Graduate students compete to represent the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering during the 2018 Poster Competition
Ramla Qureshi (left) receives first prize in the department of civil, structural and environmental engineering graduate poster competition. Graduate studies director Alan Rabideau (right) presents her award
By Peter Murphy
Published March 23, 2018 This content is archived.
The 2018 Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineer Department’s Poster Competition saw a structural PhD student take first place, and two environmental engineering students finish in second and third.
Fourteen MS and PhD students participated in the competition, doubling the number of contestants from last year’s event. Students representing multiple research areas within the department gave the audience and 10 faculty judges a variety of projects and ideas to review.
Alan Rabideau, Director of Graduate Studies for the department, presented four awards to the students with the top three scores. Ramla Qureshi, a PhD student received first prize and an award of $250 for her poster titled Active Boundary Conditions for Structural Fire Testing. Research in the area of fire testing has accelerated over recent years. Qureshi has been working to develop a small-scale experiment for hybrid fire testing as part of her research. More information about Qureshi’s research is available at this link.
The department’s Graduate Student Association (GSA) president, Abhishek Pathak, worked with other GSA members within the department to develop the student’s choice award, which Qureshi also received.
Abdulrahman Hassaballah received second place and $150 for a poster highlighting his research, Inactivation of E. coli, Enterococcus spp. and somatic coliphage in secondary wastewater by peracetic acid (PAA), sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) and ultraviolet (UV) light. He recently discussed this research during the 2018 New York Water Environment Association, Inc. (NYWEA) conference.
Third place and $100 went to Yanbin Cui for his poster and research titled One-pot synthesis of glycerol derived mesoporous Fe0/C and Fe3O4/C for Cr (VI) treatment. He and Hassaballah were just two of the many contestants from the well-represented environmental engineering discipline.
“We look forward to this event every year,” says Joe Atkinson, professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering. “It’s an opportunity for the faculty to learn a little about research outside of their own discipline. We’re very proud of all of our students.”
Qureshi and Hassaballah will represent the department in two additional poster competitions next month; the School of Engineering and Applied sciences competition, on Monday, April 16, and the University-wide competition during the Annual Celebration of Student Academic Excellence on Thursday, April 26.
To see more photos from the poster competition, visit this link.