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CEE
IN FOCUS
Vol. 3
Issue 2
Spring 2011
Alumni Newsletter / MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
IN THIS ISSUE
In this issue of CEE In Focus you’ll find stories about CEE researchers
who are looking at the world and its phenomena in novel ways. The
lead story reveals the surprising mechanics of how a cat drinks, a
study inspired by the simple act of watching a pet cat eat his breakfast.
Another story describes a new way of seeing into the very distant past
by using modern-day genomes to trace genes back to their origins some
3 billion years ago. Other stories involve viewing cement at the molecular level, disproving the old adage that oil and water don’t mix, and
How do cats drink? Cutta Cutta (above) is about to
demonstrate the biophysics of this balancing act.
Photo / Pedro Reis, Micaela Pilotto and Roman Stocker
predicting groundwater recharge in arid regions using a new approach.
WHAT’S INSIDE
New Study Reveals the
Surprising Dynamics
Underpinning How Felines
Drink \ page 4
Scientists Decode 3-BillionYear-Old Genomic Fossils
to Find Evidence of Ancient
Environmental Change \ page 8
Eric Adams Wins Ig Nobel
Prize for Disproving
Adage That Oil and Water
Don’t Mix \ page 10
MESSAGE FROM THE DEPARTMENT HEAD
This spring MIT celebrates its 150th anniversary (150 years of “Inventional
Wisdom”) with three months of symposia, exhibitions and an Open House
on April 30th. CEE and other departments have contributed timelines of
their notable achievements. As you can imagine, this timeline provides an
2
interesting perspective on the history of the department and its contributions
in shaping the disciplines of civil and environmental engineering. I look
forward to sharing it with you in the Fall 2011 issue of this newsletter.
Andrew
Whittle
The articles in this issue of CEE In Focus illustrate the amazing diversity in
our current portfolio of research activities and highlight some of the extraordinary work being done by our faculty. Rapid developments in genomics
are leading to new insights into microbial ecology and evolution, profoundly
affecting our understanding of ocean environments (Penny Chisholm – EastWest Divide) and generating new hypotheses regarding paleontology and creation of the biosphere during the pre-Cambrian period (Eric Alm – Archaean
Gene Expansion/Genomic Fossils).
Climate change constitutes a major driver for research across the department.
Dara Entekhabi and Dennis McLaughlin have focused on its effects on the
prediction of groundwater recharge, and developed probabilistic methods for
evaluating long-term water resource challenges at regional scale. Franz Ulm,
Roland Pellenq and the Liquid Stone research team have used atomistic simulation tools to develop the first consistent molecular models for the structure
of cement, a critical step towards improving the mechanical and durability
properties of concrete and potentially reducing CO2 during manufacture.
There are many diverse applications of fluid mechanics, as exemplified by
Roman Stocker and Pedro Reis, whose diagnosis of cat lapping has received
huge media attention. Eric Adams was the surprise recipient of an Ig Nobel
Prize for research (done 10 years ago) on the transport and mixing of a plume
of oil droplets from a deep ocean source.
I salute all my colleagues for their amazing, creative research and for making
CEE such an exciting environment for all our students.
Andrew J. Whittle
CEE IN FOCUS \ SPRING 2011
News Briefs
Research Features
Cats Get the Last Lap: Study Reveals
the Subtle Dynamics Underpinning
How Felines Drink
4
TRB Committee Says DOD Should
Pay Some Costs of Transportation
Infrastructure Near Military Bases
14
Decoding Genomic Fossils: Scientists
Find Evidence of Ancient
Environmental Change
8
CEE Researchers Collaborate With
Nobelist
14
MIT Celebrates 150 Years
15
PSB 07-08-0703 / Design: Moth Design / Printing: Artco Inc.
News and Research
Eric Adams Wins the Ig Nobel Prize
in Chemistry for Disproving the
Adage That Oil and Water Don’t Mix
10
Cement’s Basic Molecular Structure
Revealed: Robustness Comes From
Messiness, Not a Clean Geometric
Arrangement
11
Minor Changes in Precipitation May
Have Major Impact on Groundwater
Supplies in Arid Regions
12
Profiles
Student Profile: Pierre Fuller
16
Faculty Profile: Nigel H.M. Wilson
17
Faculty and Staff News
18
Student News
19
Alumni News
20
Gifts to CEE
23
Genomic Comparison of Ocean
13
Microbes Reveals East-West Divide in
Populations in the Atlantic and Pacific
CEE IN FOCUS
CEE In Focus is published twice annually by
the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering to keep our alumni and friends
STAFF
CONTACT
Denise Brehm
CEE In Focus
Editor-in-chief, CEE In Focus
Senior Communications Officer
Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
informed about the department’s educational
Caroline Barnes
Designer, CEE In Focus
and research activities and its faculty, students
Debbie Levey
and staff, and to help alumni stay in contact
Editor, CEE In Focus
with each other. We welcome your news and
Andrew J. Whittle
comments. Please send correspondence
to cee-in-focus@mit.edu.
Department Head
Edmund K. Turner Professor
Patricia Dixon
Administrative Officer
CEE In Focus is winner of a Gold Award in the 2009 Circle
of Excellence Awards of the Council for the Advancement
and Support of Education (CASE).
Room 1-290
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617.253.7101
Fax: 617.258.6775
cee-in-focus@mit.edu
http://cee.mit.edu
3
4
CATS
GET THE
LAST LAP
Study Reveals the Subtle Dynamics Underpinning How Felines Drink
By Denise Brehm / Civil & Environmental Engineering
Cat fanciers around the world appreciate the
gravity-defying grace and exquisite balance
of their feline friends. But do they know
those traits extend even to the
way cats lap milk?
Research Feature \ How Cats Drink
“Science allows us to look at natural processes with a different eye and
to understand how things work, even if that’s figuring out how my cat
laps his breakfast. It’s a job, but also a passion, and this project for me
was a high point in teamwork and creativity.” — Roman Stocker
Roman Stocker’s family cat, Cutta
Cutta, acts as research assistant
while demonstrating the speed
and agility with which felines of
all sizes drink.
Photo / Pedro Reis, Micaela
Pilotto and Roman Stocker
Researchers at MIT, Virginia Tech and
Princeton University analyzed the way
domestic and big cats lap and found that
felines of all sizes take advantage of a
perfect balance between two physical
forces. The results were published in the
Nov. 26 issue of the journal Science.
It was known that when cats lap, they
extend their tongues straight down toward
the bowl with the tip of the tongue curled
backwards like a capital “J” to form a ladle,
so that the top of the tongue touches the
liquid first. That insight came from a 1940
film of a cat lapping milk, made by the
renowned MIT Professor Harold “Doc”
Edgerton, who first used strobe lights in
photography to stop action.
But recent high-speed videos made by
this team clearly reveal that the top of
the cat’s tongue is the only surface to
touch the liquid. Cats, unlike dogs, aren’t
dipping their tongues into the liquid like
ladles after all. Instead, the cat’s lapping
mechanism is far more subtle and elegant.
The smooth tip of the tongue barely
touches the surface of the liquid before the
cat rapidly draws its tongue back up. As it
does so, a column of milk forms between
the moving tongue and the liquid’s surface.
The cat then closes its mouth, pinching
off the top of the column for a nice drink,
while keeping its chin dry.
This unusual lapping mechanism begins
when the cat’s tongue touches the liquid
surface and some water sticks to it through
liquid adhesion, much as water adheres
to a human palm when it touches the
surface of a pool. But in this case, the cat
draws its tongue back up so rapidly that
for a fraction of a second, inertia — the
tendency of the moving liquid to continue
following the tongue — overcomes gravity,
which is pulling the liquid back down
toward the bowl. The cat instinctively
knows just when this delicate balance of
power will change, and it closes its mouth
in the instant before gravity overtakes
inertia. If the cat waited, the column
would break, the liquid would fall back
into the bowl, and the tongue would come
up empty.
While the domestic cat averages about four
laps per second, the big cats, such as tigers,
know to slow down. Because their tongues
are larger, they lap more slowly to achieve
the same balance of gravity and inertia.
Analyzing the Mechanics
In this research, Roman Stocker of CEE,
Pedro Reis of CEE and the Department
of Mechanical Engineering, Sunghwan
Jung of Virginia Tech and Jeffrey Aristoff
of Princeton analyzed high-speed digital
videos of domestic cats, including Stocker’s
family cat, and a range of big cats (a
tiger, a lion and a jaguar), thanks to a
collaboration with Zoo New England’s
mammal curator John Piazza and assistant
curator Pearl Yusuf. And, in what could be
a first for a paper published in Science, the
researchers also gathered additional data
by analyzing existing YouTube.com videos
of big cats lapping.
With these videos slowed way down, the
researchers established the speed of the
tongue’s movement and the frequency of
lapping. Knowing the size and speed of the
tongue, the researchers then developed a
mathematical model involving the Froude
number, a dimensionless number that
characterizes the ratio between gravity and
inertia. For cats of all sizes, that number
is almost exactly one, indicating a perfect
balance.
To better understand the subtle dynamics
of lapping, they also created a robotic
version of a cat’s tongue that moves up
and down over a dish of water, enabling
the researchers to systematically
explore different aspects of lapping, and
ultimately, to identify the mechanism
underpinning it.
“The amount of liquid available for the cat
to capture each time it closes its mouth
depends on the size and speed of the
tongue,” said Aristoff, a mathematician
continued on page 6
5
Research Feature \ How Cats Drink
continued from page 5
who studies liquid surfaces. “Our research — the
experimental measurements and theoretical
predictions — suggests that the cat chooses the
speed in order to maximize the amount of liquid
ingested per lap. This suggests that cats are
smarter than many people think, at least when it
comes to hydrodynamics.”
