carnegie Mellon University 

Location of Master’s Studies: Virginia Tech 

Awards and Recognitions: Member 

of Chi Epsilon and Tau Beta Pi, 

graduated with honors; recipient of the 

Alumni Association Academic-Athletic 

Achievement Award given to the male 

senior athlete at Carnegie Mellon with 

the highest GPA; second-team all 

conference (football). 

Primary Area of Interest: Structures 

Outside Work Experience: West Virginia 

DOH, Lewisburg, W.Va., worked with 

state inspectors during the construction 

of a 500 foot steel bridge over the New 

River; GAI Consultants, Pittsburgh, 

Penn., designed transmission lines and 

transmission structures using computer 

aided design software and worked on 

the rehabilitation of a small concrete 

dam in Fort Wayne, Ind.; Kimley-Horn 

and Associates, Virginia Beach, Va., 

involved in the structural rehabilitation 

of a railroad underpass bridge in 

Norfolk, Va., and assisted in consulting 

efforts for the construction of a highway 

interchange. 

Career Goals: After graduation, I plan to 

work towards earning my professional 

licensure. Through past experience 

I have found that I enjoy working in 

consulting, and I want to work at a firm 

where I will be exposed to projects 

involving both bridge and building 

design. 

Hometown: Knoxville, Tenn. 


University of Tennessee, Knoxville 


Awards and Recognitions: Chi Epsilon; 

Tau Beta Pi; Golden Key; GAANN 

Fellowship; Sussman Scholarship; EPA 

Science to Achieve Results (STAR) 

fellow, NSF Integrated Graduate 

Education and Research Training 

(IGERT) fellow. 



Outside Work Experience: Co-op with 

Entergy Operations, Inc., New Orleans, 

La., 1997-1999; AmeriCorps Water 

Quality Team, Knoxville, Tenn., 2001. 

Career Goals: I plan to pursue a teaching 

career that allows me to work with 

the development of environmentally 

sustainable engineering systems. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Benjamin T. Cross 

Kacie C. D’Alessandro 

Christina C. Davis 

Hometown: Hamilton, Va. 


University of Delaware 

Location of Master’s Studies: University 

of Delaware 

Awards and Recognitions: E.C. Davis 

Scholar Award (UD Graduate School); 

full football athletic scholarship (UD 

Undergraduate); dean’s list every 

enrolled semester at UD; four varsity 

football letters at UD; 2004 CoSida first 

team and 2003 CoSida second team 

football Academic All-American; 2003 

Atlantic 10 Football Scholar Athlete 

of the Year; 2002 and 2004 UD Civil 

Engineering Scholar Athlete of the 

Year; member of 2003 I-AA national 

championship football team as well as 

2003 and 2004 Atlantic 10 champions. 


Outside Work Experience: University 

of Delaware Center for Composite 

Materials internship, 2002-2003; 

Delaware Engineering and Design 

Corporation internship, 2004-2005. 

Career Goals: I would like to obtain an 

advanced research position whether 

it be at a university or in the structural 

engineering industry. 

Hometown: Easley, S.C. 


Clemson University 

Location of Master’s Studies: Clemson 

University 

Awards and Recognitions: Precast/ 

Prestressed Concrete Institute Daniel 

P. Jenny Research Fellowship; 

American Society of Civil Engineers 

S.C. Section Scholarship; W.M. 

Thames Jr. Engineering Scholarship; 

General Electric Women’s Networking 

Scholarship; Legislative Incentive for 

Future Excellence Scholarship; Chi 

Epsilon; Tau Beta Pi; Calhoun Honors 

College, Clemson University. 


Outside Work Experience: Wind 

Engineering and Structures Laboratory 

research assistant, Clemson, S.C.; 

Florence & Hutcheson, Inc. internship, 

Columbia, S.C. 

Career Goals: After completing my 

doctoral degree, I plan to enter 

academia and become a professor at 

a research university. I want to teach 

future engineers along their path to 

success by motivating and guiding 

them throughout their academic 

journey. Additionally, I want to become 

a leading researcher with the capability 

of combining my interests in both 

concrete materials and structures. 

Hometown: Rocky Mount, Va. 


Virginia Tech 


Awards and Recognitions: Registered 

professional engineer; EPA Science to 

Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowship; 

AWWA LARS and Thomas R. Camp 

Scholarships; NWRI Fellowship; 

VWRRC William R. Walker Graduate 

Fellowship; WPI Graduate Fellowship; 

AEESP Outstanding M.S. Thesis 

Award; ASCE Thompson Award for 

Outstanding Undergraduate; Tau Beta 

Pi; Chi Epsilon 



Outside Work Experience: Environmental 

engineer, CDM, 2000-2003; intern, 

Montgomery Watson Harza, 1997; 

co-op engineer, RR Donnelley Printing 

Company, 1994-1995. 

Career Goals: I would like to contribute to 

the field of environmental engineering 

through teaching, research, and 

consulting. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Martha E. Gross 

Kathryn A. Gunberg 

Rebecca A. Halvorson 

Hometown: Norfolk, Va. 



Location of Master’s Studies: 


Awards and Recognitions: Fulbright 

Scholar (Stuttgart, Germany); licensed 

professional engineer 

Primary Area of Interest: Construction 

Outside Work Experience: Leonhardt, 

Andrä and Partner, 1999; The Citadel, 

2004; Skanska, 2000-2007. 

Career Goals: Since today’s infrastructure 

challenges are financial as well as 

technical, I look forward to supporting 

the construction and rehabilitation 

of transportation facilities through 

innovative project-delivery strategies, 

and then eventually returning to 

teaching. 

Hometown: Ada, Mich. 


University of Michigan 

Location of Master’s Studies: University of 

Michigan 

Awards and Recognitions: Chi Epsilon, 

F.E. Richart Fellowship, UM, 2006; 

Greene Fellowship, UM, 2006. 


Outside Work Experience: Soils & 

Structures, Inc., during summer 2006; 

City of Ann Arbor, May 2004 -November 

2005. 

Career Goals: Whether in academia or 

industry, I hope to teach others about 

geotechnical engineering and to 

continue to broaden my knowledge and 

experience in the field. 

Hometown: Whitewater, Wisc. 


University of Wisconsin-La Crosse 

Location of Master’s Studies: N/A 

Awards and Recognitions: Ray Heath 

Scholarship in Chemistry, 2006; UW-L 

Undergraduate Research Grant, 2005; 

National Deans List, 2003-2007; 

American Legion Award for Citizenship, 

2003. 



Outside Work Experience: REU summer 

intern, Mercury research lab at UW-La 

Crosse; Subassembly at electronics 

factory. 

Career Goals: Following graduation from 

Virginia Tech, I will find a position at a 

research institution, a consulting firm, 

or possibly an international service 

organization. Whether as a career or an 

annual summer vacation, I also hope to 

use my understanding of water quality 

engineering in developing nations 

to improve their basic quality of life 

through their source of water. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Andrew B. Hardyniec 

Jordan A. Jarrett 

Wendell O. Khunjar 

Hometown: Bringhurst, Ind. 


Michigan Technological University 

Awards and Recognitions: Summa 

Cum Laude; Michigan Tech Civil 

and Environmental Engineering 

Outstanding Achievement Award; MTU 

Alumni Legacy Award; Class of ’49 

Endowed Scholarship; Presidential 

Excellence Scholarship; dean’s list for 

all semesters at Michigan Tech; MTU 

research scholar; valedictorian of high 

school class. 


Tech 


Outside Work Experience: Federal 

Highway Administration, California 

Division, investigated soil retaining 

structures built in response to 

landslides and presented my work 

at the 1st North American Landslide 

Conference in Vail, Col.; California 

Department of Transportation, 

investigated bridge support structures 

and was involved in bridge inspections; 

resident assistant, three years; 

research assistant at Michigan Tech. 

