With the AI revolution upon us, it’s easy to see technology and human beings on opposite sides of a spectrum. But for Duncan Griffin, director of sustainability for HDR’s Health Design Practice, technological developments only enhance the possibilities for human healing and comfort. In episode 176 of ASCE Plot Points, Griffin talks integrated sustainable design and why a holistic approach to potential outcomes is essential to infrastructure.
ASCE members know Rossana D’Antonio as a member of the Society’s Board of Direction. She is the executive director for NV5, a global consulting firm. Prior to that, she was the deputy director of the Los Angeles Department of Public Works. And she's been very active throughout ASCE - especially in sustainability and advocacy efforts. But what you might not know is the tragedy that struck her family nearly two decades ago when her brother - a professional pilot - died in a plane crash. D'Antonio ...
Tania Stewart is a transportation engineer for the Maryland Department Of Transportation State Highway Administration. Tania Stewart is a professional photographer whose work has taken her across the globe. Both things can be true. The multitalented Stewart has been able to pursue both careers – civil engineering and photography – at the same time. In episode 174 of ASCE Plot Points, Stewart talks about how she makes it work and why each of her passions tie into and help the other. Learn more ab...
The ASCE member mother-daughter team of Minerva Rodriguez and Isabella Salgado celebrated buying a new house last June in the very nice Altadena neighborhood of Los Angeles. Rodriguez, P.E., PMP, M.ASCE, the mentorship chair for the ASCE Metropolitan Los Angeles Branch; Salgado, A.M.ASCE, the social chair. Both professional civil engineers. It was a storybook situation. Until last week. The Eaton Fire – part of a devastating series of wildfires in Los Angeles County – forced the family to leave ...
It goes without saying. IRONMAN triathlons are intense. Cold-water swimming for 2.4 miles, followed by 112 miles on a bike, and capped off with a 26.2 marathon run. It takes someone special to conquer such a challenge. Perhaps someone like a civil engineer? Isaac Kontorovsky is a principal and vice president for BKF Engineers as well as vice president of the ASCE San Diego Section, and he recently took on IRONMAN California. Swim, cycle, run – all of it. And he found a lot of common ground betwe...
This ASCE Day – coming up next week, Nov. 5 – will mark ASCE’s 172nd anniversary. And that’s a very long time. For an organization to last for so many years, it needs great leadership and great leaders who give back. Jean-Louis Briaud and Knut Eriksen are two such leaders. Each is a member of the ASCE Foundation’s 1852 Society, a very select group of people who have generously given more than $100,000 to the Foundation during their lifetimes. In episode 171 of the ASCE Plot Points podcast, Briau...
A new school year is upon us. That is a very exciting proposition for civil engineering students worldwide, for ASCE, and for everyone lucky enough to use and enjoy the infrastructure these young engineers will design and build in the future. But what’s it like being a civil engineering student in 2024? What’s the most exciting part? “Being a civil engineering student at any time had to be amazing, but being a student, particularly in 2024, is fantastic because of all the new opportunities and t...
Dr. Ayanna Howard discusses the current and future impact of AI on civil engineering, highlighting its integration into everyday technologies and specific applications like digital twins and site surveying. She emphasizes the growing accessibility of AI tools and their potential to enhance efficiency and sustainability in the field, as well as the importance of incorporating AI concepts into engineering education. The conversation also covers Dr. Howard's personal journey into robotics and the evolution of AI technology.
Christine Rice, P.E., M.ASCE, is a project engineer for Wood Rodgers in Sacramento, California, and former governor for ASCE’s Region 9. But as of last week, her resume might have a new top line: game-show contestant. Rice competed on the June 3 episode of “Weakest Link,” hosted by Jane Lynch on NBC. She brought all of her civil engineering knowledge and experience with her. Would it be enough to prove that she was not the weakest link? In episode 168 of the ASCE Plot Points podcast, Rice detail...
