Karan Venayagamoorthy won the Lorenz G. Straub award

One of our faculty members, Dr. Karan Venayagamoorthy, has won the Lorenz G. Straub award from the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the Univ of Minn. for his 2006 PhD dissertation at Stanford University.

"Established under the Lorenz G. Straub Memorial Fund, this Award is given for the most meritorious thesis in hydraulic engineering, ecohydraulics, or related fields. The competition is international, and nominations may be made by any recognized civil and environmental engineering program in the world. Recipients are presented with a Straub Award medal and a monetary gift."

Congratulations, Karan!

Pinar Omur-Ozbek to Train City Water Engineers Wednesday, Nov. 18

On Wednesday, Pinar Omur-Ozbek, a research assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at the university, will train Fort Collins Water Treatment Utility personnel to diagnose certain chemicals in the water using their sense of taste and smell.

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Omur-Ozbek conducts training known as Flavor Profile Analysis (Standard Method 2170), which is designed to help water engineers more quickly diagnose water problems and take faster action to minimize consumer complaints. Her research focuses on the aesthetic issues associated with drinking water.

"The water industry spends millions of dollars each year to tackle the taste and odor of drinking water,” said Omur-Ozbek, who just joined Colorado State from Virginia Tech. “We can help cities manage these issues just with simple taste-and-smell techniques. Using their noses, they can diagnose earthy or musty smells in their source water that indicate the presence of certain chemicals and hence they will be able to more quickly act to address them. We're calibrating people to rate the intensity of odors in the water. The intensity of the odor correlates to the concentration of the odorant which will help with deciding on the proper treatment method."

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USDA Awards Dr. Mazdak Arabi & eRAMS Technology

Mazdak Arabi, CSU civil and environmental engineering professor, is lead researcher for this project that was awarded $615,000 as part of the 2009 USDA national and watershed scale grants totaling $1.2 million to aid in research addressing critical water resource issues. This integrated study aims to develop and disseminate an innovative open-source web technology called eRAMS that enhances decision makers' capacity to target conservation practices for sediment, nutrient and pesticide control.

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This project takes technology transfer to a whole new level because end users don’t need new software or hardware to obtain data, develop appropriate models, and perform scenario analysis and optimization studies. Watershed planners will benefit from vast data resources and models that are currently accessible to the research community and can assess the costs and conservation benefits of alternative management scenarios.

Although efforts will initially be focused in the South Platte River Basin in Colorado, the technology will be applicable to two watersheds in Indiana and North Carolina with significantly different ecohydrologic characteristics. Additionally, educational and outreach materials will be developed and used in two courses at CSU and in national workshops.

US Army Corps of Engineers contracts CSU to Design Levee Overtopping Facility in wake of Hurricane Katrina

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded $1.7 million to Chris Thornton, director of the Engineering Research Center, to design and build one of the world’s largest wave overtopping simulators at the university's Foothills Campus in Fort Collins.

The CSU team will be initially responsible for generating guidelines and methodologies for determining the forces exerted on levees during extreme storm conditions for all levee systems, not just the New Orleans area, said Thornton, also an assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department.

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Analysis of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the protected side of levee slopes are vulnerable to erosion and, therefore, potential catastrophic breach during large hurricane events. Raising levees to the 1% design crest elevation reduces this risk, however, they still remains a risk of erosion during wave-only overtopping events in excess of the 1% design loading.

Industry opinion is that knowledge of resistance to erosion caused by wave only overtopping is under-developed, and knowledge related to designing erosion armoring systems to protect against wave-only overtopping is altogether lacking. Any controlled testing of grass-covered slopes, or any protection system intended to stabilize soil slopes, must be conducted at full scale because of insurmountable scaling effects.

Therefore, full-scale overtopping testing under this very dynamic hydraulic loading is essential to provide appropriate levels of confidence in future designs of protected side levee armoring solutions. To achieve this goal, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has contracted with Colorado State University to design, construct and operate a full scale levee overtopping facility.

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New Faculty in Civil & Environmental Engineering

The Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering is excited to welcome ten new faculty members: Dr. Tom Sale, Dr. Kimberly Catton, Dr. Susan De Long, Dr. Jose Luis Chavez, Dr. Pinar Omur-Ozbek, Dr. Rebecca Atadero, Dr. Karan Venayagamoorthy, Dr. Domenico Bau, Dr. Sybil Sharvelle and Dr. Mazdak Arabi. Each brings with them a diverse set of expertise to our already strong team of professors and researchers. We expect great things from each of them and look forward to their many contributions in the years to come.

Dr. Tom Sale joined the Department this Fall as an Associate Professor and is continuing on in his role as the Director of the Center for Contaminant Hydrology in Civil and Environmental Engineering. His Research and consulting focus on innovative solutions for groundwater contaminants in source zones and plumes. Dr. Sale received his Ph.D. from Colorado State University, M.S. Degree from the University of Arizona, and B.A. degrees from Miami of Ohio.

Dr. Kimberly Catton is a research scientist/professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at CSU. Her area of expertise is in biological fluid mechanics. She earned a B.S. in Biological and Agricultural Engineering and a M.S. in Environmental Engineering. Her master’s research was on effectiveness of biofilters to remove low concentrations of nitric oxide from engine exhaust.

Dr. Susan De Long is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her area of expertise is environmental biotechnology and she obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley in Environmental Science. While at UC Berkeley, she discovered a fascination with molecular biology and she decided to pursue a second bachelors' degree in molecular and cell biology.

Dr. Jose Luis Chavez is an Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. He earned his B.S. in Agricultural Engineering from the Universidade Federal da Paraiba (Paraiba Federal University) at Campina Grande, Brazil, in 1992. In 1999 Dr. Chavez received his M.S. degree in Irrigation Engineering from Utah State University. His Ph.D. was in Biological and Agricultural Engineering from Utah State University in 2005.

Dr. Pinar Omur-Ozbek is a Research Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. She received her M.S. degree at Virginia Tech where she focused on taste-and-odor problems related to algal products in source waters and then received her Ph.D. for her interdisciplinary research to investigate the metallic flavor of drinking water caused by iron and copper.

Dr. Rebecca Atadero joined our faculty as an assistant professor in July 2008. Rebecca earned her bachelor's degree in civil engineering from CSU in 2002 and then went on to the University of California, San Diego to earn a M.S. and Ph.D. in structural engineering. Rebecca first returned to CSU in 2006 as a research scientist/instructor and taught Structural Analysis and Steel Design to undergraduate students. She and her husband Todd are excited to continue living in Fort Collins.

Dr. Karan Venayagamoorthy joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as an assistant professor in January 2008. Karan received his B.S. in civil engineering and master's degree in civil engineering from the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa in 2000 and 2002 respectively. Karan then received his Ph.D. in 2006 from Stanford University specializing in environmental fluid mechanics and hydrology.

Dr. Domenico Bau is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Bau received his degree in Civil Engineering at the School of Engineering of the University of Padova, where he also worked as a research scientist following graduation. His work experience on the impact of anthropogenic activities on the environment prompted him to enter the PhD program in Environmental Engineering at MTU, which he completed in 2006.

Dr. Sybil Sharvelle is an Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and is a member of the Environmental Engineering focus area. Dr. Sharvelle attended the University of Colorado for her B.S. and M.S. degrees and received her doctoral degree from Purdue University, where she developed a biological processor for treatment of graywater for potable reuse during long duration space missions.

Dr. Mazdak Arabi is a Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. He is teaching and actively conducting research in the water resources management and planning and environmental engineering areas. After receiving his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran, Mazdak became a graduate research assistant and then a received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2005.