Civil and Environmental Engineering
Showing 261-280 of 414 Results
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Kopal Nihar
Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering
BioI am a PhD candidate advised by Dr Rishee Jain and working at Urban Informatics Lab. My research interest lies in understanding data-driven human-building interactions and impact of indoor air quality on occupant behaviour, especially for the purpose of natural ventilation.
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Hae Young Noh
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
BioHae Young Noh is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research introduced the new concept of “structures as sensors” to enable physical structures (e.g., buildings and vehicle frames) to be user- and environment-aware. In particular, these structures indirectly sense humans and surrounding environments through their structural responses (i.e., vibrations) by inferring the desired information (e.g., human behaviors, environmental conditions, heating and cooling system performance), instead of directly measuring the sensing targets with additional dedicated sensors (e.g., cameras, motion sensors). This concept brought a paradigm shift in how we view these structures and how the structures interact with us.
Traditionally, structures that we inhabit (such as buildings or vehicles) are considered as passive and unchanging objects that we need to monitor and control, utilizing a dense set of sensors to collect information. This has often been complicated by “noise” caused by the occupants and environments. For example, building vibrations induced by indoor and outdoor environmental and operational conditions (e.g., people walking around, traffic outside, heating system running, etc.), have been often seen as noise that needs to be removed in traditional building science and structural engineering; however, they are a rich source of information about structure, users, environment, and resources. Similarly, in vehicle engineering, researchers and engineers have been investigating control and dynamics to reduce vehicle vibration for safety and comfort. However, vibrations measured inside vehicles contain information about transportation infrastructure, vehicle itself, and driver.
Noh's work utilizes this “noise” to empower the structures with the ability to perceive and understand the information about users and surroundings using their own responses, and actively adopt and/or interact to enhance their sustainability and the occupants’ quality of life. Since she utilizes the structure itself as a sensing medium, information collection involves a simpler set of hardware that can be easily maintained throughout the structural lifetime. However, the analysis of data to separate the desired information becomes more challenging. This challenge is addressed through high-rate dynamic sensing and multi-source inferencing. Ultimately, her work aims to allow structural systems to become general sensing platforms that are easier and more practical to deploy and maintain in a long-term.
At Stanford University, Noh received her PhD and MS degrees in the CEE department and her second MS degree in Electrical Engineering. Noh earned her BS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. -
Leonard Ortolano
UPS Foundation Professor of Civil Engineering in Urban and Regional Planning, Emeritus
BioOrtolano is concerned with environmental and water resources policy and planning. His research stresses environmental policy implementation in developing countries and the role of non-governmental organizations in environmental management. His recent interests center on corporate environmental management.
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Khalid Osman
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioKhalid Osman joined the department as an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering in autumn of 2022. His research spans the use of mixed quantitative-qualitative methods to assess public perceptions of water infrastructure, water conservation efforts, and the management of existing infrastructure systems to meet the needs of those being served by the systems. He currently is focused on the operationalization of equity in water sector infrastructure, conceptualizing equity in decentralized water and sanitation systems, water affordability, and stakeholder-community engagement in sustainable civil infrastructure systems for achieving environmental justice.
Khalid was the holder of a Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholars Graduate Fellowship and also a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. -
Nicholas Ouellette
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Environmental Complexity Lab studies self-organization in a variety of complex systems, ranging from turbulent fluid flows to granular materials to collective motion in animal groups. In all cases, we aim to characterize the macroscopic behavior, understand its origin in the microscopic dynamics, and ultimately harness it for engineering applications. Most of our projects are experimental, though we also use numerical simulation and mathematical modeling when appropriate. We specialize in high-speed, detailed imaging and statistical analysis.
Our current research includes studies of turbulence in two and three dimensions, with a focus on coherent structures and the geometry of turbulence; the transport of inertial, anisotropic, and active particles in turbulence; the erosion of granular beds by fluid flows and subsequent sediment transport; quantitative measurements of collective behavior in insect swarms and bird flocks; the stability of ocean ecosystems; neural signal processing; and uncovering the natural, self-organized spatiotemporal scales in urban systems.