Career Goals: After completing my 

master’s degree, I intend to pursue a 

doctoral degree. I hope to work for a 

consulting firm, preferably working on 

unique structures, or obtain a research 

position. I foresee myself teaching one 

day so I can share my knowledge of 

engineering with others. 

Hometown: Littleton, Col. 


Colorado State University 

Location of Master’s Studies: Colorado 

State University 

Awards and Recognitions: Chi Epsilon 

secretary; Colorado State University 

CEE Structural Engineering 

Scholarship; Colorado Distinguished 

Scholars Award 


Outside Work Experience: Structural 

intern at S.A. Miro, Inc. in Denver, 

Col., from May 2007 to August 2008. 

Research and teaching assistantships 

at Colorado State University from 

January 2007 to August 2009. 

Career Goals: After gaining more 

experience as a practicing structural 

engineer, I would like to end up in 

academia as a professor, teaching and 

leading research projects. 

Hometown: San Fernando, Trinidad, and 

Tobago / Miami, Fla. / Blacksburg, Va. 


Howard University 


Awards and Recognitions: U.S. Dept. 

of Education GAANN Fellowship, 

NSF Graduate Fellowship honorable 

mention, 2004, 2005; ASCE National 

Capitol Section, National Capitol 

Section Scholarship, 2003; Tau Beta 

Pi Engineering Honor Society lifetime 

member; 



Outside Work Experience: Research 

assistant, Howard University Biological 

Processes Research Group; assistant 

engineer, Montgomery Watson Harza; 

petrochemical engineer intern, Trinidad 

and Tobago National Petroleum 

Marketing Co. Ltd. 

Career Goals: I wish to become an 

international consultant and a 

professor. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Lashun K. King 

Lori Koch 

Laura M. Kosoglu 

Hometown: Elaine, Ark. 


Tennessee State University 

Location of Master’s Studies: Tennessee 


Awards and Recognitions: Engineering 

scholarship, Fall 2000-Spring 2006; 

dean’s list, Fall 2000-Spring 2006; 

U.S. Geological Survey Headquarters: 

Outstanding Achievement Recognition, 

Spring 2006; Technical Research 

Symposium presentation winner, 

Spring 2006; Alabama American Water 

Resources Association symposium 

winner, Fall 2005; Tennessee American 

Water Resources Association 

symposium winner, Spring 2004; 

Campus Superstar: U.S. Black Engineer 

Information and Technology Magazine, 

Fall 2004. 



Outside Work Experience: U.S. Geological 

Survey: S.C. Water Science Center, 

Summer 2006; U.S. Geological Survey: 

volunteer for science research, Fall 

2003-Spring 2006; Y-12 National 

Security Complex, Summer 2002-2005, 

National Nuclear Security Administration, 

U.S. Department of Energy (Q Level 

Clearance). 

Career Goals: Upon completion of my 

doctoral degree, I would like to pursue 

a career as a professor with research 

and teaching responsibilities. I strongly 

believe that a career in academia will 

provide me an opportunity to become 

directly involved and impact the lives of 

many motivated students. 

Hometown: Ocean City, N.J. 

Location of Undergraduate Studies: Penn 


Location of Master’s Studies: Clemson 

University 

Awards and Recognitions: Member of Chi 

Epsilon 



engineer, Smislova, Kehnemui, and 

Associates, Rockville, Md., 2007-2008 

Career Goals: I want to pursue a P.E. and 

teach at a university. 

Hometown: Cherry Hill, N.J. 


Lehigh University 

Location of Master’s Studies: Lehigh 

University 

Awards and Recognitions: NSF IGERT 

Fellow; Sigma Xi: International 

Scientific Research Society; ADSC: 

International Association of Foundation 

Drilling Scholarship; Lehigh University 

President’s Scholar; John B. Carson 

Award; Tau Beta Pi; Chi Epsilon 


Outside Work Experience: American 

Water Engineering Co-Op in Voorhees, 

N.J., three rotations 

Career Goals: I plan to conduct university 

research and teaching in geotechnical 

engineering with international and 

interdisciplinary collaboration. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Randi Lieberman 

Marc J. Maguire 

Michael P. McGuire 

Hometown: Parkland, Fla. 


University of Florida 


Florida 

Awards and Recognitions: Association 

of Drilled Shaft Contractors (ADSC) 

National Scholar; Chi Epsilon; Cum 

Laude graduate; Golden Key honor 

society; Honors College undergraduate 

student; Florida Blue Key Leadership 

honor society; dean’s list (eight 

semesters); Ilene Silverstein Scholarship 

for Sisterhood (Delta Phi Epsilon) 



Outside Work Experience: Civil engineering 

analyst, Kimley-Horn and Associates 

(2006-2008); graduate assistant for 

the Center for Leadership and Service, 

University of Florida (2005-2006); 

geotechnical engineering intern, ESP 

(2005); undergraduate student teaching 

assistant, University of Florida (2004- 

2005) 

Career Goals: After obtaining my Ph.D., I 

hope to continue in academia enabling 

others to realize their goals through 

education. I would like to focus on 

continuing education and research in the 

field of sustainability and environmental 

engineering. In addition to traditional 

academic environments, I am passionate 

about education through experience, and 

I aspire to travel to developing countries 

in an effort of international cooperation to 

achieve common goals of sustainability. 

Hometown: Lincoln, Neb. 


University of Nebraska-Lincoln 


Nebraska-Lincoln 

Awards and Recognitions: University 

of Nebraska-Lincoln Milton E. Moore 

Graduate Fellowship; R.&L. Harris 

Civil Undergraduate Engineering 

Scholarship. 


Outside Work Experience: Nebraska 

Department of Roads, Bridge Division, 

Research and Rating Team – worked 

on bridge rating and design, as well as 

a number of research projects; Midwest 

Roadside Safety Facility, Lincoln, Neb., 

undergraduate research assistant – 

test setup and analysis of full scale 

vehicular crash testing. 

Career Goals: Following graduation, I plan 

to attain professional licensure and 

hope to acquire a research position in 

either industry or academia focusing on 

prestressed concrete structures. 

Hometown: Blacksburg, Va. 


University of Pennsylvania 


Awards and Recognitions: Geosynthetics 

Institute Fellowship; Geo-Institute 

Student Presidential Group; GAANN 

Fellowship; IREE grant; Tau Beta Pi; 

registered professional engineer in 

Virginia. 


Outside Work Experience: Senior staff 

engineer, Schnabel Engineering, Inc., 

2001-2004. 

Career Goals: I’d like to teach at the 

college level or return to consulting. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Jennifer H. Miller 

Caroline K. Nguyen 

John E. Petrie 

Hometown: Sayre, Penn; Tucson, Ariz. 


Bucknell University 


of Arizona 

Awards and Recognitions: Licensed 

professional engineer (State of 

Arizona) 




engineer, Malcolm Pirnie, Inc., Tucson, 

Ariz., Sept. 2000 - May 2006; Water/ 

Wastewater project engineer, MWH 

New Zealand, Ltd., Wanganui, New 

Zealand, July 2006 - June 2008. 

Career Goals: An academic career will 

offer me the opportunity to generate 

interest and aid in the development of 

future industry professionals, pursue 

my own research and professional 

development, and influence and 

contribute to applied projects in the 

public or private water/wastewater 

sectors. I would like to continue in 

academics (research and teaching in a 

faculty position) and consult within my 

research area. 

Hometown: Graham, N.C. 

Location of Undergraduate Studies: N.C. 

State University-Raleigh, N.C. 