May in Washington D.C., means United For Infrastructure Week. ASCE marked the occasion by releasing a new economic study called Bridging the Gap, analyzing the additional potential costs to both the U.S. GDP and the American taxpayer if IIJA levels of infrastructure investment aren’t continued beyond 2026. Infrastructure Week also is a great opportunity for collaboration. Case in point: ASCE and the Global Infrastructure Investor Association, an organization representing the private sector on a ...
Diniece Mendes is director for freight mobility at the New York City Department of Transportation and serves on the ASCE Transportation and Development Institute’s Board of Governors. She’s also – as of this spring – a movie star. Mendes is one of five ASCE members to feature in the new IMAX film Cities of the Future, playing on giant screens around the world. In episode 166 of ASCE Plot Points, Mendes talks about the movie experience, living and working in New York, and what she sees as the mos...
Los Angeles is No. 1 on the 2024 list of ASCE Best Places for Civil Engineers. That’s three straight years for L.A., if you’re keeping track at home. So what’s the city’s secret to success? What’s so special about the civil engineering scene there? Ruwanka Purasinghe, P.E., M.ASCE, civil engineering associate for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and president-elect of the ASCE Los Angeles Section, has some answers. In episode 165 of ASCE Plot Points, Purasinghe talks about, yes, wha...
Aaron Shavel is New York through and through. Born and raised there – and now works as a project manager for TCE, specializing in rail infrastructure. And New York breeds a certain kind of toughness. Where did Shavel learn his civil engineering toughness? From his civil engineering mom. In episode 164 of ASCE Plot Points, Shavel talks about growing up around his mom’s civil engineering projects as a kid and why he thinks now is a golden age for civil engineering.
Erin Novini has blended chemical engineering with environmental engineering as an engineering specialist for consulting firm Trihydro since 2005. And in that nearly two-decade span, she’s seen sustainability develop in the corporate world quite a bit. In the conclusion of the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute Environmental Health and Water Quality Committee’s sustainability miniseries, Novini discusses her career, her work, and how she sees sustainability playing in the corporate ...
It's part two of the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute Environmental Health and Water Quality Committee’s sustainability mini-series on the ASCE Plot Points podcast. Christopher Chini started his undergrad studies at Texas A&M majoring in computer science. But found he wanted to make a more tangible, direct impact on communities and on the environment. Today, he’s a research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Labs and a former chair of the EWRI Sustainability Committe...
This Earth Day, the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute’s Environmental Health and Water Quality Committee is a launching a sustainability mini-series on ASCE Plot Points. Three podcasts this week; three different sustainability professionals discussing how they’ve navigated their careers to keep issues of sustainability at the forefront. Up first is Emily Grubert, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, associate professor of sustainable energy policy in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the Uni...
Is civil engineering leadership about people? Or is civil engineering leadership about technical expertise? Yes. Civil engineering leadership is all of that and more in 2024. Lauren Taylor is a great example of civil engineering leader in the modern era, blending people skills with project management. Taylor Taylor works for WSP, based in Austin, Texas, as the Texas planning and advisory services lead. Last month, she was named an ENR Top 20 under 40 young professional. In episode 160 of ASCE Pl...
“We all want to do something that matters,” Isabella Salgado says. She is a civil engineer for the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering and the social activities chair for the ASCE Los Angeles Younger Member Forum. And one way she’s found recently to connect to something larger is advocating for the profession as part of the ASCE Legislative Fly-In. In episode 159 of ASCE Plot Points, Salgado talks about her eye-opening trip to Washington, DC (including meeting one of her idols), and how sh...
Travis St. Louis and Michael Palmer are evangelists of sorts for modular construction and design. Each took their backgrounds in architectural engineering and moved into the modular construction practice from different angles – St. Louis on more of the civil engineering side as an enclosure engineer and associate principal for Simpson, Gumpertz, and Heger based in Oakland, California; and Palmer more on the business side as head of strategy and real estate for the Volumetric Building Companies, ...