6
Aristoff said the team benefitted from the
diverse scientific backgrounds of its members:
engineering, physics and mathematics.
“This work is as splendid a case as I can recall
of things looked at … but seen in a way that no
“Our process in this work was typical, archetypal really,
of any new scientific study of a natural phenomenon.
You begin with an observation and a broad question,
‘How does the cat drink?’ and then try to answer it
through careful experimentation and mathematical
modeling.” — Pedro Reis
one else has seen,” said Professor Steven Vogel of
Duke University, a biomechanics researcher who
was not involved in this project. “Now that I’ve
been clued in, I can report that what these people
describe and explain agrees entirely with my own
casual observations of the lapping action of the
feline in charge of this establishment.”
“In the beginning of the project, we weren’t fully
confident that fluid mechanics played a role in
cats’ drinking. But as the project went on, we were
surprised and amused by the beauty of the fluid
mechanics involved in this system,” said Jung, an
engineer whose research focuses on soft bodies, like
fish, and the fluids surrounding them.
The work began about four years ago when Stocker,
who studies the biophysics of the movements of
ocean microbes, was watching his cat lap milk.
That cat, eight-year-old Cutta Cutta, stars in the
researchers’ best videos and still pictures. And like
many movie stars (Cutta Cutta means “stars stars”
in an Australian aboriginal language), he doesn’t
mind making people being wait. With their cameras
trained on Cutta Cutta’s bowl, Stocker and Reis said
they spent hours at the Stocker home waiting on
Cutta Cutta … to drink, that is.
“Science allows us to look at natural processes
with a different eye and to understand how things
work, even if that’s figuring out how my cat laps his
breakfast,” Stocker said. “It’s a job, but also a passion,
and this project for me was a high point in teamwork
and creativity. We did it without any funding,
without any graduate students, without much of the
usual apparatus that science is done with nowadays.”
“Our process in this work was typical, archetypal
really, of any new scientific study of a natural
phenomenon. You begin with an observation and a
broad question, ‘How does the cat drink?’ and then
try to answer it through careful experimentation and
mathematical modeling,” said Reis, a physicist who
works on the mechanics of soft solids. “To us, this
study provides further confirmation of how exciting
it is to explore the scientific unknown, especially
when this unknown is something that’s part of our
everyday experiences.”
Besides their obvious enthusiasm for the work itself,
the researchers are also delighted that it builds on
Edgerton’s 1940 film of the cat lapping. That film
appeared as part of an MGM-released movie called
“Quicker’n a Wink,” which won an Academy Award
in 1941. Reis and Stocker say they’re moving on to
other collaborations closer to their usual areas of
research. But their feline friend Cutta Cutta might
have Oscar hopes. n
To see videos of Cutta Cutta drinking and the
mechanical experiment, go to the CEE news story and
click on the links embedded in the photo caption:
http://cee.mit.edu/news/releases/2010/cats-lapping
Researchers Roman Stocker (left) and Pedro Reis were dogged in their
pursuit of the mechanics underpinning cats’ lapping.
Photo / Courtesy Pedro Reis and Roman Stocker
Research Feature \ How Cats Drink
WHEN FELINES DRINK, THEY CREATE A PERFECT BALANCE OF GRAVITY AND INERTIA
7
The ingredients involved in a cat’s lapping are initial fluid adhesion to the dorsal part of the tip of the tongue, followed by lifting a liquid
column formed by inertia, and jaw closure just before gravity overtakes inertia to break the column. Researchers created a robotic version of
a cat’s tongue to enable a systematic exploration of the lapping. Photos / Reis, Jung, Aristoff and Stocker
8
DECODING
GENOMIC
FOSSILS
Scientists Find Evidence of Ancient Environmental Change
By Denise Brehm / Civil & Environmental Engineering
About 580 million years ago, life on Earth began
a rapid period of change called the Cambrian
Explosion, a period defined by the birth of new
life forms over many millions of years that
ultimately helped bring about the modern
diversity of animals. Fossils help paleontologists
chronicle the evolution of life since then, but
drawing a picture of life during the 3 billion
years that preceded the Cambrian Period is
challenging, because the soft-bodied Precambrian
cells rarely left fossil imprints. However, those
early life forms did leave behind one abundant
microscopic fossil: DNA.
Because all living organisms inherit their genomes
— the entire package of hereditary information
existing in their DNA and RNA — from ancestral
genomes, computational biologists at MIT reasoned
that they could use modern-day genomes to
reconstruct the evolution of ancient microbes.
They combined information from the ever-growing
genome library with their own mathematical
model that takes into account the ways that
genes evolve: new gene families can be born and
inherited; genes can be swapped or horizontally
transferred between organisms; genes can be
duplicated in the same genome; and genes can be
lost.
The scientists traced thousands of genes from
100 modern genomes back to those genes’ first
appearance on Earth to create a genomic fossil that
tells not only when genes came into being but also
which ancient microbes possessed those genes.
The work suggests that the collective genome of all
life underwent an expansion between 3.3 and 2.8
Image © John Kaufmann • http://jek2004.com
billion years ago, during which time 27 percent of
all presently existing gene families came into being.
Eric Alm, a professor in CEE and the Department
of Biological Engineering, and Lawrence David,
who recently received his Ph.D. from MIT and
is now a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society
of Fellows, have named this period the Archean
Expansion. A paper about their research was
published in Nature on Jan. 6, 2011.
Because so many of the new genes they identified
are related to oxygen, Alm and David first thought
that the emergence of oxygen might be responsible
for the Archean Expansion. Oxygen did not exist in
the Earth’s atmosphere until about 2.5 billion years
ago when it began to accumulate, likely killing off
vast numbers of anaerobic life forms in the Great
Oxidation Event. “The Great Oxidation Event was probably the most
catastrophic event in the history of cellular life, but
we don’t have any biological record of it,” said Alm.
Research Feature \ Genomic Fossils
“What is really remarkable about our findings is that they prove that
the histories of very ancient events are recorded in the shared DNA of
living organisms. And now that we are beginning to understand how
to decode that history, I have hope that we can reconstruct some of the
earliest events in the evolution of life in great detail.” — Eric Alm
Closer inspection, however, showed that oxygenutilizing genes didn’t appear until the tail end
of the Archean Expansion 2.8 billion years
ago, which is more consistent with the date
geochemists assign to the Great Oxidation Event.
The Birth of Modern Electron Transport
Instead, Alm and David believe they’ve detected
the birth of modern electron transport, the
biochemical process responsible for shuttling
electrons within cellular membranes. All
organisms that breathe oxygen use electron
transport to do so, while plants and some microbes
use electron transport during photosynthesis when
they harvest energy directly from the sun. A form
of photosynthesis called oxygenic photosynthesis
is believed to be responsible for generating the
oxygen associated with the Great Oxidation Event,
and is responsible for the oxygen we breathe
today.
The evolution of electron transport during the
Archean Expansion would have enabled several
key stages in the history of life, including
photosynthesis and respiration, both of which
could lead to much larger amounts of energy
being harvested and stored in the
biosphere.
“Our results can’t say if the development of electron transport
directly caused the Archean
Expansion,” said David.
“Nonetheless, we can speculate
that having access to a much
larger energy budget enabled the
biosphere to host larger and more
complex microbial ecosystems.”
The scientists went on to investigate
how microbial genomes evolved
The figure shows the evolution of gene families in ancient genomes across the Tree of Life. The sizes of the small interior pie
charts scale with the number of evolutionary events in lineages.
Slices indicate event types: gene birth (red), duplication (blue),
horizontal gene transfer (green), and loss (yellow). The Archean
Expansion period (3.33 to 2.85 billion years ago) is highlighted
in green. Figure / Lawrence David
after the Archean Expansion by looking at the
metals and molecules associated with the genes
and how those changed in abundance over time.
They found an increasing percentage of genes
using oxygen, and enzymes associated with copper
and molybdenum, which is consistent with the
geological record of evolution.
“David and Alm have integrated genomics and
phylogenetics in an innovative and stimulating
way, shedding welcome light on the early
evolution of life,” said Andrew Knoll, a Harvard
professor of natural history whose own research
focus is Archean and Proterozoic paleontology
and biogeology. “Hearteningly to Earth scientists,
they paint a picture of metabolic evolution quite
consistent with geologic expectation.”
“What is really remarkable about our findings is
that they prove that the histories of very ancient
events are recorded in the shared DNA of living
organisms,” says Alm. “And now that we are
beginning to understand how to decode that
history, I have hope that we can reconstruct some
of the earliest events in the evolution of life in
great detail.” n
9
News and Research \ Ig Nobel Prize
“You could say that BP should have known — based on a study it
helped fund — that much of the oil [from the Deepwater Horizon
spill] would not rise directly to the surface.” — Eric Adams
10
Eric Adams Wins the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry
for Disproving the Adage That Oil and Water Don’t Mix
By Denise Brehm / Civil & Environmental Engineering
Eric Adams, lecturer, senior research
engineer and director of the M.Eng.
program, was awarded the 2010 Ig Nobel
Prize in chemistry for disproving the
adage that oil and water don’t mix. Adams
and his co-investigators Scott Socolofsky
S.M. ’97, Ph.D. ’01 and Stephen Masutani
shared the prize with British Petroleum,
one of the funders of a research project
completed in 2000 that demonstrated
that most oil from a spill in the deep
ocean would in fact mix with water,
rather than rise directly to the surface.
