CEE Update Faculty News

Greeshma Gadikota has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering (NAE)’s 2020 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium and the NAE German-American Frontiers of Engineering meeting in 2021. Gadikota was also recognized as a Scialog Fellow in Negative Emissions Science. Gadikota is the recipient of DOE CAREER Award (2019), AICHE Sabic Award for Young Professionals from the Particle Technology Forum (2020) and the Minerals 2020 Young Investigator Award.

April Gu has been awarded the 2019 Ralph Fuhrman Medal from the Water and Environment Federation. Gu has also been awarded the 2020 Distinguished Service Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors.

Damian Helbling was awarded the 2019 College of Engineering Research Excellence award.

Ken Hover was a recipient of the 2019 College of Engineering James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching award.

Andrea Ippolito, CEE Lecturer, was a recipient of the 2020 College of Engineering Douglas Whitney ’61 Excellence in Teaching award.

Patrick Reed A collaborative paper between Patrick Reed, the Joseph C. Ford Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and The Aerospace Corporation has won the top 2020 Gold Medal prize in the global “Humies” competition hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group in Genetic and Evolutionary Optimization. The paper titled, “Low cost satellite constellations for nearly continuous global coverage,” was published Jan. 10, 2020, in Nature Communications.

Derek Warner was a recipient of the 2019 College of Engineering James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching award.

Bill McGuire Remembered on 100th Birthday

Bill McGuire mini-reunion of Professor McGuire’s former graduate students and a few colleagues was held virtually on December 17, 2020 to commemorate what would have been McGuire’s 100th birthday. Bill served on the CEE faculty for 40 years, retiring in 1989. He was widely respected as a structural engineer specializing in steel structures and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1994. During the 1970s and 80s, he supervised a series of graduate students who have gone on to distinguish themselves in their academic and professional careers, and several of these alumni joined this reunion to honor Bill’s memory.

McGuire was a principal structural consultant from the Cornell side in the design and maintenance of the Arecibo Observatory from the original conception in the early 1960s until Cornell relinquished management of the facility in 2011, just two years before Bill’s death. Because this spectacular innovative structure was dear to Bill’s heart, the reunion was tinged with a note of sadness due to the recent deterioration and ultimate collapse of the observatory on December 1st.