People returning to what remains of the beachside town of Lahaina, Hawaii, and other Maui communities after one of the nation’s deadliest wildfire disasters face more dangers, beyond the 1,700 buildings and dozens of lives already lost. Professor Andrew Whelton weighs in on the lingering health risks for humans and wildlife.

Ph.D. candidate Jiawei Xue received the Best Poster Award for his presentation at the First Research Summit of Urban Science in Beijing on August 5-6, 2023. The title of his poster is, "Predicting Individual Irregular Mobility via Web Search-Driven Bipartite Graph Neural Networks."

The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday, August 4th, ratified the appointment of Melba Crawford, the Nancy Uridil and Francis Bossu Professor in Civil Engineering, as Distinguished Professor. This special recognition is bestowed on a select few professors of outstanding accomplishment who have achieved national and international prominence.

Purdue University has been named a major partner, with Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering Satish Ukkusuri at the helm, in the first U.S. DOT-funded national security center.

A research project led by CE faculty Brandon Boor and Nusrat Jung which seeks to monitor and reduce indoor air pollutant exposures in classrooms has received $24,000 in funding from the U.S. EPA as part of the Agency's People, Prosperity, and the Planet (P3) Program.

Concrete sensors invented by Luna Lu, Associate Dean of Faculty of College of Engineering and Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering, will soon give engineers real-time data from Indianapolis’ newest interstate section, potentially preventing potholes, reducing construction traffic jams and saving taxpayer dollars spent on road repairs.

Milo Riverso (MSCE 1982, Ph.D. 1984), CEAAA recipient and Distinguished Engineering Alumnus, began his tenure as the 21st president of Manhattan College on July 1, 2023.

Congratulations to George Watson (BSCE 2010), PE, PMP, CPESC, Indiana Bridge Lead and Assistant Vice President at WSP USA, for being named the 2023 Indiana Young Engineer of the Year by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Indiana.

Julio Ramirez, Karl H. Kettelhut Professor in Civil Engineering and Director of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Network Coordination Office (NCO) Center, has been appointed as the ASCE representative on the Technical Committee 29 Network Construction and Joint Utilization of Large Scale Experimental Facilities of the The Asian Civil Engineering Coordinating Council (ACECC).

Congratulations to CE student athletes Daniel Labrador, member of the Purdue men's tennis team, and Joseph Romanyk, member of the Purdue men's track & field team, on being named Academic All-Big Ten for Spring 2023. To be eligible for Academic All-Big Ten, students must carry a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher.

Inez Hua, Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering, has been selected for induction into Purdue University's Book of Great Teachers. The Book of Great Teachers was dedicated in 1999 and currently holds the names of 428 distinguished faculty.

Hubo Cai, Professor of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering and Management and Interim Head of the School of Construction Management Technology, has received the 2023 Alfred Noble Prize awarded by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for his paper, "Robust Hybrid Approach of Vision-Based Tracking and Radio-Based Identification and Localization for 3D Tracking of Multiple Construction Workers," published in Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, July 2020.

U.S. Navy Capt. Constance Solina (BSCE 2000) relieved Capt. Jeff Deviney as commodore of Naval Construction Group 2 during a July 7 ceremony in Gulfport, Mississippi, and will also lead all Atlantic-based Seabees. Solina received the CE Alumni Achievement Award in 2017.

John Wardlaw earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Curaçao majoring in built environment with a specialization in civil engineering, but his career has taken him in a different direction - so far. His online master's degree in civil engineering from Purdue University promises to change that.

For her "contributions to remote sensing technology and leadership in its application for the benefit of humanity," Purdue University Civil Engineering Professor Melba Crawford is the recipient of this year's IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal.

Dr. Ming Qu, professor of civil engineering, has been selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2023-2024 in Japan. The Fulbright Scholar Awards are highly competitive and prestigious fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach, conduct research, and carry out professional projects worldwide.

Andrew Whelton, a Purdue professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering, has traveled numerous times to the sites of wildfires, where he and his students collect water samples to help guide a community on the best way to restore its water systems.

CE grad students Herta Montoya and Wen Tang received first and third place awards, respectively, in the best student paper competition held by the ASCE Structural Health Monitoring and Control Committee at the 2023 ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Conference.

Ernest (Chip) Blatchley, Lee A. Rieth Professor in Environmental Engineering and Professor in Environmental and Ecological Engineering, has received funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Department of Energy as part of a collaboration to develop next-generation personal protective equipment (PPE) that will provide protection against airborne pathogens.

Steven P. Osborn, PE, SE (BSCE '78), Founder and President of CE Solutions, Inc. and chair of the Civil Engineering Advisory Council, received the Trade Association Professionals (TAP) Lifetime Achievement Award. This award is presented annually to an individual who has demonstrated exceptional dedication and made an outstanding contribution to the A/E/C industry in central Indiana.