An oil spill is actually a mixture
of oil and natural gas. The gas
bubbles (and to a lesser extent,
larger oil droplets) create a plume,
but water currents “blow” much
of the oil and entrained seawater
downstream, leaving gas to rise
separately. Density stratification is
caused when lighter (warmer) water overlies heavier (colder) water.
Light gas and heavy seawater will
rise to a level of neutral buoyancy,
causing the oil and seawater to
separate from the gas and spread
laterally. Gas bubbles continue to
rise, causing the plume to restart
with lesser quantities of oil.
Image / Eric Adams
The Ig Nobels are awarded each year
by Improbable Research, a local organization
that inspires an appreciation for science and
scientists by poking fun at research that, on the
surface, appears frivolous or just plain funny.
But in 2010, the selections for chemistry and
economics displayed a deeper irony. Improbable
Research ostensibly rewarded BP — whose
Deepwater Horizon rig last year spewed oil into
the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months — for
proving beyond a doubt what had already been
demonstrated, and the heads of Goldman Sachs,
AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill
Lynch, and Magnetar — whose companies
played a role in the recent economic meltdown
— for innovative investment strategies.
In a ceremony held Sept. 30, 2010 at Harvard
University’s Sanders Theatre, Adams, Socolofsky
and Masutani good-naturedly accepted their
award. “It’s too bad BP couldn’t be with us.
But in their stead and with no disrespect to
either party, we bring you Steve,” Adams
said, referring to Masutani, a professor at
the University of Hawaii who was dressed
as the “Star Wars” tyrannical ruler Emperor
Palpatine, carrying a sign that said “Big Oil.”
The research for which Adams and his coinvestigators won the prize was part of the
Deep Spill Joint Industry Project, funded by the
U.S. Minerals Management Service and 23 oil
companies. The centerpiece of the project was
a pair of experimental oil spills conducted by
SINTEF, a Norwegian research institution. In
these tests, oil mixed with methane was released
near the seafloor at a depth of 840 meters off
the Norwegian coast, and monitored with an
array of instruments including remotely operated vehicles. The results demonstrated what
Adams and Socolofsky’s laboratory experiments
conducted earlier in the project had already
shown. Rather than form a simple plume that
would carry the oil directly to the surface, most of
the oil would mix with seawater and stratify into
horizontal layers with water of the same density.
As Adams put it: “First Steve showed in laboratory
experiments that oil spewing up from the deep
ocean floor would form small droplets. Then I
showed that those droplets would get smaller if a
chemical dispersant were added to the oil plume at
its source. Then Scott and I showed that ocean currents and water density differences would cause
the small droplets to leave the plume and stratify.
“You could say that BP should have known —
based on a study it helped fund — that much of
the oil would not rise directly to the surface,”
Adams said. During this year’s Deepwater
Horizon spill, BP officials implied the opposite.
In his acceptance speech at Sanders Theatre,
Socolofsky, a professor at Texas A&M
University, said, “It’s probably better that the
oil stay subsurface where it can be degraded by
microbes. Keeping it subsurface also keeps it
away from marine life and coastal marshes.”
The Ig Nobels were presented by Nobel laureates,
including MIT Professor Frank Wilczek, who
received the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics. n
News and Research \ Concrete’s DNA
“Now that we have a validated molecular model, we are working to manipulate the chemical structure to design concrete for
strength and environmental qualities.” — Franz-Josef Ulm
Cement’s Basic Molecular Structure Revealed: Robustness
Comes From Messiness, Not a Clean Geometric Arrangement
By Denise Brehm / Civil & Environmental Engineering
In the 2,000 or so years since the Roman Empire
employed a naturally occurring form of cement
to build a vast system of concrete aqueducts and
other large edifices, researchers have analyzed the
molecular structure of many natural materials and
created entirely new building materials such as
steel, which has a well-documented crystalline structure at the atomic scale.
Oddly enough, the three-dimensional
crystalline structure of cement hydrate —
the paste that forms and quickly hardens
when cement powder is mixed with water
— eluded scientific attempts at decoding,
despite the fact that concrete is the most
prevalent man-made material on earth and
the focus of a multibillion-dollar industry
that is under pressure to clean up its act.
The manufacture of cement is responsible
for about 5 percent of all carbon dioxide
emissions worldwide.
The molecular model of C-S-H: the
blue and white spheres are oxygen
and hydrogen atoms of water molecules, respectively; the green and
gray spheres are inter- and intra-layer
calcium ions, respectively; yellow and
red sticks are silicon and oxygen atoms
in silica tetrahedra.
Image / Roland Pellenq
But an interdisciplinary MIT research team
finally decoded the three-dimensional structure of
the basic unit of cement hydrate in 2009, publishing their work in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
Scientists had long believed that at the atomic
level, cement hydrate (or calcium-silica-hydrate)
closely resembles the rare mineral tobermorite,
which has an ordered geometry consisting of layers of infinitely long chains of three-armed silica
molecules (called silica tetrahedra) interspersed
with neat layers of calcium oxide.
But the MIT team found that the calcium-silicahydrate (C-S-H) in cement isn’t really a crystal. It’s
a hybrid that shares some characteristics with crystalline structures and some with the amorphous
structure of frozen liquids, such as glass or ice.
At the atomic scale, tobermorite and other
minerals resemble the regular, layered geometric
patterns of kilim rugs, with horizontal layers
of triangles interspersed with layers of colored
stripes. But a two-dimensional look at a unit of
cement hydrate would show layers of triangles (the
silica tetrahedra) with every third, sixth or ninth
triangle turned up or down along the horizontal
axis, reaching into the layer of calcium oxide above
or below.
And it is in these messy areas — where breaks
in the silica tetrahedra create small voids in the
corresponding layers of calcium oxide — that water
molecules attach, giving cement its robust quality.
Those erstwhile “flaws” in the otherwise regular
geometric structure provide some give to the building material at the atomic scale that transfers up
to the macro scale. When under stress, the cement
hydrate has the flexibility to stretch or compress
just a little, rather than snapping.
“Now, we’ve finally been able to look inside to find
cement’s fundamental signature. I call it the DNA
of concrete,” said CEE Macomber Professor FranzJosef Ulm. “Whereas water weakens a material like
tobermorite or jennite, it strengthens the cement
hydrate.”
Senior Research Scientist Roland Pellenq pinned
down the exact chemical shape and structure of
C-S-H using atomistic modeling and a Monte Carlo
simulation. He first removed all water molecules
from the basic unit of tobermorite, watched
the geometry collapse, then returned the water
molecules singly, then doubly and so on, removing
them each time to allow the geometry to reshape
as it would naturally. After he added the 104th
water molecule, the correct atomic weight of C-S-H
was reached, and Pellenq knew he had an accurate
model for the geometric structure of the basic unit
of cement hydrate.
The team, which also included Associate Professor
Markus Buehler and graduate student Rouzbeh
Shahsavari, then used that atomistic model to
perform six tests that validated its accuracy.
“Now that we have a validated molecular model,
we are working to manipulate the chemical
structure to design concrete for strength and
environmental qualities,” said Ulm. n
11
News and Research \ Groundwater Recharge
“Climate change models, which can differ significantly, make
regional forecasts over relatively long time scales, but the
mechanisms that affect recharge are very localized and
sporadic.” — Dennis McLaughlin
12
Minor Changes in Precipitation May
Have Major Impact on Groundwater Supplies in Arid Regions
By Cathryn Delude / Civil & Environmental Engineering Correspondent
People living in the great expanses of flat, dry
regions of the world that lack natural freshwater
lakes depend on episodic rainstorms to replenish the groundwater they use for domestic and
agricultural purposes. New work by researchers
in CEE shows that even minor variations in
precipitation caused by climate change could
cause major, often counterintuitive changes to
fragile groundwater supplies in these areas.
For example, if the future brings drier winters but
wetter summers to the Texas High Plains, annual
rainfall could increase 10 percent, but recharge
— the water that soaks deep into the ground to
replenish groundwater — would drop 10 percent,
largely because the area’s rain-fed cotton crops
would soak up the summer rain. Likewise, 20 percent less precipitation, falling mainly in summer,
could reduce groundwater recharge by 75 percent,
but because of the rain’s timing, cotton crops might
still be sustainable. Alternatively, 10 percent more
annual precipitation in intense spring storms
before the growing season could yield 20 percent
more recharge. These patterns match historical
rainfall variability and recharge response patterns, the researchers found.
People living in regions of flat,
semi-arid land depend on groundwater for agricultural, industrial
and domestic use. The Brazos
Double Mountain Fork River
in West Texas is typical of the
ephemeral streams found in these
regions. Photo / Wikimedia
“The most important factors
affecting diffuse groundwater
recharge are the intensity, timing
and duration of discrete rainstorms,” said Professor Dennis
McLaughlin, a co-author of two
related articles in the September
2009 and July 2010 issues of
Water Resources Research.
“Climate change models,
which can differ significantly,
make regional forecasts over relatively long
time scales, but the mechanisms that affect
recharge are very localized and sporadic.” Uncertainties about local short-term variability
make it difficult to estimate recharge in the current
climate, much less predict conditions in a changing
future. For that reason, McLaughlin, Professor
Dara Entekhabi, Gene-Hua Crystal Ng Ph.D. ’09,
(now at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park,
Calif.), and Bridget Scanlon of the University of
Texas, Austin used a probabilistic framework to
understand the dynamics of groundwater recharge.
For the first study, they analyzed the mechanisms
that control groundwater recharge in the southern
High Plains. They combined past rainfall and
meteorological records with measurements of
soil moisture and chloride ion profiles deposited
by rainfall, using procedures similar to those
developed to analyze ice-core records. After
analyzing 71 years of historical weekly recharge
rates, they found that a few intense storms
during the fallow season account for most of the
annual recharge, while steady light rains during
the growing season contribute relatively little.