Awards and Recognitions: National 

Science Foundation graduate 

fellowship, 2003-2005, 2007; NSF 

Computer Science, Engineering, 

and Mathematics scholarship, 2002- 

2003; W.C. Billy Creel Memorial 

Scholarship, 2002-2003; Progress 

Energy scholarship, 2001-2002; CP&L 

scholarship, 2000-2001. 



Outside Work Experience: Stearns & 

Wheler, environmental engineer, June 

2005 - June 2007; Hazen and Sawyer, 

intern, May 2001 - August 2003. 

Career Goals: I would like to obtain a PE 

license and become a professor at a 

research university. 



Virginia Tech, New England 

Conservatory 


Awards and Recognitions: Sussman 

Foundation internship, 2008; VCUQ 

Faculty Development grant, 2007; 

VCUQ Faculty Research grant, 2005; 

Paul Torgersen Excellence in Research 

Award, 1999; Waste Policy Institute 

summer graduate fellowship, 1998. 



Outside Work Experience: Assistant 

professor of mathematics and physics, 

Virginia Commonwealth University 

School of the Arts in Qatar, 2004-2007. 

Career Goals: I plan to pursue an 

academic career and continue to be 

active as a researcher and an educator. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Lynsey D. Reese 

Emily A. Sarver 

James H. Stagge 

Hometown: Bellefonte, Penn. 


University of Pittsburgh 

Location of Master’s Studies: 



Summa Cum Laude and member of 

Chi Epsilon honors fraternity 


Outside Work Experience: Internship 

at the Pennsylvania Department 

of Transportation, Summer 2005 

and 2006; Teaching assistant at the 

Pennsylvania State University, August 

2007 – August 2009. 

Career Goals: I would like to work for 

a consulting firm working on unique 

projects. Later I hope to become a 

professor and share the experiences 

and knowledge gained from years in 

the field. 



Virginia Tech 


Awards and Recognitions: National 

Science Foundation Graduate 

Research Fellowship Award; University 

of California at Berkeley Materials 

Science and Engineering Department 

William V. Power Graduate Award, 

Fall 2006; finalist, Hertz Foundation 

Fellowship Award, 2006; Paul E. 

Torgersen Graduate Research 

Excellence Award, 2006; Virginia Tech 

College of Engineering Outstanding 

Senior of the Year, 2004; 



Outside Work Experience: Phelps 

Dodge Process Technology Center, 

Morenci, Ariz., M.S. thesis project 

research on reaction kinetics involving 

activated carbon used as a catalyst in 

regenerating key ions in electrolyte for 

hydrometallurgical copper extraction. 

Career Goals: I have interests in mining 

and minerals processing, with an 

emphasis on environmental issues in 

these fields, and I would like to work in 

academia. 

Hometown: Timonium, Md. 


University of Maryland, College Park 


Maryland, College Park 

Awards and Recognitions: Robert 

Morris Award for Environmental 

Leadership; Undergraduate Honors 

Research Project honorable mention; 

undergraduate engineering honors; 

undergraduate university honors 



Outside Work Experience: Staff engineer, 

Roux Associates; civil/hydraulic 

engineer, The Bioengineering Group; 

environmental lab assistant, USDA 

Agricultural Research Center; surveyor, 

Johnson, Mirmiran, and Thompson 

(JMT) Engineering 

Career Goals: I hope to pursue a position 

as a professor or researcher, focused 

on hydraulic modeling of natural 

systems and their use as sustainable 

stormwater alternatives. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Melissa Stewart 

Matthew K. Swenty 

Christopher A. Wilson 

Hometown: Gainesville, Fla. 


University of Florida 


of Florida 

Awards and Recognitions: NSF IGERT 

Fellowship at Virginia Tech; Florida 

Alumni Fellow at University of Florida 

(Masters); GAANN Fellow at University 

of Florida (Master’s); National Merit 

Scholarship winner (undergraduate); 

member of Tau Beta Pi 



Outside Work Experience: Water/ 

wastewater engineering intern at 

Gainesville Regional Utilities in 

Gainesville, Fla., during Master’s 

degree studies; summer internship 

at Water Missions International 

in Charleston, S.C.; research/lab 

assistant at the University of Florida 

in the biological and environmental 

engineering departments; teaching 

assistant at the University of Florida 

in the environmental engineering 

department. 

Career Goals: I look forward to obtaining 

my doctorate and hope to obtain 

professional licensure as well. I 

would like to pursue a career as a 

professor, teaching and doing research 

that interacts with the professional 

engineering community. 

Hometown: Rolla, Mo. 

Location of Undergraduate Studies: University 

of Missouri-Rolla 


Missouri-Rolla 

Awards and Recognitions: University of 

Missouri-Rolla Chancellor’s Fellowship; 

UMR Civil Engineering Senior 

Achievement Award; ASCE Washington 

Internship for Students in Engineering 

(WISE) intern; Missouri ACI graduate 

scholarship; member, Tau Beta Pi, 

Kappa Mu Epsilon, Phi Kappa Phi, and 

Chi Epsilon honor societies; member of 

Chancellor’s Leadership Class. 


Outside Work Experience: I worked for 

about a year at the HBE Corporation in 

St. Louis, Mo. I helped with the structural 

design of hospitals and financial 

institutions for design/build projects. I 

worked for over two years in the bridge 

division of the Missouri-Department of 

Transportation. There, I analyzed and 

designed bridges for the state highway 

system. 

Career Goals: My goal is to obtain my 

Ph.D. in civil engineering, so I can return 

to academics. I enjoy the practical 

and theoretical sides of civil engineering 

and hope that my professional 

experiences along with my educational 

background will help me in teaching 

and research. 

Hometown: Struthers, Ohio 


Bucknell University 


Awards and Recognitions: Bucknell 

University, Michael D. LaGrega Award 

for Excellence in Environmental 

Engineering, 2004; Edna Bailey 

Sussman Foundation internship, 

2006; Virginia Water Environment 

Association (VWEA) Sonny Roden 

Memorial Scholarship; member, 

Water Environment Federation 

and Association of Environmental 

Engineering and Science Professors. 



Outside Work Experience: Bucknell 

University, Lewisburg, Penn., 

undergraduate research assistant, Fall 

2003-Spring 2004; MS Consultants, 

Inc., Youngstown, Ohio, environmental 

engineering intern, Summer 

2001-Summer 2004. 

Career Goals: I would like to continue 

my research in biosolids and residuals 

management, increasing the scientific 

knowledge of the biological process 

that drives advanced anaerobic 

digestion technologies. Upon 

graduation, my goal is to work as a 

professional engineer, integrating 

cutting edge research into the 

development of sustainable wastewater 

and biosolids management processes. 


VIA SCHOLARS 


Michael Woodworth 

Hometown: Rocky River, Ohio 


University of Cincinnati 


Tech 

Awards and Recognitions: American 

Society of Civil Engineers; university 

honors; Cincinnatus Scholar; Chi 

Epsilon; Engineering Ambassadors 


Outside Work Experience: VSL – 

Australia, July 2007–November 

2007; GOP Limited, September 

2004–September 2005; BBN 

Technologies, March 2003–June 2004. 

Career Goals: I plan to obtain a Ph.D. 

and find employment in industry or 

academia with a research component. 

I eventually wish to teach at the 

university level. 


VIA ALUMNI 

Via Alumni: Where are they now 

UNDERGRADUATES 

Suzanne Ayres Angelo 

Year Graduated: 2003; Master’s 2006, 

Virginia Tech 

Employer: Unknown 

Doran J. Bosso 


Virginia Tech 

Employer: Skanska Infrastructure Development, 

Alexandria, Va. 

Chris English 


University of Illinois, Urbana 

Employer: CH2M Hill, St. Louis, Mo. 

Previous Employer: 1996-97, Patrick Engineering, 

Springfield, Ill. 

