News

Associate Professor Wil V. Srubar was named a "Top 25 Newsmaker" by editors at the Engineering News-Record for his passion about creating "living" building materials, beginning with a greener masonry block.

In 2021, the devastating Marshall Fire showed wildfire can strike Colorado in almost any place or season. Scientists like Assistant Research Professor Brad Wham now hope to glean lessons from it for communities across the West.

The Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering welcomes Karl Linden as the incoming department chair. Linden, a CEAE professor and an associate director of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering, took the reins January 1 from Professor Rich Regueiro, who served as the interim chair since July.

The Marshall Fire spurred CU Boulder researchers to apply their expertise to the aftermath. CEAE Assistant Professor Cresten Mansfeldt, along with other researchers, collected water samples from Coal Creek waterway shortly after the fire; the work has since expanded to monitor the response of bugs and algae living in these waters. CEAE Teaching Professor Matthew Morris, who lost his Superior home in the fire, helped solicit design and construction proposals from builders, providing homeowners with a “short list” of options to select a builder.

The Construction Safety Research Alliance (CSRA) hosted its third annual Safety Summit in 2022, bringing together over 200 construction industry safety professionals from across North America to discover the latest alliance research, share best practices and connect with peers, advocates, and leaders in the field. Research for the CSRA is led by executive director Matthew Hallowell, an associate professor for civil, environmental and architectural engineering.

Using bright green lasers and camera equipment, a team of CU Boulder engineers ran an experiment to reveal how tiny water droplets, invisible to the naked eye, are rapidly ejected into the air when a lid-less, public restroom toilet is flushed. Now published in Scientific Reports, it is the first study to directly visualize the resulting aerosol plume and measure the speed and spread of particles within it.

In an interview with Sinclair Broadcast Group, Kyri Baker, an assistant professor of engineering, said she's not surprised people are starting to understand the vulnerability of the nation's power infrastructure, most of which she said was built above ground to maximize efficiency and accessibility. “People didn’t really think about domestic terrorism being a threat to these substations," Baker said.

Research by Wil Srubar was recognized with a $500,000 Explorer Grant from Breakthrough Energy Foundation, a part of Bill Gates’ philanthropic venture capital organization that funds climate tech ventures.

The new DOE designation, awarded to 17 educational programs nationwide, honors post-secondary academic programs that require students to apply the best practices of zero energy design in their projects.

Six degree programs in CU Boulder's College of Engineering and Applied Science, including civil and environmental engineering, earned top 20 spots among public universities in U.S. News and World Report’s Best Undergraduate Engineering specialty rankings. U.S. News and World Report did not rank architectural engineering programs.