For the second study, the researchers replaced
the historical data with future weather “samples”
simulated by a weather generator program. This
program essentially rolled the dice thousands
of times to simulate random rainstorms that
reproduce the monthly rainfall distribution
predicted by each of five possible future climate
scenarios: wetter, more intense storms, more
seasonal variation, drier, and very dry. With this,
they could assess probable changes in the timing,
frequency and magnitude of recharge events
on a weekly basis 80 years into the future.
The relatively rare events that control groundwater recharge in flat terrain are also sensitive to
changes in land use. For example, planting less
water-intensive crops could increase recharge
from summer rains, but replacing cropland
with housing developments that divert rainfall
into storm drains could reduce recharge.
“There are many regions of the world where
groundwater is a major source of freshwater,” said
Entekhabi. “One of the major impacts of global
change on human societies in these regions will
be on groundwater recharge, so it’s important that
we be able to assess the risk of those changes.” n
News and Research \ East-West Divide
“Our guiding axiom is ‘let the organisms reveal to us what environmental
factors are the most critical in regulating their growth and driving their
evolution.’ This information is critical for predicting the ocean biota’s
response to environmental change.” — Sallie (Penny) W. Chisholm
Genomic Comparison of Ocean Microbes Reveals
East-West Divide in Populations in the Atlantic and Pacific
By Denise Brehm / Civil & Environmental Engineering
Much as an anthropologist studies populations of people to learn about their physical
attributes, environs and social structures,
some marine microbiologists read the
genome of microbes to glean information
about the microbes themselves, their environments and lifestyles.
To obtain microbe samples, scientists
on the R/V Kilo Moana oceanographic research ship lower a rosette holding 24 bottles that capture samples at
different ocean depths in the Pacific
Ocean. Photo / Maureen Coleman
Using a methodology called comparative
population genomics, scientists compare
the entire genomes of different populations
of the same microbe to see which genes are
“housekeeping” or core genes essential to all
populations and which are populationspecific. Population-specific genes sometimes
tell a very clear story about the environment
(for instance the availability of light and
particular elements), and over time, they can
point to the microbes’ evolutionary adaptation to changes in the ecosystem.
In recent research, the population-specific genes
revealed important differences in two environments with a clarity never before reported, providing unmistakable clues about the lifestyles of two
populations of the oceanic photosynthetic bacterium, Prochlorococcus, one living in the Atlantic
Ocean and one in the Pacific. Professor Sallie (Penny) W. Chisholm and Maureen
Coleman Ph.D. ’08, now a postdoctoral scholar at
Caltech, found that although a continent separates
the populations, they differ significantly in only
one respect: those in the Atlantic have many
more genes specifically related to the scavenging
of phosphorus, an essential element for these
microbes. And just as the variations in the beaks
of Darwin’s finches were evolutionary adaptations
related to food availability, so too are the variations
in the Prochlorococcus genes related to phosphorus
gathering. Both are examples of a powerful evolutionary force at work.
The Atlantic Ocean has an order of magnitude
lower concentration of phosphorus than the
Pacific, so they expected to see some difference in
phosphorus-related genes, but they didn’t expect
that to be the only difference. It indicates that
phosphorus availability is the dominant selective
force in defining populations at these two sites. It
also provides a benchmark the scientists can use
to monitor environmental changes over time. In
essence, the Prochlorococcus populations can alert
scientists to ecosystem-wide changes over decades. “Our guiding axiom is ‘let the organisms reveal to
us what environmental factors are the most critical
in regulating their growth and driving their evolution.’ This information is critical for predicting the
ocean biota’s response to environmental change,
and the corresponding change this will have on
Earth processes,” said Chisholm.
“Microbes have an adaptive process that responds
to very subtle changes in environmental conditions,” said Coleman. “So the microbes could potentially act as miner’s canaries, telling us what they’re
feeling. And what they feel matters, because they
help drive the carbon cycle of the planet.”
The researchers noted that the microbes in the
Atlantic Ocean had increased numbers of genes
that helped them neutralize arsenic, an element
they sometimes take up by mistake when they’re
scavenging for phosphorus. This finding “buttresses
the assertion” that this is the result of a strong
selective process, Chisholm said.
They also compared the genomes of two populations of a neighboring bacterium, Pelagibacter, and
found that genes related to phosphorus gathering
in that bacterium appear in far greater numbers
in the Atlantic Ocean population, but with a
twist. These microbes have a somewhat different
repertoire of phosphorus-related genes, suggesting subtle differences in how these two microbial
groups scavenge phosphorus. This could reflect
an adaptive behavior known as niche partitioning,
which allows cells sharing a microenvironment to
apportion resources according to a cell’s lifestyle
rather than competing for the same element or
same form of an element. n
13
News Briefs
TRB Committee Says DOD Should Pay Some Costs
of Transportation Infrastructure Near Military Bases
Professor Joseph Sussman chaired a congressionally
mandated committee that released a report Feb. 7
calling for the Pentagon to pay some of the cost
of new transportation infrastructure needed to
mitigate the relocation of tens of thousands of military personnel later this year, rather than making
local and state governments shoulder the entire
burden. The report also states that some of this
funding should go towards the creation or enhance14 ment of public transportation and not focus solely
on roads and highways, as has been done in the past.
The report from the National Research Council’s
Transportation Research Board developed case
studies for six military bases located in metropolitan areas that are among the 18 bases that will
receive a large influx of military personnel as mandated by the 2005 Defense Base Closure and
Realignment (BRAC) process. BRAC requires that
base closings and staff relocations be implemented
by September 2011, but the TRB report states that
responding by that deadline is unrealistic and
calls for a special appropriation for infrastructurerelated projects that can begin within the year and
be completed in three years.
“If the Department of Defense wants to move
huge numbers of troops into Fort Belvoir, they
don’t have to ask anybody for permission,”
said Sussman, the JR East Professor. “But the
committee recommends the DOD pay an impact
fee that would be negotiated and determined using
a model like that used in the private sector.”
An impact fee is typically imposed on a developer
by a local government to cover the cost or partial
cost of the infrastructure required for a proposed
development. The Department of Defense has
not been required to pay an impact fee in the
past and has argued that off-base transportation
infrastructure is not its responsibility except in
cases where development would cause traffic to
double in the environs of a military base. That,
said Sussman, is an impossibility in already
heavily congested areas like Fairfax County, Va.,
where Fort Belvoir is located.
Joseph Sussman
The committee did constrain the impact fees that
could be imposed on the DOD by making the fee
nondiscriminatory. “If a city or town hasn’t ever asked
for an impact fee from past developers, they can’t
now ask the DOD to pay one,” said Sussman. “[Our
recommendations] could be viewed as reshaping
the dialogue between local planners and the DOD
to put things much more on a level playing field.”
To read more about the TRB report, visit the CEE
website: http://cee.mit.edu/news/releases/2011 n
CEE Researchers Collaborate With Nobelist
A two-dimensional graphene sheet
being pulled from an adhesive
substrate will form triangular ribbons.
Graphic / Dipanjan Sen
Professors Pedro Reis and Markus Buehler and
doctoral student Dipanjan Sen recently collaborated
on research with Konstantin Novoselov, co-winner
of the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics. Novoselov and
Andrew Geim, who are both at the University of
Manchester, won the Nobel for their work using
adhesive tape to pull graphene flakes (or ribbons)
from graphite. Graphene, at a single atom thick, is
the strongest and thinnest known material. It is also
an exceedingly good electrical conductor whose
conductivity alters with the width of the ribbon.
Reis, who studied at Manchester and knew
Novoselov, had co-authored a series of papers
explaining the consistently triangular tears that
occur when tape, wallpaper and other thin films
are pulled away from a surface. Novoselov had
observed similar shaped tears in graphene. The
researchers wondered if the analogous geometric
shapes indicate that the behavior is controlled by
the same mechanisms at these different scales.
Buehler, who uses molecular dynamics simulation to explore materials at the nanoscale, and
Sen worked with Reis and Novoselov to carry out
atomistic-level simulations on graphene ribbons
adhered to a substrate. Buehler’s atomistic modeling is based on known chemical principles derived
directly from quantum mechanics, and simulates
the interactions of molecules under prescribed
conditions.
The team’s atomistic simulations on graphene
did not agree entirely with Reis’ existing model
describing a material’s behavior at the macroscale.
After careful deliberation on the problem, Sen
recognized that the contributor to elasticity in a
macroscale system — the bending energy — was
minimal at the atomic scale. Bending energy is a
combination of stretching (on the top side of the
material) and compression (on the bottom), and
scales as the cube of the thickness of the material.
But a two-dimensional material like graphene has
no thickness, and bending energy arises only from
changes in the bonds and angles between atoms.
The researchers found that at the nanoscale, the
bending energy can be ignored in favor of the
stretching energy stored in the sheet, which is
concentrated in a roughly elliptical region of the
sheet just ahead of the fold and in the stretching of
the torn ribbon. n
MIT’s 150th Anniversary
MIT Celebrates 150 Years
15
MIT is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2011
with three months of symposia, exhibitions and
an Open House on April 30th.
Photo / Christopher Harting
Institute Open House
Those who visit MIT on Saturday, April 30 will be able to see
exhibits in Building 1 focused on several areas of CEE research and
education. (See the list below.) CEE exhibits will be on display in Room
1-131 and nearby classrooms.