Brian P. Felker 

Year Graduated: 2001 

Current Status: Unknown 

Kathryn Firich 


Employer: Brown and Caldwell, Alexandria, 

Va. 

R. Andrew Goodwin 


Current Status: U.S. Army Engineer R&D 

Center, Portland, Ore. 

Chris Kaldahl 


Employer: Appalachian Mountain Club, 

Gorham, N.H. 

Peter D. Kauffmann 

Year Graduated: 2009 

Employer: Currently pursuing a M.S. 

degree in civil and environmental engineering 

at Virginia Tech 

Stephen O. Meininger 


Employer: CH2M Hill - OMI, Clarksville, 

Md. 

Joshua Mouras 


Employer: Magnusson Klemencic Associates, 

Seattle, Wash. 

Joseph Schmitt 


Current Status: Unknown 

Paul Taylor 


Current Status: ExxonMobil, Houston, Tex. 

Henry J. Theiss 



Jennifer Verwest 


Current Status: Currently pursuing a graduate 

degree at Texas A&M University, 

College Station, Tex. 

Elliott Robert Wheeler 


Employer: Operations Management International, 

Inc., Englewood, Col. 

Ryan Willey 



The following students also received 

their undergraduate degrees while 

on a Via Scholarship and elected 

to pursue their master’s degrees at 

Virginia Tech, also as Via Scholarship 

recipients. Their complete listings can 

be found in the alumni student section 

of this publication. These students are: 

Randall Boe, William Scott Dewhirst, 

II, Charles M. Dietz, Jr., Greg Hensley, 

Jeffrey Kuttesch, Matthew Moore, 

John D. Riley, John Stephen Siczka, 

Jeffrey Snow, and Marcia Votour 

Prowell. 

GRADUATES 

CONSTRUCTION 

Frank Arcuri 


Degree Awarded: Master’s 

Employer: Fluor Corporation, New York, 

N.Y. 

Mary Jane Contos Bartlett 



Employer: O’Brien & Gere Engineering, 

Morrisville, N.C. 

Janet Sparks Chandler 



Employer: Full-time mother 

Allan D. Chasey 


Degree Awarded: Ph.D. 

Employer: Del E. Webb School of Construction, 

Arizona State University, 

Tempe, Ariz. 

Kirsten Davis 



Employer: Boise State University, Boise, 

Idaho 

Benjamin Hays 



Employer: L.A. Dept. of Public Works, Los 

Angeles, Calif. 

John Hildreth 



Employer: University of North Carolina, 

Charlotte, N.C. 

Angel Ho 



Employer: Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, 

Va. 

Jennifer Firman McConnell 



Employer: Schoor DePalma, Kulpsville, 

Penn. 

Joshua P. Middleton 



Employer: American Infrastructure, 

Worcester, Penn. 

Juan C. Pińero 



Employer: Barrett Hale & Alamo, Consulting 

Engineers, San Juan, Puerto Rico 

Jeffrey Snow 

Years Graduated: 2000 and 2002 

Degrees Awarded: Undergraduate (2000) 

and Master’s (2002) 

Employer: American Infrastructure, 

Worcester, Penn. 


VIA ALUMNI 

Robert C. Williams 

Year Graduated: 2006 and 2008 

Degree Awarded: Master’s (2006) and 

Ph.D. (2008) 

Employer: Vecellio and Grogan Inc., Beckley, 

W.Va. 

Terry L. Williams 



Employer: Alan A. Meyers, Inc. 

ENVIRONMENTAL & 

WATER RESOURCES 

Nancy Lade Anderson 



Employer: Full-time Mother 

Jason L. Beck 



Employer: Camp Dresser and McKee 

(CDM), Charlotte, N.C. 

Randall Boe 




Employer: CH2M Hill, Gainesville, Fla. 

Elizabeth Claire Booth 



Employer: Golder Associates, Denver, 

Col. 

Charles B. Bott 



Employer: Hampton Roads Sanitation 

District, Virginia Beach, Va. and Adjunct 

Professor, civil and environmental engineering, 

Virginia Tech 

J. Steven Brauner 



Employer: Parsons Engineering, Denver, 

Col. 

Bradley M. Coffey 



Employer: Metropolitan Water District of 

Southern California, Water Quality Division 

Joel Cohn 



Employer: Malcolm Pirnie, Norfolk, Va. 

Cynthia Crane 



Employer: Hydro Geologic, Herndon, Va. 

Andrea Crowe Hargette 



Employer: Black & Veatch, Inc., Greenville, 

S.C. 

Christina Clarkson Davis 



Employer: Ph.D. student, Virginia Tech, 

Northern Virginia Campus 

Jason Davis 



Employer: Corallo, Eagle, Idaho 

William Scott Dewhirst, II 




Employer: Newport News Water Works, 

Newport News, Va. 

Charles (Chuck) Dietz, Jr. 




Employer: Virginia Department of Conservation 

and Recreation, Dublin, Va. 

Daniel Dorsel 


Degree Awarded: Master’s, ENE 

Employer: Cardinal Newman School, Columbia, 

S.C. 

Mark Dougherty 



Employer: Auburn University, Auburn, Ala. 

Laura Duncan 



Employer: Arcadis, Knoxville, Tenn. 

Mary Facciolo 



Employer: Raleigh, N.C., consulting firm 

Ryan M. Fedak 



Employer: Hayes, Seay, Mattern, and Mattern, 

Roanoke, Va. 

Jamie Fettig 


Degree Awarded: Master’s, ENE 

Employer: Parson Engr. Sci., N.Y. 

Scott A. Forsling 



Employer: Brown, Collins and Associates, 

Draper, Utah 

John Fripp 



Employer: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, National 

Resources Conservation Service, 

Ft. Worth, Tex. 

Wesley Geertsema 




Kevin R. Gilmore 



Employer: Bucknell University, Lewisburg, 

Penn. 

Aimee E. Greyshock 



Employer: Virginia Department of Health- 

Office of Drinking Water, Culpepper, Va. 

Matthew Gwaltney 

Year Graduated: 2007 (posthumously) 


Deceased 

Orrick (Rick) Haney 



Employer: Haney Associates, Inc., Anderson, 

S.C. 

David Holbrook 



Employer: National Institute of Standards 

and Technology, Gaithersburg, Md. 

Edward Brian Houston 



Employer: Black & Veatch, Gaithersburg, 

Md. 

Kari Husovitz Foy 



Employer: B.P. Barber and Associates, 

Inc., N. Charleston, S.C. 

Angela Iatrou Simon 



Employer: Tutor Perini, Framingham, 

Mass. 


VIA ALUMNI 

Joshua A. Joseph, Jr. 



Employer: CH2M Hill, Atlanta, Ga. 

Richard T. Kelly, II 



Employer: Brown & Caldwell, Seattle, 

Wash. 

Rebecca Lattyak 



Employer: Malcolm Pirnie, West Lafayette, 

Ind. 

Katherine Linares 



Employer: HDR Engineering, Inc., Norfolk, 

Va. 

Erika Lubkowitz Bailey 



Employer: HDR, Inc., Raleigh, N.C. 

Donald C. Marikovich 



Employer: Draper Aden & Associates, 


Eduardo Mendez, III 



Employer: U.S. Army 

Becki Marshall Rosenfeldt 



Employer: Hazen & Sawyer, Belcher 

Town, Mass. 

Katherine McArthur Leitch 



Employer: Merck & Co., Inc., West Point, 

Penn. 

Colleen McCloskey Rossmeisl 



Employer: Companion Animal Clinic, 


Brian McCormick 



Employer: Frostburg State University, 

Frostburg, Md. 

Laurie S. McNeill 



Employer: Utah State University, Logan, 

Utah 

Peter B. Merkle 



Employer: Sandia National Labs, Albuquerque, 

N.M. 

