News Message from the Chair

Student Quality on the Rise

We are always proud and eager to share the activities and accomplishments of our students and our dedication to providing them the best education possible. Our successful ABET accreditation last year is a testament to the breadth and depth of educational outcomes achieved by our students. Our undergraduate student enrollment continues to surge—both in quantity and quality—and we currently have close to 280 undergraduate students. You will find examples of numerous awards bestowed on our exceptional students in this newsletter.

Faculty Members Excel

Our faculty members continue to make outstanding professional and scholarly accomplishments in support of our mission and our national and international recognition. To propel our interdisciplinary-minded vision ahead, we hired two outstanding faculty members this year. Xu Liang, who joined us from the University of California–Berkeley, brings amazing talent to address large-scale problems in hydrology and global climate change. Piervincenzo Rizzo, who joined us from the University of California–San Diego, brings unique expertise in developing new solutions for nondestructive infrastructure health monitoring. You can read more about them and all of our outstanding faculty in this newsletter. We currently are searching for two new faculty members in the areas of structural engineering, and mechanics and sustainability, and I am confident that I will report on two new extraordinary faculty members who have joined our department in my next newsletter.

Leadership

As you may expect, my role is to lead the faculty in their quest to accomplish their goals of outstanding professional stature through the creation of a collaborative vision, forging partnerships with other academic institutions, industry, and government, and helping to find the resources that they need to fulfill their aspirations. We were able to expand our long and successful collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) by signing a $25 million five-year agreement, which designated Pitt as one of the leading institutions in the state to assist PennDOT in the development and implementation of new technologies and operational strategies in the transportation sector.

The department continues to serve the public with a variety of educational and outreach programs. Through the support of our industrial partners, we have developed an undergraduate Mining Engineering Certificate and graduate Transportation Engineering Program to meet the ever increasing demand in these engineering disciplines. We also have added significant focus on green construction in our Construction Management Program. Our participation in the Local Transportation Assistance Program will serve to transfer information on state-of-the-art technology in construction and maintenance of roads and bridges.

In closing, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to our many loyal alumni and friends for their continuous and generous support of our department. Arguably, we are one of the most fortunate departments in the country today in this respect.

We invite you to read this newsletter and share your ideas, challenges, and collaboration.

Radisav D. Vidic, PhD, PE
Professor and Chair