As part of the 150th anniversary celebration, exhibits at the MIT
Museum and the MIT Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery highlight 150
representative people, objects and concepts. CEE-related items
include the first object on display: a large wooden model of Boston
showing connections to the Big Dig tunnels that transformed
downtown Boston. As Secretary of Transportation for Massachusetts,
senior lecturer and senior research associate Fred Salvucci ’61,
S.M.’62 was instrumental in planning the massive Central Artery
project.
A few steps away, a giant copy of the $100,000 check presented
to CEE graduate student Rouzbeh Shahsavari illustrates the MIT
$100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Shahsavari, who works with
Professor Franz-Josef Ulm, won the 2010 competition for his C-Crete
Technologies business plan to develop a “green” concrete that
would cut down on the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the
ubiquitous building material.
Online Timeline
The MIT Museum’s online timeline includes Arthur Ruge S.M. ’33,
Sc.D. ’39 and his invention of the first electrical strain gauge. Ruge,
who was a young CEE professor at the time, patented the device,
which measured the movement of a structure during an earthquake.
Ruge left MIT to manufacture and sell the SR-4 Strain Gauge, a form
of which is still in use today.
To find out more about MIT’s 150th celebration, go to the 150 website:
http://mit150.mit.edu n
CEE EXHIBITS FOR THE MIT 150 OPEN HOUSE: APRIL 30 FROM 11 AM to 4 PM IN ROOM 1-131
Constructing a Steel Bridge
See in the Seas
The Gravity-Defying Lapping of a House Cat
Take a look at the 2010 Steel Bridge Team’s
bridge and a video of the team in action.
Matt Pires ‘10 and the MIT Steel Bridge Team
This exhibit features NEREUS, a mass
spectrometer integrated with the Odyssey II
autonomous underwater vehicle.
Professor Harold Hemond
Videos of a pet cat named Cutta Cutta
demonstrating how cats drink.
Professor Roman Stocker
Professor Pedro Reis
20-minute presentations followed by Q&A
11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Eye in the Sky
Come see a scale model of a NASA satellite
scheduled to launch November 2014.
Professor Dara Entekhabi
Molecular Secrets of Building Materials (Shhh!)
Manipulate materials at the molecular level.
Professor Markus Buehler
Senior Research Scientist Roland Pellenq
Shake and Build
This exhibit demonstrates how vibrations from
earthquakes affect buildings.
Professor Eduardo Kausel
Terrascope: Reducing Atmospheric CO2
A freshman learning community focused on
answering that question.
Professor Charles Harvey
Lecturer Ari Epstein
Cracking Up! How Rock Cracks Under Stress
See samples of fractured rock and videos of rock
cracking under very high pressure.
Professor Herbert Einstein
Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring Earth to Life
Without photosynthesis, there would be no life
as we know it. Attend a children’s book reading
and a demonstration of photosynthesis.
Professor Sallie W. Chisholm
12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Renewable Energy, Cheap Charcoal, Rainwater
Harvesting and Water Purification in Uganda
A real-life project in Ddegeya, Uganda.
MIT Chapter of Engineers Without Borders
Civil and Environmental Engineering Students
Student Profile
Student Profile
Pierre Fuller
S.M. 2009
CEE Doctoral Student
In 2001, 18-year-old Pierre Fuller of Flint, Mich., followed
his long-held dream of becoming an architect by enrolling
in the architecture program at Michigan’s Lawrence Technological University. He ended up getting two degrees —
architecture and civil engineering — and graduating magna
cum laude. Then, inspired by research he did while working
at an engineering firm during college, his interests turned
to building-information modeling technology and graduate
school at MIT. He’s considering going to law school after
he gets his Ph.D. This winter, Fuller, now 27, was one of two
students invited to give a talk at MIT’s 37th Martin Luther
King Jr. celebration.
16
Pierre Fuller Photo / Dominick Reuter
What was the topic of your speech at MIT’s MLK celebration?
I based it on the biblical story of Nehemiah, who enlisted the
help of an entire community to rebuild a protective wall around the
city by getting each family to rebuild the wall in front of their home.
As in the story of Nehemiah, I attribute my success of getting to
where I am now to the collective influence of my mother, who was
a single mother; my barber Sunny, who was influential when I was a
youngster in keeping me out of trouble; and to my grandmother. My
mother guided me, my grandmother taught me humility and Sunny
kept me out of trouble. Each person laid a brick and protected me
when I was weak. I used a quote from Dr. King about us inheriting a
world house in which we all have to learn to live together in peace.
I believe what is required for us to inherit Dr. King’s “world house”
is that we have humility; that we don’t try to be the saviors of the
world individually.
Fuller:
You began in architecture, then added civil engineering. Why?
Fuller: I had always enjoyed drawing and wanted to be a cartoonist,
but in middle school I was introduced to computer drafting software
and by the time I hit high school, I knew I wanted to be an architect.
I took drafting classes my first two years in high school and then
architectural drafting classes at a technical school nearby and got a job
at a civil engineering firm doing drafting my senior year. I worked
there summers during college and this led me to civil engineering.
Then I decided to be a land developer; it would be a good investment strategy and I could do the engineering and the architecture.
But as I came out of my undergrad degree, I started to move toward
structural engineering — designing a building and also designing
the structure. My last year of undergrad, I worked for a structural
engineering firm. I got interested in building-information modeling
technology when the firm I was working for asked me to find out
how they could incorporate it into their business. So I researched
the software, wrote a report, figured out the one that was best for
our business, and eventually implemented it and trained staff on it.
What did you find particularly interesting about buildinginformation modeling technology?
Fuller: It brought together my two worlds; it was a piece of software
that allows you to model the architecture and the structural engineering and have a virtual representation of the building. When I
came to MIT, I was fresh out of that experience and I really wanted
to do something with it. I thought, if we have such a complete representation of the building to hand over to the client — a fully threedimensional model — let’s make that model live. If we take all the
information that’s produced by a working, completed building and
connect it by sensors back to that model, it can tell us in real time
what’s happening in the building. Instead of having to walk through
your building physically, you can walk through it virtually and be
able to see, for instance, the pressure in a pipe or the temperature in
a room. I took Autodesk Revit, a popular commercial software used
by structural engineers, and created a kind of a plug-in that feeds
real-time information to the back-end database of Revit. I call it LiveBuild. That was my master’s thesis work.
Tell me about your Ph.D. thesis research.
Fuller: I’m developing mobile technology — a cellphone app — that
will help with indoor navigation where there’s no GPS access and
also help people who perhaps can’t see or are in a wheelchair. When
you start helping people navigate indoors, you have the problem of
details, like stairs or a very steep ramp. Other navigation systems
ignore the small details that are critical to helping people with physical disabilities. My research is funded by Transport for London, so
initially I’m focused on the London Underground. But the technology that I am developing should be generally applicable to any type
of building and several other relevant problems. We want to build
a database of information, possibly by storing the paths people use
to navigate a station, capturing photos and using image processing
to reconstruct a three-dimensional map of the building. By the time
we’re done, we may have a complete picture of the building everyone can use to navigate, whether disabled or not. n
Faculty Profile
Faculty Profile
Nigel H.M. Wilson
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
S.M. 1967, Ph.D. 1970
After doing his undergraduate degree at Imperial College
in London, Nigel Wilson came to MIT in 1965 as a graduate
student in transportation. He studied with Professor Dan
Roos and earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering with a transportation systems focus. He joined the faculty in 1970, the
same year he graduated. He has since done research on
urban transport systems for major cities around the world,
including Boston, Chicago, San Juan and now London, which
was the second major city in the world (after Singapore) to
successfully introduce congestion pricing. For most of the
last 20 years, he has also run the interdepartmental M.S.T.
program, from which his son John graduated in 1995.
17
Nigel Wilson (right) with Frederick Salvucci Photo / Stuart Darsch
What brought you to MIT?
Wilson: I did my undergraduate degree in civil engineering at Imperial
College, where I took a course with Professor Sir Colin Buchanan,
who was one of the granddaddies of urban transportation. He wrote a
seminal book in 1963 called “Traffic and Towns” that really piqued my
interest in urban transportation. I heard about the Ford Foundation
providing fellowships to study in the U.S., so I applied and was lucky
enough to be selected. The Ford Foundation selected MIT (over
Berkeley) as the university for me.
What was it about Buchanan’s book that really grabbed you?
Wilson: It was the notion that you could think creatively about how to
organize roads in a metropolitan area and come up with much better
plans than had traditionally been the norm — that there was a strong
nexus between the road system, the traffic system and the quality of
life in urban areas. He was one of the first people to articulate this very
clearly. Before then, the focus of transportation was very much an
engineering focus on construction of the highways, roads and railways.
In the early 1960s it began, partly through Buchanan’s “Traffic and
Towns,” to look at the impacts of roads and traffic on urban congestion
and urban life, how roads were used, and behavioral and operational
issues. Transportation came logically to be housed mostly in civil
engineering because of the roots in engineering and construction, but
transportation now could plausibly equally well fit in urban planning,
in mechanical engineering, in a range of different departments.
How did the interdepartmental M.S.T. Program come about?
Wilson: In 1978 Dan Roos became the second director of the Center
for Transportation Studies, which was established in 1973 to foster
interdepartmental transportation research. Dan was very interested
in having an educational program within the center, and the M.S.T.
was approved in 1978. The interdepartmental doctoral program came
into existence about 15 years later. We felt that you needed to have a
strong master’s program before you offered a Ph.D. program. So the
logical place to start was with a master’s program. At that time we
had a master’s program with a focus on transportation and a Ph.D.
program with a transportation systems focus in civil engineering. But
everything had been housed within civil. So really the big change was
making this formally an interdepartmental program. Over the years,
we’ve tried to keep it accessible to a wide range of undergraduate
majors. So people with economics or political science or urban
planning can venture in, as long as they have the quantitative skills
to deal with our core courses and curriculum. Traditionally maybe
about two-thirds of the students in the M.S.T. program have a civil
engineering undergraduate degree, but about one-third don’t. And
that one-third is very, very broadly distributed.