Matthew C. Moore 




Employer: Sikland Engineering Associates, 

Van Nuys, Calif. 

Christopher D. Muller 



Employer: Brown and Caldwell, Seattle, 

Wash. 

Jocelyn Fraga Muller 



Employer: University of Washington, Seattle, 

Wash. 

Caroline Nguyen 



Employer: Ph.D. candidate, Virginia Tech 

Julia Novak 



Deceased 

Jeff Parks 



Employer: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va. 

Kristina Perri 



Employer: CH2M Hill, Atlanta, Ga. 

Carrie Adam Phipps 



Employer: CH2M Hill, Newport News, Va. 

Noreen Poor 



Employer: Public Health Engineering, University 

of South Florida 

Diana Rashash 



Employer: North Carolina State University, 

Raleigh, N.C. 

Heather Veith Rectanus 



Employer: Battelle, San Diego, Calif. 

Sandra Robinson 



Employer: CH2M Hill, Redding, Calif. 

Jason Rushing 



Employer: Malcolm Pirnie, Fairfax, Va. 

Mary Rust Sadler 



Employer: Arcadis, Raleigh, N.C. 

Paolo Scardina 




Dipankar Sen 



Employer: Santa Clara Valley Water District, 

San Jose, Calif. 

Vickie L. Singleton 



Employer: Full-time mother, New Bern, 

N.C. 

Brad Shearer 



Employer: CH2M Hill, Redding, Calif. 

Holly Shorney 

Year Graduated: February 1992 


Employer: Black & Veatch, Inc., Kansas 

City, Mo. 

John S. Siczka 




Employer: CH2M Hill, Brown Deer, Wisc. 

Aaron B. Small 



Employer: AES Consulting Engineers, Williamsburg, 

Va. 

Sheryl D. Smith 



Employer: Camp, Dresser and McKee, 

Raleigh, N.C. 


VIA ALUMNI 

Jeffrey A. Sparks 



Employer: Malcolm Pirnie., Richmond, Va. 

Jonathan Stathis 



Employer: Cedar City Corp., Cedar City, 

Utah 

Amanda E. Strickhouser 



Employer: Watson Wyatt, San Francisco 

Chris Tadanier 



Employer: Black & Veatch, Denver, Col. 

Dan Waddill 



Employer: Dept. of the Navy, Norfolk, Va. 

Diane Waters 



Employer: City of Miami, Public Works 

Dept., Miami, Fla. 

Edwin W. Watkins 



Employer: Ogden Environmental and Energy 

Services, Nashville, Tenn. 

David Whichard 



Employer: International Paper, S.C. 

Krista Rule Wigginton 



Employer: Ecole Polytechnic Federale de 

Lausanne, Switzerland 

Christopher Wolfe 



Employer: Semcor, Washington, D.C. 

Jennifer Wright 



Employer: Department of Environmental 

Quality (DEQ), Richmond, Va. 

Kevin D. Young 





Anna Zaklikowski 



Employer: HDR Engineering, Portland, 

Ore. 

Lauren Zuravnsky 



Employer: Greeley and Hansen, Richmond, 

Va. 

GEOTECHNICAL 

William Bassett 


Employer: Federal Highway Administration, 

Washington, D.C. 

Diane Yamane Baxter 



Employer: GZA GeoEnvironmental Inc., 

Providence, R.I. 

Craig Benedict 



Employer: Gannet-Flemming, King of 

Prussia, Penn. 

David Bentler 


Degrees Awarded: Master’s; Ph.D. 

Employer: Shaw Stone & Webster, Inc., 

Denver, Col. 

Jeremy Britton 



Employer: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

Portland, Ore. 

Pete Chenevey 



Employer: Dames & Moore, Cincinnati, 

Ohio 

Jaime Colby 



Employer: Sanborn, Head & Associates, 

Inc., Westford, Mass. 

Megan Cole 



Employer: GEI Consultants, Winchester, 

Mass. 

Jeramy Bruyn Decker 



Employer: Kewit Construction Co., Pacifica, 

Calif. 

Patricia (Trish) M. Gallagher 

Year Graduated: December 2000 


Employer: Drexel University, Philadelphia, 

Penn. 

Russell Green 




George Filz 




Brendan Fitzpatrick 



Employer: GEOPIER Foundation Co., 

Inc., Mooresville, N.C. 

Laura Henry 



Employer: Haley & Aldrich, N.J. 

Wayne Herring 



Employer: ARM Group, Hershey, Penn. 

Randall Hickman 



Employer: BP American, Inc., Houston, 

Tex. 

Michelle Hoy 



Employer: Oregon Dept. of Environmental 

Quality, Portland, Ore. 

Kenneth A. Huber 



Employer: Senior Pastor at Calvary Baptist 

Church, Riverhead, N.Y. 

Scott Mackey 



Employer: Central Connecticut State University, 

New Britain, Conn. 

Jessica R. Marshall 



Employer: Colorado Public Works Authority 

Christopher L. Meehan 



Employer: University of Delaware, Newark, 

Del.

VIA ALUMNI 

Clark Morrison 



Employer: North Carolina Dept. of Transportation, 

Raleigh, N.C. 

Bob Mokwa 



Employer: Montana State University, 

Bozeman, Mont. 

Michael Navin 



Employer: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

St. Louis, Mo. 

David Nevius 



Employer: Terra Costa Consulting, San 

Diego, Calif. 

James Parkes 



Employer: Gannett Fleming, Harrisburg, 

Penn. 

Maysill G. Pascal 



Employer: Haley and Aldrich Inc., Parsippany, 

N.J. 

Craig Petranka 




Michael Pockoski 



Employer: Hayward Baker, Inc., Odenton, 

Md. 

Jonathan Porter 


Degree Awarded: Master’s (Via) and 

Ph.D. 

Employer: U.S. Air Force, Tyndall AFB 

Marcia Votour Prowell 


Degrees Awarded: Undergraduate and 

Master’s 

Employer: Virginia Geotechnical Services, 

PC, Richmond, Va. 

Susan Rafalko 



Employer: Reinforced Earth Co., Vienna, 

Va. 

Alan Rauch 



Employer: Fuller, Mossbarger, Scott, and 

May Engineers, Inc., Lexington, Ken. 

Nathan Reeves 



Employer: S&ME, Inc., Raleigh, N.C. 

John D. Rice 



Employer: Utah State University, Logan, 

Utah 

Andrew T. Rose 



Employer: University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, 

Penn. 

Jennifer A. Schaeffer 



Employer: CH2M Hill, Seattle, Wash. 

Matthew Sleep 




Edward R. Ware III 



Employer: Wurster Engineering, Greenville, 

S.C. 

Kord Wissman 



Employer: GEOPIER Foundation Co., 

Inc., Mooresville, N.C. 

STRUCTURES & MATERIALS 

Mary Sue Mouchka Abel 



Employer: EMCS Design Group, Milwaukee, 

Wisc. 

Chad C. Alander 



Employer: Goodkind & O’Dea, Carlisle, 

Penn. 

Nick Amico 



Employer: Figg Engineering, Tallahassee, 

Fla. 

Kirsten A. Baldwin Metzger 



Employer: Laurene & Rickher, P.C., Charlotte, 

N.C. 

Anthony Barrett, Capt., USAF 



Employer: U.S. Air Force, Kunsan Air 

Base, South Korea 

James Wescott (Wes) Bott 



Employer: HDR Alaska, Inc., Eagle River, 

Alaska 

Susan Bowers 



Employer: Whitman, Requardt & Associates, 

Baltimore, Md. 

Adam G. Bowland 




J. Christopher Carroll 



Employer: University of Louisiana at 

Lafayette, Lafayette, La. 

Jason Cawrse 



Employer: CH2M Hill, Alexandria, Va. 

