Category: Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment

Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have shown that ecosystem engineering by mussels in Southeastern US salt marshes is a stronger driver of coastal ecosystems’ ability to keep pace with sea-level rise than expected.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals, has elected 19 faculty from the University of Florida, including 5 from Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, to its newest class, breaking previous records for the number of faculty awarded in a single year.

Denise R. Simmons, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering and associate dean for Workforce Development in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, is the leading principal investigator for the $1.28 million, four-year project “Critical Conversations: Systemic and Agentic Empowerment of Black Ph.D. Students and their Faculty Advisors in Engineering,” which is sponsored by the Racial Equity in STEM Education program, an initiative of the National Science Foundation’s Education and Human Resources (EHR) division that supports racial equity in STEM.

Kiley Graim, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering, is leading a $1.5 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute study with co-investigator James Cahill, Ph.D., an assistant instructional professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences. Their grant seeks to create a valuable tool that will allow researchers to diagnose human cancers, potentially leading to earlier clinical interventions.

The University of Florida’s Association of Hispanic Alumni (AHA) recently selected Carlos A. Penin, PE, (CCE, ‘77) to receive the 2022 Gran Caimán of the Year award for his passion, commitment and leadership beyond engineering.

For scientists, Hurricane Ian, which roared onto Florida’s southwest coast on September 28, 2022, as a Category 4 storm with winds of 250 kilometers per hour, has been both a research opportunity and an ordeal.

University of Florida Transportation Institute (UFTI), in collaboration with the Florida Department of Transportation and campus and city partners, will study a suite of emerging technologies that can save lives by providing timely warnings to drivers and pedestrians about one another — before an encounter becomes fatal.

Antarpreet Jutla, Ph.D., an environmental engineering sciences associate professor in the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment, along with researchers and humanitarian advisors from other institutions, created a one-of-its-kind portal to predict and prevent cholera outbreaks. With a $1 million grant from NASA, UF will become one of the first institutions primed to understand the patterns of this disease’s emergence in several parts of the world with the use of prediction tools.

The University of Florida’s Center for Coastal Solutions, or CCS, and the SAS Institute, a global leader in data analytics software, are joining forces to study the factors that influence water quality and the connections between water quality and economic activity in southwest Florida.

Researchers at the University of Florida found that residential settings might be hotspots to spread SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, due to poor ventilation in homes and the relaxed usage of masks. As part of this study, researchers were also the first to demonstrate a viable, or infectious, virus on the surface of a cellphone.