Celebrating civil and environmental engineering: Course 1 hosts 13th annual research symposium
MIT researchers present breakthroughs on climate, biodiversity, and infrastructure
VERONIKA MOROZ—THE TECH
On Feb. 24, the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) held its 13th Annual Research Day. Throughout the afternoon, members of the CEE community listened to talks and poster sessions that showcased research projects on developing sustainable infrastructure as well as furthering knowledge in biodiversity and climate change.
Reimagining multi-level infrastructure
The conference began with a focus on sustainable infrastructure, including a keynote talk by Assistant Professor Gioele Zardini, whose work focuses on compositional design of sustainable critical systems for society with applications in energy, aerospace, and autonomy.
In his presentation, Zardini talked about decarbonizing shipping technology, reducing congestion, and increasing the energy efficiency of design algorithms. “Designing a single one of these systems is one thing, but thinking about the entire interaction between all the subcomponents and integration with the existing infrastructure is hard,” Zardini told the audience, before providing an explanation of how his lab manages these challenges through the consideration of components, variables, and stakeholders.
Zardini’s address was followed by four lightning talks by graduate students Kirby Heck, Jackson Jewett MEng ’18, Mahdi Seyyedan, and Edgar Ramirez Sanchez. Each talk focused on a different infrastructure optimization problem, from reducing the toll of wind turbine wakes on energy production to the development of reliable weather generators that model how unsaturated soil influences the potential weather damage to infrastructure.
Modeling impacts and solutions to climate change
Professor Charles Harvey delivered the opening keynote for the second part of the symposium, which focused on biodiversity and climate, explaining his research on the importance of peat swamp forests for controlling emissions. According to Harvey, peat forests release a substantial amount of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere because of the high amount of organic material present in peat forests. When the water table lowers in these areas, decomposition rates of the organic material increases, which leads to increased emissions. By increasing the water table in peat forests, Harvey says, scientists can lessen the already staggering amount of man-made emissions.
For Harvey, the research event was a demonstration of humanity’s hope for combating climate change. “We actually have a lot of technologies now that work really well to reduce emissions,” Harvey told The Tech. “By contrast, oil drilling is actually going to lead to much more expensive energy.”
The keynote was followed by lightning talks by graduate student Vassiliki Mancoridis, as well as postdocs Hsin-Fang Chang, Maya Anjur-Dietrich, and Ian McCahill. With topics from new modeling methods for tracking biodiversity loss to findings on a marine cyanobacteria responsible for 10% of all CO2 uptake in the world, the presentations highlighted the breadth of research in Course 1.
In the closing remarks, Associate Professor Darcy McRose and Associate Professor Desirée Plata PhD ’09 emphasized the importance of scientific progress toward resolving the climate crisis and meeting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s goal of 13 gigatons removed annually.
“Will this carbon be stored in the ocean? The deep Earth? The built environment?” Plata asked. “These are questions and points that require careful thought about Calvin cycling, physical infrastructure, logistics, energy use, and ecological impacts — the stuff we here at CEE were born to do.”
An open discussion panel followed the closing remarks led by Associate Professor Serguei Saavedra and Associate Professor Admir Masic, where participants discussed possible checkpoints for combating climate change. One issue of great topic was reducing the cost of removing a metric ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the costly $600-$1,000 range to $25. While carbon removal from the atmosphere has been advertised as a critical component in combating rising temperatures, proponents at the conference argued that such a goal would only divert time and resources from more feasible and efficient solutions.
Fostering a continued discussion of existing research
Once discussion and presentation had ended, two rounds of poster sessions began. Participants were able to freely interact with the poster presenters and listen to their projects as well as suggest ideas and renditions.
“It’s nice to have an informal gathering where you can freely express ideas and talk to professors you usually wouldn’t get the chance to talk to about your research,” said second-year PhD student Evan King of the Wainwright Lab.
Senior undergraduate Richard Chen ’25 researchers the distributive impact of variable electricity pricings to optimize energy use and the effects on all income brackets. His days are flooded with calculations, but events like the CEE Annual Research Day remind him of the tangible impact his work has.
Electricity bills are part of people’s day-to-day lives, so “seeing how they experience that and their ideas has definitely brought me more excitement in terms of realizing that this project really does affect people,” Chen explained. “Many conversations with audiences that come by reminds me exactly just how relevant this is and how critical this is.”
Honoring the best posters and presenters
The event culminated in an awards ceremony. The top three prizes in best poster went to Master’s student Yu-Hsuan Hsu, junior Margarita Zambrano, and PhD student Ilan Upfal.
“It’s exciting, because I was so nervous about this research day. It was my first time present[ing] such a poster,” Hsu said. “I’m very grateful for it and thankful for everyone’s help.”
The award for best talk went to PhD student Jackson Jewett. About 8% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions come from the cement industry, Jewett said in his presentation. His research focuses on creating more sustainable concrete through topology optimization. “Concrete is a wonderful material, but it's very complex, and we need to understand that complexity during the design and optimization process,” Jewett said. By using computer science simulations to pick the best placement of both concrete and steel in the design of a cement beam, Jewett made the beam bear a 40% heavier load than an unoptimized beam with the same volume of material.
The CEE Annual Research Day not only celebrates the work currently being done by students in Course 1, but it aims to foster new innovative projects. As PhD candidate Randall Pietersen explained, the format motivates presenters to “digest what they do in a mode of presentation that you understand, [which will] definitely will help you make connections you wouldn’t have seen.”
“A lot of them are trying to address climate change in very diverse ways,” summarized CEE Masters of Engineering student Eileen Zhang, an event attendee. “I think it’s really cool that they bring it all together.