How many students have been through the M.S.T. program?
Wilson: We’ve had at least 500, maybe even 600. Probably threequarters leave with an M.S.T. or perhaps an M.S.T. and another
master’s degree, the most common being urban studies and planning,
technology and policy, and operations research. And about a quarter
of our M.S.T. students go on to a Ph.D. either here or elsewhere. That
hasn’t changed very much over time. The 75 percent who leave with
a master’s degree go roughly evenly into three sectors: transportation
operations, either airlines or railways in the private sector or
transport agencies in the public sector; government, either at the
federal, state or local level or internationally; and consulting, working
for organizations that work for government or operators.
How would you summarize the impact of the programs?
Wilson: I think initially there was a tremendous impact from the
master’s degree students who went on to a Ph.D. at MIT, and then
went on to faculty positions elsewhere. They’ve had a tremendous
influence on people who are being educated in transportation
throughout the country, throughout the world. And the M.S.T.
graduates have played a major role in the way the airline industry
operates, the way the railroad sector operates, the way transit
organizations operate, and the way consulting firms who work in the
transportation sector operate. I think they’ve been very influential. n
Faculty and Staff News
Faculty and Staff News
18
Professor Moshe Ben-Akiva was included by the Wall
Street Journal in a Dec. 4 list of five innovative
thinkers in the transport industry for his work on
DynaMIT, a real-time traffic management simulator
that analyzes the way drivers behave. The system
uses road sensors, video cameras and other information to predict traffic flow several hours out.
Professor Philip Gschwend is recipient of an Excellence in Review
award from Environmental
Science & Technology, a journal
of the American Chemical Society.
The award recognizes outstanding
reviewers and pays homage to
their significance in the research
publication process.
Global financial turmoil, rising labor costs in developing countries and volatility in the price of oil can
disrupt a company’s entire supply chain and threaten
its ability to compete. In Professor David Simchi-Levi ’s
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) selected Professor Edward DeLong as a AAAS Fellow,
a distinction that recognizes his important contributions to
microbial systems science. DeLong is a pioneer in the field
of metagenomics, which focuses on the genomics of natural
microbial communities.
new book, “Operations Rules: Delivering Customer
Value through Flexible Operations” (MIT Press,
2010), he identifies a set of scientifically and empirically based rules on issues such as price, product
characteristics and information technology to help
companies transform their operations and supply
chain management.
Professor Joseph Sussman gave the keynote speech at
the World Bank Transportation Sector’s annual meeting Sept. 8 after members of the organization saw
a video of a similar talk he gave at MIT last spring.
That talk, “Transportation in Contemporary Society:
A Complex Systems Approach,” can be viewed on
MIT World. In an interview with ITS International,
Sussman said the U.S. transportation industry needs
a new vision for multimodal transportation that
includes intelligent transportation systems and can
“capture the imagination” of the public, which would
then be more willing to provide funding. He calls for
a new type of transportation professional who thinks
broadly about transportation technologies and how
they relate to transportation systems and institutions.
On Oct. 5, Professor Franz-Josef Ulm delivered the
Maurice A. Biot Lecture hosted by the Department
of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
at Columbia University. Ulm dedicated his lecture, ”Poromechanics: From Atoms to Concrete
Structure,” to Olivier Coussy, who died in 2010.
A new book by Professor Chiang C. Mei and
co-author Bogdan Vernescu of Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, “Homogenization
Methods for Multiscale Mechanics” (World
Scientific, 2010), provides researchers
with a concrete treatment of the theory
of homogenization — deriving averaged
equations for a much larger scale based
on considerations at the small scale — for
treating inhomogeneous media. The book
illustrates the use of homogenization for a
broad range of physical problems.
A profile and Q&A with Parsons Lab administrative
assistant Jim Long appeared in the Sept. 10 issue of
Goldmine magazine, a publication about recording
artists, recordings, memorabilia and collectors. Long
has been collecting music recordings since age six,
when he bought his first single, The Police’s “Don’t
Stand So Close To Me.” He also tinkers with vintage
audio and video equipment.
CEE co-sponsored a half-day symposium Sept. 28, The
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: What Happened? Where Do We Go
From Here? Researchers at the symposium said that it
should be possible to drastically reduce the chances of
a repeat occurrence, and if there is another, responders should be able to deal with it more rapidly and
effectively than before. The talks can be seen on MIT
World: http://mitworld.mit.edu/series/view/168
MIT selected CEE postdoctoral associate Hector
Hernandez as a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar, one
of eight this academic year. Hernandez works with
Professor Janelle Thompson on a study of deep-earth
microbes in environments with very high levels of
carbon dioxide, part of a larger project to understand
the biochemical reactions associated with the subsurface injection of CO2. n
Faculty
StudentProfile
News
Student News
A team of MIT students including
CEE senior Joel Veenstra formed
Sanergy, a company that plans
to build thousands of modular
“sanitation centers” in developing
countries. People could purchase
low-cost memberships to use
these facilities, and entrepreneurs
could convert the waste into
much-needed biogas and organic
fertilizer. Sanergy has built two
centers in Kenya and is analyzing data from those to
improve future efforts.
Graduate student Rouzbeh Shahsavari was a Silver
Medalist at the Graduate Student Award competition
at the 2010 Materials Research Society (MRS) fall
meeting in Boston. The honor recognizes the “excellence and distinction” of Shahsavari’s past academic
achievements and materials research and his promise
for future achievement. Professor Franz-Josef Ulm is his
research advisor.
Doctoral student Simon Laflamme gave a seminar Sept.
22 to the Center for Dynamics of Complex Systems,
the Nonlinear Dynamics Group, and the Theory of
Chaos Group at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
His talk, “Self-Organizing Inputs for Black-Box
Modeling of Large-Scale Nonstationary Dynamic
Systems,” waßs based on his research with Professor
Jerome Connor.
CEE junior Monica Oliver ’s research from her spring
2010 UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities
Program) in urban studies and
planning led to the publication
of a role-playing simulation that
will be used as a teaching tool in
Harvard Law School’s Program on
Negotiation. “Helping Cities Adapt
to Climate Change Risks” helps
city officials and other stakeholders understand the technical and
policy issues created or
Two CEE students were invited speakers at MIT’s 37th annual Martin Luther King
Jr. breakfast, held Feb. 9: doctoral student Pierre Fuller S.M. ‘09 (see p. 16) and
1C senior Khalea Robinson. In her talk, “The Shared Path,” Robinson stressed the
critical importance of collaboration in securing the creation of a fairer, more just
world. Photo / Dominick Reuter
19
Graduate student in transportation Kari Hernandez (third from right)
received one of nine spots to attend the International Union of Railways’
High Speed Rail World Congress in Beijing in December 2010. Student
attendees were selected based on paper submissions in three categories:
High-Speed Rail (HSR) in the Future, HSR and Innovation, and HSR and
Telecommunications. Hernandez’s paper took the prize in the HSR and
Telecommunications category and she was asked to make a short presentation to the 2,500-plus attendees during the closing ceremony. Her research
is on the role of intermodality in long-range transportation system development, with a focus on the value of high-speed rail and airport integration.
exacerbated by climate change, particularly issues at
the interface of urban planning and civil engineering,
like housing retrofits.
The International Journal of Applied Mechanics
selected a paper by CEE graduate students Zhao Qin
and Steve Cranford, former visiting graduate student
Dr. Theodor Ackbarow (now with McKinsey & Co.),
and Professor Markus Buehler as a best paper published
in the journal during 2009 and 2010. “RobustnessStrength Performance of Hierarchical Alpha-Helical
Protein Filaments” was the cover story for the inaugural issue of the journal in March 2009. n
A team with two CEE students and an alumna won the
$100,000 first prize in the ConocoPhillips Energy Prize
in October 2010, beating about 150 competitors from
around the country. Doctoral students Matthew Orosz
’03, S.M. ‘06 and Amy Mueller ’02, M.Eng. ’03 (electrical engineering and computer science) and alumna and
Elizabeth Wayman ’04 S.M. ’06 (mechanical engineering)
of Team STG plan to use solar energy to provide heat, hot
water and electricity for schools and clinics in the developing world. The team, which is running a pilot project in
Lesotho, has been working with Professor Harold Hemond
to develop small-scale solar power generators that use the
organic Rankine cycle with parabolic trough technology
to convert relatively low-temperature thermal energy to
electric power. Hemond was awarded seed funding from
the MIT Energy Initiative in 2009 for his research hybridizing photovoltaic and thermal power.
Upcoming Event
Alumni News
Alumni are invited to an afternoon symposium honoring Professor Chiang C. Mei, who retired July 2010.
The symposium will be held May 20 at the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass.
If you wish to attend, please contact James Long at
jmlong@mit.edu or 617-253-6569. More information:
http://cee.mit.edu/events/chiang-mei-symposium
Alumni News
Course 1 welcomes Course 9B alumni
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From its establishment in 1919, Course 9B – General Engineering was designed to provide “the fundamental subjects on
which an engineering education must rest and allow the student to make up the rest of the course to fit his needs and
desires,” according to an article that ran in The Tech, March 16, 1923. “This course was not designed as a refuge for those
who could not get a degree in one of the other courses but rather as a refuge for the good student whose wants are not satisfied by one of the more rigidly laid down courses … [It] is at present laid out so as to give the student a fairly good knowledge
of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering.”