Kevin R. Collins 



Employer: Lawrence Technological University, 

Southfield, Mich. 

Amy Dalrymple Ryan 



Employer: Starzer, Brady, Fagan Associates, 

Inc., Atlanta, Ga. 

D. Brad Davis 



Employer: University of Kentucky, Lexington, 

Ken. 

Kyle Richard Dominisse 



Employer: Walter P. Moore, Kansas City, 

Mo. 


VIA ALUMNI 

Richard Drumm 



Employer: FHWA 

Keith Grubb 



Employer: American Institute of Steel Construction, 

Chicago, Ill. 

Linda Morley Hanagan 



Employer: Penn State University, State 

College, Penn. 

Matthew D. Harlan 



Employer: Clark Nelsen, Norfolk, Va. 

Devin K. Harris 



Employer: Michigan Technological University, 

Houghton, Mich. 

Greg Hensley 




Employer: Pinnacle Engineering, Charlottesville, 

Va. 

Anne Himebaugh 



Employer: Simpson, Gumpertz, and 

Heger, Waltham, Mass. 

Hunter Hodges 



Employer: Lane Bishop York and Delahaye, 

Inc., Birmingham, Ala. 

William P. Jacobs, V 



Employer: Stanley D. Lindsey and Associates, 

Atlanta, Ga. 

Jared B. Jamison 



Employer: Hankins and Anderson, Glen 

Allen, Va. 

Bernard L. Kassner 




Ann E. Jeffers 



Employer: University of Michigan, Ann 

Arbor, Mich. 

Stephanie A. Koch 



Employer: Parsons Brinkerhoff-Ohio Inc., 

Columbus, Ohio 

Adam R. Lease 



Employer: Cives Steel Company, Winchester, 

Va. 

Bryan J. Loflin 



Employer: Parsons Brinkerhoff, Raleigh, 

N.C. 

Justin D. Marshall 



Employer: Auburn University, Auburn, Ala. 

James David Martin 



Employer: Walter P. Moore, Tampa, Fla. 

Timothy W. Mays 


Degrees Awarded: Master’s (1997) and 

Ph.D. (2000) 

Employer: The Citadel, Charleston, SC 

Laurie Mazursky 



Employer: Sutton-Kennerly and Assoc., 

Asheville, N.C. 

David McGowan 



Employer: Dominion Generation, Glen 

Allen, Va. 

Sean Molloy 



Employer: Redwine Reizian Structural 

Engineers, Avon, Col. 

Michael Motley 



Employer: The LPA Group, Inc., Tallahassee, 

Fla. 

Michael C. Neubert 



Employer: King Guinn Associates, Charlotte, 

N.C. 

Charles (Chuck) Newhouse 



Ph.D. (2005) 

Employer: Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, 

Va. 

Patricia Seay O’Neil 



Employer: Bechtel, Frederick, Md. 

Jason D. Perry 

Year Graduated: December 2003 


Employer: Stanley D. Lindsey & Associates, 

Ltd., Nashville, Tenn. 

Jason Piotter 


Degree Awarded: Master’s; Ph.D. pending 

Employer: Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

Robert T. Prince 



Employer: Hayes, Seay, Mattern & Mattern, 

Inc., Roanoke, Va. 

Bruce Queen 



Employer: President, QED Inc., Raleigh, 

N.C. 

Michelle Rambo-Roddenberry 



Employer: FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, 

Tallahassee, Fla. 

Nicholas Redmond 



Employer: Magnusson Klemencic Associates, 

Seattle, Wash. 

Clint Rex 



Ph.D. (1996) 

Employer: Stanley D. Lindsey and Associates, 

Atlanta, Ga. 

Cheryl Rottman 



Employer: Frontenac Engineering, St. 

Louis, Mo. 


VIA ALUMNI 

John C. Ryan, Jr. 



Employer: StructurTech Construction Systems, 

Charleston, S.C. 

Richard A. Saunders 



Employer: KSI Structural Engineers, Atlanta, 

Ga. 

Donald P. Scholz 



Employer: CVM Engineers, Wayne, Penn. 

Michael W. Seek 



Employer: East Tennessee State University, 

Johnson City, Tenn. 

Bruce Shue 



Employer: Smislova, Kehnemui & Assoc., 

Rockville, Md. 

Michael Sladki 



Employer: SKA Engineers, Washington, 

D.C. 

Paul Spears 



Employer: Martin / Martin Consulting Engineers, 

Kansas City, Mo. 

Sean Robert Sullivan 



Employer: HNTB, East Lansing, Mich. 

Emmett A. Sumner 



Employer: North Carolina State University, 

Raleigh, N.C. 

Anthony B. Temeles 



Employer: Modjeski & Master’s, Philadelphia, 

Penn. 

Angela Sellars Terry 



Employer: Self-employed 

Steven J. Tschetter 



Employer: Suncoast Post-Tension, Inc., 

Woodbridge, Va. 

Christopher J. Waldron 


Degrees Awarded: Master’s (2001) and 

Ph.D. (2004) 

Employer: University of Alabama at Birmingham, 

Birmingham, Ala. 

Joseph A. Wallenfelsz 



Employer: Traylor Brothers, Inc. and 

Massman Construction Co., Golden 

Meadow, La. 

J. Ashley Warren 



Employer: The LPA Group, Inc., Falls 

Church, Va. 

Christopher Werner 



Employer: Stroud Pence, Norfolk, Va. 

Maurice W. White 


Degree Awarded: Master’s and Ph.D. 


John Whitlow 




Gregory Williamson 



Employer: ExxonMobil, Fairfax, Va. 

Eric J. Wishart 



Employer: Civil CADD Services, Inc., Lincoln, 

R.I. 

Mustapha Zmerli 



Deceased 

TRANSPORTATION 

INFRASTRUCTURE AND 

SYSTEMS 

Sudarshana C.S. Bhat 



Employer: University of Texas at Austin, 

Austin, Tex. 

Douglas R. Bish 




Edgar David de León Izeppi 



Employer: Virginia Tech Transportation 

Institute, Blacksburg, Va. 

Joshua (Josh) Diekmann 



Employer: A consultant in Seattle, Wash. 

Erin Walsh Donovan 




Anthony Ingle 



Employer: DLZ Michigan, Kalamazoo, 

Mich. 

Jeffrey Kuttesch 




Employer: Rummel, Klepper, and Kahl 

Engineers (RK&K), Baltimore, Md. 

John D. Riley 




Employer: Kimley-Horn & Associates, Inc., 

Richmond, Va. 

Kevin M. Siegel 



Employer: PBS & J, Inc., Newport News, 

Va. 

Eric J. Siess 



Employer: Naval Surface Warfare Center, 

Dalgreen, Va. 


VIA DONORS 

Donors to the CEE Department for 2008-2009 

The donors recognized on the 

following pages made a contribution 

to the Via Department of Civil and 

Environmental Engineering (CEE) 

during fiscal year 2009 (7/1/08 – 

6/30/09). Although every effort has 

been made to ensure the accuracy 

of this report, we acknowledge that 

errors may have occurred. If your 

name has been omitted or listed 

incorrectly, please accept our sincere 

apologies and send in any corrections 

to the CEE Main Office at (540) 231- 

6635. 

