AWARDS
Guo and Ph.D. students receive awards at recent ACWE and EMI conferences
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering
Associate Professor Yanlin Guo and four Ph.D. students received awards at two recent conferences. The 15th Americas Conference on Wind Engineering (ACWE) was in held in St. Louis, Missouri from May 19-22 and the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) was held in Anaheim, California from May 27-30.
“I am deeply honored and humbled to be recognized individually, and even more excited to see my students’ hard work and excellent performance acknowledged at these prestigious venues,” said Guo.
“Their success is a testament to their dedication and the strong mentoring culture we strive to cultivate in our department and at CSU. These recognitions also reflect the CSU team’s ongoing contributions to the professional wind engineering community and demonstrate that we proudly carry forward the legacy of Professor Jack Cermak and the enduring inspiration of CSU alumnus Professor Ahsan Kareem.”
This was the first year ACWE held the Advances in Wind Engineering Student Paper Competition – CSU students received two of the three awards!
Guo received the Giovanni Solari Award for Junior Researcher from the International Association of Wind Engineering (IAWE) for her significant and original contributions to system identification with applications to wind engineering, hurricane-resistant design, and use of novel platforms in research and education.
Anarak received the Best Student Paper Award in the Advances in Wind Engineering Student Paper Competition at the 15th Americas Conference on Wind Engineering for her paper titled “Validating Debris Flight Model in Highly Turbulent Boundary Layer Flows Using Wind Tunnel Testing.”
Elnahla received the Best Student Paper Award in the Advances in Wind Engineering Student Paper Competition at the 15th Americas Conference on Wind Engineering for his paper titled “Statistical Characterization of Extreme Wind Duration Using Surface Observations in the U.S.”
Fatehi received the Best Student Paper Award in the Fluid Dynamics Committee Student Paper Competition at the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2025 for his paper titled “Machine Learning-Based Optimization for Enhancing Aerodynamic Performance of Multi-Row Ground-Mounted Solar Trackers.”
Xiong received 3rd place in the Objective Resilience Student Paper/Presentation Competition at the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference 2025 for his paper titled “Uncertainty-aware Fragility Modeling of Urban Building Exteriors Subjected to Hurricane-induced Windborne Debris with Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets.”
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Ahsan Kareem of the University of Notre Dame, for his longstanding guidance and unwavering support. I am also sincerely thankful to the following scholars for their valuable contributions and dedicated efforts in research collaboration and co-advising students:
I also want to express my deepest gratitude to the College of Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at CSU for fostering a vibrant ecosystem that encourages researchers to learn, grow, and thrive—thanks to the strong support from the Dean’s Office and Department Head, as well as the opportunity to draw on the experiences and insights of colleagues. This achievement would not have been possible without their continued encouragement and backing.
Sincerely,
Yanlin Guo, Associate Professor