Faculty Research Grants

Dr. Patricia Gallagher (PI, CAEE) in collaboration with Drs. Chuck Haas, Patrick Gurian, Frank Moon, Rich Weggel, Mira Olson, Joe Wartman (CAEE) and Scott Knowles (CoAS) recently received the Department of Education - Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) for the project entitled, “Drexel University GAANN Fellowships in Urban Hazard Mitigation: Creating Sustainability and Resilience.” The goal of the awarded GAANN program is to foster the development of engineers to meet the emerging and diverse challenges associated with modern society’s demands for resilient cities, renewable urban infrastructure, sustainable growth and environmental quality.The budget for this three-year program is $511,524

Drs. Michael Piasecki and William Regli were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation's Office of Shared CyberInfrastructure for the project titled, CI-TEAM Implementation Project: Cyber-Infrastructure for Engineering Informatics Education. This one year project was awarded $900,000 and includes faculty from the University of North Carolina, the University of Maryland and the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Michael Piasecki (PI) was awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the project, CUAHSI/CLEANER Demonstration and Development of a Test-bed Digital Observatory for the Susquehanna River Basin and Chesapeake Bay. This project includes researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Michael Piasecki was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for the project, Development of Informatics Infrastructure for the Hydrologic Sciences, phase II. This collaborative project includes researchers from the University of Texas, Utah State University, Duke University and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. This is a 5-year project awarded: $4,500,000.

Dr. Aspasia Zerva was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for the project titled, SGER: Sensitivity Analysis of Concrete Gravity Dams Subjected to Non-Uniform Seismic Excitations. Amount of award: $74,987

Dr. Michael Piasecki was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for the project, CEO:P--A Prototype System for Multi-Disciplinary Shared Cyberinfrastructure: Chesapeake Bay Environmental Observatory (CBEO). The project includes researchers from Chesapeake Research Consortium, Johns Hopkins University, University of Delaware, San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of Maryland and Hampton University. Total funding for the project: $2.15 million.                                 

Dr. Aspasia Zerva was awarded $67,832 from the National Science Foundation for her project, Simulated Acceleration Time History.

Dr. Chuck Haas, Department Head of Civil, Architerctectural and Environmental Engineering, along with Co-PIs including Drs. Franklin Moon, Jin Wen, Patrick Gurian, Agami Reddy, Emin Aktan, Mohana Shankar, Tony Hu (IST) and Mun Choi has recieved several doctoral fellowship positions available through the “Educating Renaissance Engineers” GAANN Fellowship program. Motivated by the societal challenges associated with our ailing urban infrastructure, this program aims to develop a new category of CAE Engineers - renaissance CAE Engineers - capable of effectively educating future infrastructure managers. In addition to being well-versed in traditional CAE paradigms, such renaissance engineers will be capable of exploiting ongoing technological advancements as well as communicating information to support decisions of the non-technical stewards of critical infrastructures. Amount of award: $504,000

Joseph Wartman (PI) and Patricia Gallagher (co-PI) were awarded a $395,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the Research Experience for Undergraduate site "Engineering Cities." The multidisciplinary REU site will be led by the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, and include participation of faculty from other departments in COE, as well as the College of Arts and Sciences and the Lebow College of Business. The site will focus on research and education in five overlapping areas: (i) Analysis and Mitigation of Natural and Anthropogenic Hazards, (ii) Environmental Quality and Sustainability, (iii) Civil Infrastructure Assessment, (iv) Risk Analysis and Management, and (v) Application of Advanced Technologies for Urban Engineering.

Charles Haas, Betz Professor of Environmental Engineering, and Head of the Department of CAEE, is co-PI of a cooperative agreement awarded by NSF to establish a project office to organize the environmental community around a center called CLEANER, the Collaborative Large-scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research. The effort will be headquartered at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and will initially comprise a $2 million two year effort. The consortium of university for this project include Drexel, the University of Illinois, and the University of Iowa. Drexel's portion will be $230,000.The goal of CLEANER is to better understand complex and human-stressed environmental systems so that needed action can be taken, such as managing and protecting U.S. water supplies, restoring altered ecosystems, preserving endangered species and tracking harmful agents.

Michael Piasecki, Assoc. Professor in the CAEE department, and William Regli (PI), Assoc. Professor in CS, were selected for award through the NSF CI-Teams program.Through this project, Drexel University will lead a consortium of universities including the University of Maryland (College Park), University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and the University of Wisconsin (Madison). The project will investigate the "Creation and Use of Multi-Disciplinary Engineering Models". The project will be for one year and has a budget of $250,000.

Patricia Gallagher, Assistant Professor, PE, is part of a team awarded the first National Science Foundation NEESR Grand Challenge: Seismic Risk Mitigation for Port Systems. This $3.6 million Grand Challenge project utilizes the resources of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), a program initiated by the National Science Foundation to advance the field of earthquake engineering. The team is led by Georgia Tech and includes researchers from University of California-Davis, University of Texas-Austin, MIT, University of Washington, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Decision Research Inc., Natural Hazards Management, Inc., and Seismic Systems & Engineering Consultants, Inc. Dr. Gallagher’s portion of the award is $360,000. The goal of the project is to investigate remediate soils in port structures such as wharves and piers.

Jin Wen, Assistant Professor of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering, received an award from ASHRAE for the proposal "Tools for Evaluating Fault Detection and Diagnostic Methods for Air-Handling Units,” a 2-yr project with a cost of $113,623. Professor Wen also received a Small Grant for Exploratory Research award from the National Science Foundation for the proposal "SGER: A Smart Indoor Air Quality Sensor Network," a 1-yr project with a cost of $49,952.

Grace Hsuan, Patricia Gallagher and Joseph Wartman of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering received a $349,267 National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant for the acquisition of a high resolution x-ray tomography unit.(A. zavaliangos, H.M. Goldman. S.R. Kalidindi, W. Sun. R. Cairncross, C. Cheng, F. Ko, D. Breen)

Franklin Moon, Assistant Professor, and Ahmad Hamid, Professor, received a grant from the Portland Cement Association entitled “In-plane Cyclic Response of Partially Grouted Reinforced Masonry Shear Walls Constructed with Masonry Cement Mortar.” The objective of this project is to investigate the influence of masonry cement mortar on the seismic response of partially grouted reinforced masonry shear walls. This objective will be accomplished via 12 cyclic tests on full-scale masonry shear walls with three primary control variables: aspect ratio, vertical compressive stress, and mortar type. The project will be completed within two years and has a budget of $163,498.

Patrick Gurian, Charles Haas, and Grace Hsuan have been awarded $99,956 by the American Water Works Association Research Foundation for their proposal "Removal of Arsenic from Drinking Water by Sorption to Iron-Coated Fibers"