Alyssa Sooklal, P.E., M.ASCE, has accomplished a lot early in her career. She works as a water resources engineer for McCormick Taylor in Baltimore, and serves as president of ASCE’s Maryland Younger Members Group. But it hasn’t come without moments of frustration or insecurity. Office politics are a real thing, especially when you’re a woman in the civil engineering industry – and especially if you’re a woman sensing competition with other women in your industry. It’s not always easy to navigat...
Can you be a good parent and a good engineer at the same time? Ravi Shah thinks so. Or at least he’s trying his best to do both. Shah is a longtime active ASCE member in Orange County, California, where also works as a senior project manager for Mark Thomas. And more recently, he’s a father. In episode 156 of ASCE Plot Points, Ravi Shah talks about work-life balance and what he’s learned about juggling priorities.
Even in this era of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding, every project can use more money. It’s why grant writing is such a valuable skill in the world of civil engineering. Rebecca Neilon is a senior transportation engineer in Dewberry’s Sacramento office. And over the years she has developed a reputation of sorts as a go-to for grant writing. She has proven herself as someone who delivers the goods – she writes proposals and she wins grants. In episode 155 of ASCE Plot Points, Rebecca Neilon...
Shofiq Ahmed was a 2023 ASCE New Face of Civil Engineering honoree. So it’s clear that the traffic engineer for HDR, born in Bangladesh and now based outside Washington, DC, has made quite a name for himself. But it hasn’t always been easy. In episode 153 of ASCE Plot Points, he reflects on his journey and talks about how he’s adjusted his goals and plans along the way to stay on the path of success and happiness.
A new book from ASCE Press called IRP 8, Infrastructure System Resilience: An Engineering Framework for Assessment, Management, and Governance, breaks the big picture of system resilience into interlinked elements, making application much easier for practitioners. It's a strong case for incremental progress in the face of complex and complicated problems. Craig Davis is a founding director of ASCE’s Infrastructure Resilience Division and the book’s lead editor. In episode 152 of ASCE Plot Points...
The best thing you can do for your career is to make consistently smart, thoughtful decisions that align with what you are trying to accomplish in this life. But what exactly are you trying to accomplish? What makes you happy? Who are you? Nalah Williams is still early in her career, but she’s already got a great understanding of herself. She’s the owner Golden Mane Property Management in Dallas, Texas; she’s been active in the ASCE Dallas Branch as deputy treasurer and younger member chair; and...
ities of the Future, a new film for IMAX and giant screens, is on its way. The second in a partnership between ASCE and MacGillivray Freeman Films, following 2017's rousing success Dream Big: Engineering Our World, the film is scheduled to premiere in early 2024. Cities of the Future, inspired in part by ASCE's Future World Vision initiative, takes viewers into the future of what's possible for our built environment. Several ASCE members feature in the film, including Paul Lee, a young engineer ...
Julia Williams has never done anything exactly as you might expect. So when she got her Ph.D. in English, she took a professor job at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and has spent the past decades teaching writing and communication skills to STEM majors. And now she’s written a book about her experiences innovating and shaking things up in academia. It’s called “Making Changes in STEM Education: The Change Makers Toolkit.” In episode 149 of ASCE Plot Points, Williams talks about her new ...
Matthew Low is the chief operating officer for Hoyle Tanner and Associates, based in Manchester, New Hampshire, and with regional offices in Florida and throughout New England. But he didn’t always have his eye on leadership. He grew into it – learning where his specific interests and talents lay and working to build his skillset from there. In episode 148 of ASCE Plot Points, Low talks about his career path into leadership and why taking proactive steps in your career always is the best plan....
The competition for civil engineering talent right now is well-documented. And in an industry still coming out of the pandemic shake-up, that means innovation and efficiency are paramount. In episode 147 of ASCE Plot Points, the Georgia Department of Transportation’s Donn Digamon, a state bridge engineer, and Ahsha McQuain, a civil engineer, talk about how they’ve continued innovating and motivating during the often-tumultuous 2020s.