CEE Alumni who 

contributed in 2008-2009 

William A. Aden........................... 1967 

Chad C. Alander.......................... 1996 

Michael A. Alto............................ 1983 

Lisa M. Alvey............................... 1994 

Thomas A. Ameel........................ 1984 

Carl S. Anderson......................... 1958 

S. Kendall Anderson................... 1962 

C. Howard Arnold........................ 1980 

Walter F. Bailey........................... 1972 

Kelso S. Baker............................ 1951 

Jessica M. Barbier...................... 1990 

Thomas E. Barstow..................... 1985 

Sandra G. Bartley.............. 1970/1973 

John P. Bassett........................... 1955 

Gary C. Beach............................ 1972 

Courtney A. Beamon................... 1995 

Ronald L. Beck............................ 1970 

Danelle M. Bernard..................... 1985 

Brian W. Bersch.......................... 1981 

Michael N. Biscotte..................... 1980 

Harold W. Bohannon................... 1968 

Michelle E. Bolding..................... 2005 

Dana M. Boyadjian...................... 1976 

Jerry D. Brammer........................ 1968 

Kenneth W. Brammer.................. 1976 

Kenneth P. Brannan.................... 1986 

Robert L. Briggs.......................... 1988 

William F. Brittle........................... 1969 

Roger L. Brockenbrough............. 1954 

Thomas W. Brockenbrough... 1942/1946 

Rollins P. Brown.......................... 1994 

Richard H. Brownley................... 1944 

Craig S. Bryant............................ 1971 

W. Barry Bryant.................. 1970/1971 

Steven B. Buchanan................... 1980 

Amy L. Buehler........................... 1994 

Guy W. Buford............................. 1952 

Douglas W. Burks....................... 1979 

Christopher T. Burner.................. 1995 

H.D. Campbell............................. 1969 

Joseph C. Campbell.................... 1968 

Valerie L. Carpenter.................... 1999 

Dennis W. Carter......................... 1967 

Derrick B. Cave........................... 1987 

Steven D. Chambliss.................. 1990 

Pah I. Chen................................. 1964 

R. Bradley Chewning......... 1964/1970 

Giles G. Childress....................... 1981 

Alfred R. Cline............................. 1958 

Stanley Cohen............................ 1949 

Kevin R. Collins........................... 1989 

Michael R. Collins....................... 1971 

Rodney E. Cox............................ 1952 

Thomas H. Cox........................... 1991 

Jeffrey T. Crate................... 1973/1976 

James F. Cruise.......................... 1974 

E. Stokes Daniels........................ 1957 

David D. Dee............................... 1987 

James B. Diamond...................... 1970 

Robert E. Dick............................. 1989 

Charles M. Dietz......................... 1972 

Richard M. DiSalvo..................... 1977 

O. Davis Ditman.......................... 1959 

Wayne A. Dixon........................... 1964 

Michael T. Donaldson.................. 1980 

Michael J. Dugas........................ 1987 

Betsy E. Dulin ............................ 1986 

Preston P. Dunavant................... 1968 

Scott C. Dunn.............................. 1992 

E. William East............................ 1980 

Anne M. Ellis............................... 1980 

Charles L. Ernest........................ 1970 

Douglas R. Fahl.......................... 1965 

Glendon J. Fetterolf.................... 1996 

George M. Filz............................ 1992 

Theron R. Fluker......................... 1999 

William D. France........................ 1995 

Robert W. Frantz......................... 1968 

Lindsey K. Gardner..................... 1960 

Kurt D. Geiger............................. 1979 

Anne M. Germain........................ 1989 

Ian A. Gibson.............................. 1991 

James W. Givens........................ 1970 

John V. Glazebrook..................... 1954 

Thomas B. Gray.......................... 1973 

Douglas W. Greene..................... 1977 

Dean S. Gregory......................... 1990 

Thomas A. Grogan...................... 1980 

Timrod A. Groover....................... 1979 

D. Randolph Grubbs................... 1971 

Charles D. Hall............................ 1970 

John B. Hall................................. 1955 

Raeann R. Hamon...................... 1985 

Gregory E. Hand......................... 1971 

Charles L. Harowitz..................... 1948 

Belinda M. Harper....................... 1996 

Brandon C. Harrison................... 2006 

E. Franklin Hart........................... 1967 

Larry V. Hartbarger...................... 1974 

Gene W. Hatcher........................ 1977 

Max L. Heckman ........................ 1975 

Pablo A. Hernandez.................... 1989 

David E. Hill................................. 1978 

Jack M. Hill.................................. 1949 

Don W. Holloway......................... 1957 

Charles S. Hughes...................... 1958 

Steven G. Hughes....................... 1986 

Robert W. Hungate............ 1986/1988 

Thomas N. Hunnicutt.................. 1959 

Robin A. Hylton........................... 1986 

Edward L. Janney....................... 1973 

Robert F. Jansen......................... 1980 

Benjamin C. Jarosz..................... 1999 

Jimmie D. Jenkins....................... 1970 


VIA DONORS 

Paul B. Johnson.......................... 1973 

Patricia W. Jordan....................... 1978 

Paul A. Jordan............................. 1979 

William E. Junda......................... 2000 

Robert B. Kahler......................... 1981 

Christopher E. Kaldahl................ 1995 

Dennis Kamber........................... 1963 

Susan E. Keck-Truman............... 1968 

Thomas M. Kennedy................... 1987 

Michael A. Knott.......................... 1975 

Kevin T. Krupa............................. 1976 

Glenda P. La Rue............... 1991/1993 

Matthew R. Lane......................... 1995 

Kevin T. Laptos............................ 1988 

Matthew S. Lawrence................. 2006 

M. James Lewis.......................... 1981 

Willis H. Lewis............................. 1941 

James R. Link............................. 1958 

Stephen R. Long......................... 1983 

James F. Loudon......................... 1960 

R. Easton Loving......................... 1989 

Dennis L. Lundy.......................... 1973 

Gary S. Lynn............................... 1988 

Mercer R. MacPherson............... 1963 

Thomas S. Maddock................... 1950 

José A. Marcano......................... 2002 

Burton M. Marshall...................... 1958 

Donald L. Martin.......................... 1974 

Michael R. Martin........................ 1974 

Russell L. Martin......................... 1977 

Peter P. Mattejat................. 1984/1985 

Lisa J. McAdam.......................... 1983 

Robert F. McCarty....................... 1965 

Megan A. McCollough................. 2007 

David I. McCready...................... 1973 

Francis D. McCreery................... 1967 

Jeffrey A. McInnis........................ 1996 

Gregory B. McKenna.................. 1982 

Arthur W. McKinney.................... 1965 

Amy D. Meli................................. 1998 

Howard C. Melton....................... 1961 

Ronald L. Meng........................... 1996 

Sherry P. Meredith....................... 1988 

Joseph F. Miller........................... 1979 

Robert S. Miller........................... 1967 

Tracy L. Miller Jackson............... 1992 

Jeremy M. Mocny........................ 1997 

Peter J. Monaldo......................... 2006 

Colleen Rice Montgomery........... 1990 

Steven T. Moore.......................... 1982 

Anthony J. Moraco...................... 1984 

Joe M. Morgan............................ 1968 

Michelle E. Motchos.................... 1996 

Michael P. Mozingo..................... 1965 

David R. Myzie............................ 1986 

Teresa I. Nauss........................... 1982 

Charles D. Newhouse........ 1993/2005 

Albert L. Nichols.......................... 1962 

Kerry Nothnagel................. 1965/1968 

Raymond J. O’Donnell................ 1980 

Morris B. Oliver........................... 1987 

Robert A. Painter......................... 1948 

