December 2019

CEE Associate Professor Sayed Bateni is the PI of a new $900,000 USDA grant on forecasting daily reference evapotranspiration and rainfall for water resources conservation and sustainable agriculture. Project objectives include 1) the use a robust hybrid wavelet-artificial neural network to accurately forecast daily reference evapotranspiration and rainfall across different agricultural irrigation areas, 2) incorporation of the forecasted reference evapotranspiration and rainfall values into the existing irrigation tool to improve water use efficiency for farmlands in the designated areas, and 3) validation of the irrigation tool in improving water use efficiency at the farm level with field trials. Co-PIs include Dr. Jonathan Deenik and Jensen Uyeda, CTAHR, and Dr. Aly El-kadi, WRRC.

Maxx Taga was awarded the Fall 2019 Outstanding Graduating Senior in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the College of Engineering Convocation held on December 20, 2019. An Honor student with a GPA of 3.75, Maxx has served as a Student Ambassador and Engineering Council student member, and has participated in student organizations such as ASCE, SWE, ECUH and etc. Maxx held various leadership roles as an Eagle Scout and conducted the project of construction of parking bollards and signage for the Kahala Elementary School parking lot. Maxx has also performed internships with Hawaiian Dredging Construction Company, NASA Glenn Research Center, Disneyland Resort, Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), etc. Congratulations and best wishes for continued success to Maxx and all the graduates!