At that time, Course 9A provided a general education in the sciences and Course 9C was mathematics-focused. By 1957,
Course 9C had become Science Teaching. In 1958, all three majors were folded into Course 22 – Humanities. However, the
careers of many 9B alumni were in fields typical of Course 1 graduates: construction, transportation, housing development
and environmental engineering. Those Course 9B alumni have been without a larger alumni community of similar minds for
some time. But no longer! CEE has brought the alumni of Course 9B into the fold of CEE alumni. — The Editors
After 23 years in the steel foundry
and forging industry, Tom Eggert
’50 (Course 9B) moved to Denver
in 1971 and became involved in
residential and commercial real
estate. He spent 20 years as an
elected county commissioner in
Arapahoe County, during which
time the population more than
doubled from 150,000 to 390,000
citizens, requiring Eggert to cope
with “all the interactions demanded
by such growth,” he wrote. He
has served as an MIT educational
counselor for 35 years, interviewing prospective students. “I relish
the opportunity to talk with the
prospective students. Their breadth
of knowledge and activity involvement in high school is amazing.”
Happily retired in Naples, Fla., Lois
and Harold Glaze ‘51 still keep in
touch with Course 17 classmates Bill
Maini ’51, S.M. ’53 and Bob Whittier
’51 and their spouses. Glaze wrote,
“Until last year we got together
annually in Boston for lunch, but
now our contacts are by phone or
email.”
(Course 9B)
worked at ASEA in Sweden for two
years before joining his father’s
company, Ohio Brass, doing
mechanical design on insulators
and mechanical research on other
products. He then became a sales
and applications engineer working
on products sold to electric utility
companies. At present, Black said
he’s “trying to develop the family
farmland.”
(Roger) Gordon Black ’56
“I loved 9B because I could select
the classes I was interested in,”
wrote Phil Cammack ‘57. “I studied
a lot of structures and wound up
doing mostly testing on helicopter
development, even though I had
not taken any courses on aerodynamics.” His projects included the
OH-6A light observation helicopter
and the Apache attack helicopter,
both still in use by the military.
He retired to Sierra City, Calif., a
scenic old gold-mining town tucked
in the mountains.
An archeologist emerita with
the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C., Martha
Goodway ’57 (Course 9B) says
Course Key
that while in school at MIT, she
Course 1A — civil and environmental engineering (unspecified)
took one of the four available
Course 1C — civil engineering
courses on computers and
Course 1E — environmental engineering science
Course 9B — general engineering until 1957
was “constantly challenged
Course 11 — sanitary engineering until 1962
during employment interviews
Course 17 — building engineering and construction until 1956
for wasting my time that way.”
She specialized in metals from all
periods, from Early Bronze Age to
the present, and published articles
in Science on topics including the
aluminum used in the engine of
the Wright brothers’ first powered
airplane, the Wright Flyer, and the
composition of harpsichord wire.
After a career of more than 15
years at Beacon/Skanska’s Boston
office that culminated in positions
as the executive vice president
and chief operating officer, Gino
Baroni S.M. ’80 started Trident
Project Advantage Group. “TPAG
provides professional services for
oversight, assistance and advice in
needs assessment, land/building
acquisition, financial instrument
procurement, development, design,
construction and total project
administrative services,” says
Baroni. “It has been quite rewarding and very successful.”
Javed Sultan S.M. ‘82 visited MIT in
summer 2010 and discussed his
work on affordable building technologies for developing countries.
He runs the Cambridge-based
nonprofit, South Asia Research
Institute for Development (SARID),
where he has created a proprietary
system for making earthquakeresistant housing for Pakistan. The
Alumni News
One project for David J. Greenwold S.M. ’99, the principal engineer
for Ammann & Whitney’s Boston office, is the 700-foot-long North
Bank Bridge that will route pedestrians and cyclists over commuter
rail tracks and the Millers River, which forms the boundary between
East Cambridge and Charlestown. The bridge is part of the surface
restoration of the Central Artery/Tunnel project. A CEE geotechnical
class led by Lucy Jen S.M. ’92, Ph.D. ’98 visited the construction site
in November 2010, accompanied by Ammann & Whitney employee
Scott Silverstein M.Eng. ’08. The Zakim Bridge can be seen in the
background.
new dwellings would be much
cheaper to build and sturdier than
the standard homes, and would
be erected by local workers using
familiar materials such as mud
bricks. He added that his construction method doesn’t require
wooden trusses, an additional
advantage in regions already suffering from deforestation.
“China has achieved remarkable
progress in developing renewable energy during the last three
decades,” says Ede Ijjasz S.M. ’90,
Ph.D. ’94 in an article that ran in
the Nov. 23, 2010 issue of the
Wall Street Journal about a World
Bank report on China’s green
energy plans. Ijjasz is the World
Bank China Sector Manager for
Sustainable
Development.
A request for
updates from the
1996 M.Eng. class
by Ben Jordan ’95,
M.Eng. ’96 drew
many responses.
Jordan continues
to work at CocaCola in Atlanta,
where he and
wife Mary Beth
are raising their
Ben Jordan M.Eng. ‘96 at Lake
two
sons. Having
McDonald in Glacier National Park with
passed the
his wife, Mary Beth, and sons Jack and
Parker.
comprehensive
exam for a Ph.D.
in environmental technology at
Georgia Tech, Jordan now needs
only to write the dissertation. His
corporate experience will help him
teach an undergrad class at Emory
University on “Institutions and the
Environment.”
Dan Alden M.Eng. ’96 works for
Engineering and Utilities at
Harvard University, a department
21
that works with the cities of
Cambridge and Boston on issues
relating to utilities and building
projects. “Cate and I purchased
a remote retreat on 28 acres in
western Massachusetts, off the grid
and nearly off the map. Our nearest
neighbors are the porcupines,
bobcats and coyotes that howl in
the night,” writes Alden.
Gary Cheng M.Eng. ’96 wrote
that he is still working at PG&E
(Pacific Gas and Electric), “the
utility associated with the recent
San Bruno gas pipeline explosion,”
and is enjoying the San Francisco
Bay area. “I recently transferred
departments and now work in
portfolio management with a focus
on hedging,” says Cheng.
Kishan Amarasekera ’96, M.Eng. ’96
A civil engineering professor at
California State University at Los
Angeles, Crist Khachikian M.Eng.
’96 is also the director of the
university’s Center for Energy and
Sustainability. He and his wife keep
busy raising three young sons.
Khachikian says that he finds time
to “pursue my goal of learning to
play the classical guitar, which I
started as an M.Eng. student 15
years ago (yikes!).”
lives in Columbia, Md, with his wife
and young son. After working for
a couple of environmental consulting firms, in 2004 he purchased
ATI, Inc., a firm that provides
architectural and engineering
services primarily to state and local
government agencies in the region
(http://www.aeati.com). Enrique Lopez Calve M.Eng. ’96, S.M.
‘97 lives in San Diego and works at
CDM, a consulting, engineering,
construction and operations firm.
He suggests that his M.Eng. class
should get together and “think
about what we can do to make this
world a little closer to what it was
when we graduated in ’96: more
positive and peaceful, and with a
future that looked so much brighter
than our future looks now.”
In 2010, C. (Tintin) Picazo M.Eng.
’96, S.M. ‘99 and her husband
“embarked on our new adventure
by moving back to the Philippines
after 15 years in the U.S.,” she
writes. “We are adjusting to all the
changes here, but it’s nice to be
close to family.”
“I’ve had quite a deviation from
the world of engineering and
consulting. My partner and I are
continued on page 22
Alumni News
continued from page 21
working full time on our farm,
Stark Hollow, in Vermont,” writes
Vanessa Riva M.Eng. ’96. “My furry,
wooly and feathered critters keep
me busy and up through the night
at times. I love what I am doing
and hopefully will soon start making some net profits.”
22
Mitsos Triantopoulos M.Eng. ‘96
has been in New York City since
shortly after graduation. “Last
year, I finally got married,” he
wrote. “We had been together
for eight years.” After everyone
stopped asking about their intentions, the couple “decided to surprise them,” Triantopoulos says.
As the professor in charge of the
’96 class, the first in the new CEE
M.Eng. program, Professor David
Marks praised the class members
for all their accomplishments.
After 41 years at MIT, he has
retired from teaching and expects
to finish up his research projects
in Cyprus, Portugal and Abu
Dhabi.
Two alumni who are civil
engineering professors at Purdue
University recently won honors.
Antonio Bobet Ph.D. ’97 will receive
the 2011 Ralph Peck Award from
the American Society of Civil
Engineers in March. The award
acknowledges his outstanding
contributions to the geotechnical engineering profession, and
the development of analysis/
design procedures for shallow
underground structures subject to
seismically induced deformation.
Joe Sinfield S.M. ’94, Ph.D. ’97 will
participate in the U.S. Frontiers of
Engineering program, where 100
young engineers from industry,
academia and government will
discuss pioneering technical and
leading-edge research with the aim
of encouraging collaborative work.
Kim Lou Jennings M.Eng. ‘00 was in
the first thesis group that went
to Nepal to study drinking water
treatment with senior lecturer
Susan Murcott ’90, S.M. 92 . Now
Jennings works in environmental
sustainability in Los Angeles,
tracking greenhouse gas emissions
and implementing carbon reduction and general environmental
sustainability strategies for Union
Bank.
Vince Suwansawat S.M. (ESD),
has become the dean of
engineering at King Mongkut’s
Institute of Technology
Ladkrabang, Thailand’s largest
engineering school.
Sc.D. ’02
was
selected as a recipient of the
Gordon Newell Memorial Prize
2010 for her doctoral work at MIT
with Professor Moshe Ben-Akiva.
