Michael Bell, a PhD candidate in Civil & Environmental Engineering, will be attending the 2013 Asia-Pacific Summer School Program in Smart Structures Technology at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, South Korea. Attendees, selected from an extremely competitive pool of applicants (approximately 10 from USA), will be fully funded through the U.S. National Science Foundation in addition to international support provided by JSF and NNSFC respectively. The three week program consists of coursework, lectures, labs and site visits incorporating students from Korea, U.S., Japan, China and India. The curriculum will address the hardware, software, data informatics, and applications of smart structures technology. [May 2013]

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CEE senior Jessica Galacgac was awarded the $2,000 Pacific District Scholarship in honor of the 46th Chi Epsilon National Honor Member Leland J. Walker, in recognition of her outstanding academic work, along with her significant, enthusiastic, and excellent involvement in extracurricular activities, and particularly in Chi Epsilon, the Honorary Civil Engineering Society. [April 2013]

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Joshua Lelemia Irvine, Ph.D. Candidate in CEE, has been selected as a recipient of the East-West Center Graduate Degree Fellowship for the Fall 2013–Spring 2014 academic year. The key experiential component of the EWC Fellowship experience includes: living on campus at the East-West Center; participating in the EWC Wednesday evening seminar on themes relevant to the US, the Pacific, and Asia region; and a commitment to service learning within East-West Center and activities, and the broader island community. [April 2013]

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Laxman Sharma's PhD dissertation at CEE was selected as the first place recipient of the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR)'s 2013 Ph.D. Dissertation Award. He completed his work on "Riverbank filtration: Modeling fate of dissolved organic carbon, transport of Escherichia coli, and coupling with aquifer storage to address temporal water scarcity" in the Summer of 2012. The UCOWR is an association of US universities and organizations leading in education, research, and public service in water resources. Each year, it recognizes two outstanding Ph.D. dissertations on water issues: (1) Water Policy and Socio Economics, and (2) Natural Science and Engineering. Dr. Sharma's dissertation was selected in the latter category. The award consists of a certificate and a $750 check, reimbursement up to $1,000 for travel expenses to the UCOWR annual meeting, and registration fee waiver to attend the meeting. Dr. Sharma is currently working with Prof. Chittaranjan Ray as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the UH Water Resources Research Center . [April 2013]

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Qian Zhang, a PhD student in CEE, won an Outstanding Graduate Student Poster Presentation award at the 2nd Annual Student Water Research Conference sponsored by the Buchanan Family Trust and NSF at the Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, OK). His winning poster was entitled "Submerged beach sand enhances the die-off of exogenous Enterococcus faecalis in beach water". He was also awarded a $500 travel award for attending the conference. [April 2013]

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Joshua L. Irvine, a PhD candidate in CEE, was selected by the University of Hawai`i at Manoa Graduate Council to receive the Francis Davis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for Graduate Assistants. He will be recognized and presented with a $1,000 cash payment award at the UH-Manoa Awards Ceremony on April 30, 2013. [April 2013]

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Melia Iwamoto, a M.S. student specializing in Geotechnical Engineering, was awarded second place in the Geosynthetics Student Poster competition at the Geosynthetics 2013 conference in Long Beach, CA.  Her poster was entitled "Shear Strength Parameters of Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil Using Mini-Pier Tests."  She received a certificate, $200 in prize money and $200 in travel reimbursement.  [April 2013] photo

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On March 16, 2013, Prof. Oceana Francis of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Hawaii served on a special panel at a conference titled "Women Inspiring Innovation through Imagination." The purpose of the conference was to enhance the awareness of female high school students to the career opportunities that the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines have to offer. [March 2013]

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Prof. Ronald Riggs is leading a multi-university team studying the impact of tsunami-borne debris, such as 60,000-pound fully loaded cargo containers, on buildings. He will present the team's finding at an international conference in June. More information [February 2013]

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Dr. Gaur Johnson has joined the department beginning in January 2013 as an assistant professor specializing in structural engineering. [January 2013]

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