Stephen E. Patchett.................... 1990 

Gerald W. Peaks......................... 1969 

Carrie H. Pendleton.................... 2000 

John L. Peter............................... 1980 

Carl W. Peterson......................... 1960 

Daniel H. Phlegar........................ 1970 

Nancy Powell.............................. 1977 

Stephen C. Powers..................... 1987 

Robert T. Prince.......................... 1998 

Carl W. Pugh............................... 1985 

Michael J. Quillen........................ 1970 

Susan D. Ralfalko....................... 2005 

Brian L. Ramaley........................ 1974 

Vinton J. Rathburn...................... 1982 

Lauren A. Raup........................... 2007 

Walter J. Rawls.................. 1966/1968 

Glenn W. Rehberger................... 1969 

Linvil G. Rich............................... 1947 

James B. Richards...................... 1968 

Jack E. Rinker............................. 1961 

Randolph P. Rivinus.................... 1968 

Michael A. Robinson................... 1990 

Jeffrey A. Roby............................ 1985 

Joseph H. Rogers....................... 1965 

Richard B. Rountree................... 1963 

Aldelmo Ruiz-Santiago............... 1949 

Dallas W. Safriet......................... 1967 

Lester M. Safriet.......................... 1963 

Daryl E. Schauss........................ 1993 

Jonathan B. Scherer................... 2007 

G.P. Schrader.............................. 1938 

Kurt G. Schroeder....................... 1987 

R. Wayne Schwartz..................... 1962 

William C. Scruggs...................... 1960 

R. John Seabrook....................... 1984 

James L. Sellers......................... 1978 

Patrick N. Shaffner...................... 1961 

Edward J. Shea.................. 1997/1999 

Michael T. Siburt.......................... 2004 

John S. Siczka................... 1994/1997 

Clyde N. Simmers....................... 1971 

Howell Simmons................ 1960/1963 

Carol P. Sinclair........................... 1983 

J. Keith Sinclair........................... 1975 

Christopher S. Smith................... 1993 

Elizabeth F. Smith....................... 1986 

Richard L. Sobbott...................... 1982 

Bryan W. Stevenson................... 1996 

Jack H. Stewart........................... 1957 

Harvey E. Strawsnyder............... 1971 

Richard H. String......................... 1988 

William A. Stuart......................... 1959 

Todd W. Swanson....................... 1974 

Richard D. Swartout.................... 1969 

Boris O. Taran............................. 1967 

Robert S. Tate............................. 1992 

Robert J. Taylor........................... 1981 

Dominic M. Tiburzi....................... 1974 

J. Allan Tice................................. 1965 

William E. Tomlinson................... 1963 

Andrew S. Topp .......................... 1999 

J. Stephen Torell......................... 1993 

Dennis D. Truax.......................... 1976 

Steven J. Tschetter...................... 1992 

Kwong Tong Tse.......................... 1978 

Frederick J. Turner...................... 1959 

Rod E. Turochy........................... 1991 

Janna Unterzuber....................... 1994 

William L. Ward........................... 1995 

Thomas B. Washington............... 1953 

Robert B. Welton......................... 1959 

Edward C. Westerman................ 1993 

Robert H. White.......................... 1950 

James E. Williams....................... 1974 

Kord J. Wissmann....................... 1987 

Farley E. Wolford........................ 1958 

James M. Wright......................... 1960 

William R. Zollinger..................... 1997 

Michael T. Zuravel....................... 1984 


VIA DONORS 

Friends who contributed 

to CEE in 2008-2009 

H. Pat and Nancy Artis 

Jayne K. Ayers 

Richard M. Barker 

Patrick C. Brooks 

Harold E. Burkhart 

Juny Kee Choi 

The Community Foundation 

Joan Cornwell 

Wanda Croy 

Robert M. Diamond 

W. Samuel and Pamela Easterling 

Marc A. Edwards 

Patricia B. Foutz 

Robert C. Glass 

Henry G. Holtzman 

Robert A. Hudson 

Jamie F. Hughes 

John H. Jones 

J. Michael Kelly 

Tiernan Klunk 

Janet T. Linkous 

Harvey B. Manbeck 

Sarah E. McLeod 

James K. Mitchell 

Christopher R. Norris 

Joan H. Nunnally 

Kathleen M. O’Leary 

Linda S. Owczarek 

Terry W. Pearson 

Denise Sherman 

David W. Smith 

Susanne C. Snow 

F. William Stephenson 

Vecellio Family Foundation, Inc. 

Richard D. Walker 

Corporations and 

Businesses who 

contributed to CEE in 

2008-2009 

ABB 

AISC Education Foundation 

American Institute of Steel 

Construction 

Anderson & Associates 

Areva 

Areva NP, Inc. 

Atlantic Constructors Inc. 

Baker Properties Group 

Barrier Systems, Inc 

Bechtel Foundation 

Black & Veatch Corporation 

Bowman Consulting Group 

Brenneman Engineering 

Camp Dresser McKee 

Carollo 

CH2M Hill Foundation 

Draper Aden Associates, Inc. 

Engineered Construction Company 

Esmer & Associates, Inc. 

ExxonMobil Foundation 

Fluor Enterprises, Inc. 

Greenway, LLC 

Hankins & Anderson 

HDR, Inc. 

HSMM/AECOM 

Irongate, Inc. 

JPR Engineering, PC 

Kirkland & Ellis LLP 

L. Edwards Associates, LLC 

Land Development Design Initiative, 

Inc. 

Metron Aviation, Inc. 

NanoSafe 

NUCOR 

Paciulli, Simmons, & Associates 

Primavera Systems, Inc. 

Quesenberry’s, Inc. 

Risa Technologies LLC 

Roanoke Branch of ASCE 

SMC Concrete Construction 

T.J. Willard & Associates, Inc. 

Tindall Corporation 

VMS, Inc. 

Wessex, Inc. 

Whiting-Turner Contracting Company 

Inc. 

Whitman, Requardt and Associates 

Wiley & Wilson, Inc. 


VIA DONORS 

The following organizations support CEE through their 

membership in the affiliates program for the Center for 

Geotechnical Practice and Research: 

Ardaman & Associates, Inc. 

Engineering Consulting Services, Inc. (ECS) 

Froehling & Robertson, Inc. 

Gannett Fleming, Inc. 

GeoConcepts Engineering, Inc. 

Geopier Foundation Co. 

GeoSyntec Consultants 

Hayward Baker – A Keller Co. 

Haley & Aldrich 

Kiewit Constructors, Inc. 

Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, Inc. 

Professional Services Industries, Inc. (PSI) 

Ray E. Martin, LLC 

S&ME 

Schnabel Engineering Associates 

Schnabel Foundation Company 

Charles J. Smith 

Treviicos Corporation 

URS Corporation 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation 

Valentine Engineering Associates, Inc. 

Virginia Department of Transportation 

The following organizations support 

CEE through their Platinum and Gold 

sponsorship of the department’s Land 

Development Design Initiative: 

Platinum 

AES Consulting Engineers 

Balzer and Associates, Inc. 

Bohler Engineering 

Bowman Consulting 

Burgess & Niple, Inc. 

Draper Aden Associates 

Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. 

Gold 

Anderson & Associates, Inc. 

christopher consultants, Ltd. 

Dewberry 

Fairfax County 

Hurt & Proffitt, Inc. 

J2 Engineers, Inc. 

Koontz-Bryant, P.C. 

Tri-Tek Engineering 


CREDITS 

Department Head................................................................................. W. Samuel Easterling 

Editor.................................................................................................................Lynn Nystrom 

Designer.........................................................................................................David Simpkins 

Photographers.......................................... Michael Kiernan, John McCormick, Jim Stroup 

CEE Coordinator......................................................................................Donna Sanzenbach 

CEE Academic Advisor and Alumni Relations Coordinator..............................Estela P. Moen 

Virginia Tech does not discriminate against employees, students, or applicants 

on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, 

national origin, religion, or political affiliation. Anyone having questions concerning 

discrimination should contact the Office for Equity and Inclusion. 


The Charles E. Via, Jr. 

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 

200 Patton Hall, Virginia Tech 

Blacksburg, VA 24060 

Non-Profit Org. 

U.S. Postage 

PAID 

Blacksburg VA 

24060 

Permit No. 28 

www.cee.vt.edu

Annual Report Year 2009 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

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