The Hong Kong Society for
Transportation Studies (HKSTS)
awards the prize for the best
dissertation paper in the field
of transportation completed
within the last three years by
a researcher of Asian origin.
Choudhury is now an assistant
professor in her home country
at the Bangladesh University of
Engineering and Technology. She
received the prize at the HKSTS
conference in December.
Charisma Choudhury Ph.D. ‘07
Working with a student-spawned
company, One Earth Designs,
environmental engineering graduate Wesley Koo ‘09 helped write the
business plan for a low-cost solar
cooker that won the top prize in
the Netherlands Green Challenge.
The lightweight portable device
not only cooks food and boils
water, but also provides home
heating and generates power
for lights and cellphones. The
students hope the device will
provide a healthier alternative to
the common practice of cooking
and heating homes with wood
and yak dung. n
ALUMNI DEATHS
Deaths in 2010
John Archer S.M. ’48, Sc.D. ’50, on July 25
Joel Brainard S.M. ’67, on Dec. 11
Robert Hutton ’50 (Course 9B), on Sept. 21
Theodore Jacobsohn ’51 (Course 9B), on Nov. 17
Robert Kellner ’42 (Course 9B), on May 16
Arthur Kubo S.M. ’65 (CE and Course 22), Ph.D. ’73
(Course 22), on Aug. 5
Leandro Rodriguez-Agrait S.M. ’66, Ph.D. ’68,
on May 4
Richard Laramie S.M. ’71, on Aug. 8
Alexander Nichiporuk ’33, on March 27
Harry Saxe Sc.D. ’52, on Sept. 4
Edmund Shea ’52 (Course 9B), on Aug. 13
Deaths in 2007
Michael Soteriades Sc.D. ’54, on Nov. 13
Lawrence Littlefield Sr. S.B. and S.M. ’33, on Apr. 23
Salvatore (Sam) Trapani ’49, on Nov. 24
Robert Milligan ’58, on Jan. 13
William Widlansky ’39 (Course 9B), on Oct. 12
Deaths in 2006
Anwar Wissa S.M. ’61, Sc.D. ’65, on June 23
Valentin Berger ’56, S.M. ’58, on June 16
G. Robert Koch S.M. ’52, on Aug. 25
Paul Witherell ’40, S.M. ’49, (Course 17), on Oct. 10
Walter Kunze Jr. S.M. ’50, on Aug. 2
Deaths in 2009
Thomas Lambie ’56, S.M. ’58, on Oct. 28
Jacques Gulbenkian ’48, on Feb. 5
Stephen Siegl Jr. ’46 on Dec. 29
Wilbur Leventer S.M. ’51, on Nov. 24
Thaddeus Nosek S.M. ’74, on Aug. 18
Barbara (Bloom) Ranson ’72, on July 26
John Kerkering S.M. ’39, on April 12
Robert Krucklin ’42, on May 7
Gifts to CEE
Thank You For Your Gifts
We wish to express sincere gratitude to the people who made gifts of $100 or more to the
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in calendar year 2010. Your gifts help make the department’s work possible.
Edward E. Adams
Andreas E. Aeppli
William B. Akers
Luis F. Alarcon
Kathryn A. Alsegaf
Kathryn Patricia V. Angeles
Demosthenes C. Angelides
Joseph Antebi
Roger E. Arndt
Harvey L. Arnold
Thomas H. Asselin
Debera A. Backhus
Brant F. Ballantyne
Katsunori Banno
Alexandre Bartolin
Mark P. Batho
Carl A. Bauer
Berghold Bayer
Jared L. Black
Robert N. Block
Leslie J. Blythe
Marco D. Boscardin
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Theodore B. Burger
C. J. Burry
Guy D. Busa
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William A. Cawley
Shi-Tsung Chan
Stephen M. Chapman
Charles M. Charman
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Takafumi Chiba
Kenneth A. Ching
Dong-Ho Choi
Joseph M. Cibor
Niki L. Cibor
Jared L. Cohon
George W. Coleman
Richard A. Conway
Joseph M. Cowgill
Chad W. Cox
James M. Cullem
James E. Dailey
Charles T. Daniel
Indhira I. De Jesus
Ricardo R. De Rojas Pando
Robert G. Dean
Keistutis P. Devenis
Jamie A. Devol
Salvatore C. Di Bernardo
John A. Dracup
Peter S. Eagleson
Robert E. Efimba
John L. Enos
Lawrence O. Eronini
Keith N. Eshleman
Stephen D. Eustis
Kevin J. Farley
Janine M. Farzin
Dennis R. Fay
James D. Ferea
Kenneth G. Fettig
Aldo F. Fioravanti
Martin Flusberg
Michelle M. Franciose
Stuart A. Freudberg
Ping Gao
Melrose T. Garrett
Aristidis P. Georgakakos
Konstantine P. Georgakakos
John H. Gerstle
John K. Gohagan
Hans C. Graber
Eric C. Green
Nathaniel J. Grier
James W. Grube
Edwin Guenther
Joseph D. Guertin
Guillermo Guzman-Barron Torres
Mark X. Haley
James V. Hamel
Brendan M. Harley
Chris T. Hendrickson
Janet G. Hering
Peter K. Ho
John W. Holcomb
John A. Hoopes
Charles D. Howard
Wayne C. Huber
Carl J. Huval
Yoshihiro Ichikawa
Shyh-Hua E. Jao
Iang Y. Jeon
Mark T. Johnson
Robert P. Johnson
William S. Jordan
Aud I. Kaalstad
Tahir A. Karamat
Eduardo A. Kausel
Stanley K. Kawaguchi
Amir M. Kaynia
Peter A. Kerr
Berg Keshian
Yeong W. Kim
Paul H. Kirshen
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Alan J. Knauf
Jayne L. Knott
Nobuhisa Kobayashi
Edward L. Koetje
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Demetrious C. Koutsoftas
William A. Kreutzjans
Mathew Kurian
Dennis E. Kuzak
Wai P. Kwan
Charles C. Ladd
Richard S. Ladd
Thomas W. Lambe
David E. Langseth
Robert F. Lathlaen
William H. Leder
Hyangly Lee
Roberto L. Lenton
Keith M. Leytham
Khoon-Min Lim
Jeen-Shang Lin
Patrick Little
Norman W. Llewellyn
Robert D. Logcher
Gary A. Lovesky
Donavan M. Lowtan
Richard C. Lundberg
Ulrich Luscher
N. J. Machnik
Thomas S. Maddock
Kenneth R. Maser
Fujio Matsuda
Roger H. McCoy
Ross E. McKinney
Deryk Meherik
Michael G. Messner
Edward A. Mierzejewski
Alexander Milton
Neal B. Mitchell
Rachna Mohanka
Fabio M. Mondini
Constance Murcott
Antoine E. Naaman
Tavit O. Najarian
John H. Nath
Ronald E. Nece
Charles R. Nelson
Gina R. Nelson
Richard A. Nelson
Lance A. Neumann
Roseanna M. Neupauer
Richard A. Newcome
Robert J. Newhouser
Eric M. Nichols
Arndt W. Nicklisch
Martin M. Nussbaumer
Harold W. Olsen
Wendy J. Pabich
James R. Pagenkopf
Diana K. Pape
Mark B. Pape
Allan M. Paull
Victor M. Pellon
David A. Peters
Eric F. Peyrard
Roberto Pietroforte
Richard R. Pikul
Darryl Pomicter
E. D. Poor-Reynolds
Nabil H. Qaddumi
William F. Quinn
Joseph A. Racosky
Jorge A. Ramirez
Matthew D. Reynolds
William J. Roberds
Marilyn Ruddy
Raymond Ruddy
James F. Ruff
Alan D. Russell
Robert A. Ryder
Kasumu O. Salawu
Ramahi B. Sarma Rupavtarm
Martin A. Schlenker
Robert P. Schreiber
Stacey Schwarcz
Karnik M. Seferian
Shyam D. Sharma
Paul F. Shiers
Neil S. Shifrin
Francisco Silva-Tulla
Richard M. Simon
Scott B. Smith
Charles K. Sollitt
Walter Steiner
Howard C. Stotland
Saturnino Suarez Reynoso
Raymond K. Sullivan
Christopher W. Swan
Josue Tanaka
Ling Tang
Louis M. Taverna
Jonathan Taylor
Zahra-El-Hayat Tazir
Lavette C. Teague
Allan C. Tedrow
Morris L. Thatcher
Robert E. Thurber
John A. Tice
John M. Ting
Albert Q. Tom
James G. Ton
Timothy D. Tonyan
Paul J. Trudeau
John R. Uppgren
Senol Utku
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Erik H. Vanmarcke
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Miguel A. Vescovacci
Vitoon Vivatrat
Theodore von Rosenvinge
Andrew J. Walsh
Yang Wen
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David E. White
Stanley M. White
Robert V. Whitman
Thomas R. Williams
Kenneth W. Wilson
Nigel H. Wilson
Ing H. Wong
Duncan W. Wood
Ray L. Wooten
Shian-Chee Wu
Hou-Gion T. Wuu
Warren M. Yamamoto
Gretchen A. Young
Grace L. Zabat
James M. Zaorski
Daniel A. Zarrilli
Guoping Zhang
Jeffrey S. Zickus
For information on making gifts to CEE, please contact Patricia Dixon at 617-253-2335, or go to the CEE
giving section of the MIT Alumni Association website: http://tinyurl.com/GiftsToMITCEE. For information
on making planned gifts, please contact the Office of Gift Planning at 617-242-6463 or gift_planning@mit.edu.
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