Newsletter • Summer 2016 • Volume 3

What a Wonderful IDEA!

The Innovation, Diversity, and Education Activities (IDEA) working group is an important component of the CBBG. Led by Deputy Director Claudia Zapata of ASU, the IDEA working group is responsible for developing programs and activities that stimulate creative and innovative thinking, create a supportive atmosphere in which students from non-traditional backgrounds feel welcome, inspire students at all levels to pursue careers in biogeotechnical engineering or other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields, and develop lesson plans and curriculum for K-12 through graduate school and continuing education/professional development programs. Other members of the IDEA working group include Education Director Willi Savenye of ASU, Education Coordinator Jean Larson of ASU, Diversity Director Martha Mitchell of NMSU, Pre-College Director Susan Brown of NMSU, Student Leadership Council Chair Michael Gomez of UCD, UCD Education and Diversity Lead Colleen Bronner, Georgia Tech Education Lead Wendy Newstetter, ASU Diversity Lead Delia Saenz, and Georgia Tech Diversity Lead Felicia Benton-Johnson.

The IDEA working group has been hard at work since the first day of CBBG operations, enthusiastically and energetically developing programs and building partnerships within our communities. One

of the major accomplishments of the IDEA working group was the successful development and implementation of three CBBG summer programs: the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program, the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, and the Young Scholars (YS) program. In the RET program, eight K-14 teachers at ASU and two K-12 teachers at Georgia Tech spent 5 weeks working side-by-side with CBBG researchers in our labs in the morning and developing lessons for their classes in the afternoons. They will pilot these lessons in their classes in the fall, and the refined lesson plans will be posted to the CBBG website and disseminated through other educational channels for others to use. In the REU program, 13 undergraduates from universities and colleges that are not CBBG members spent a week together at ASU and then 7 weeks working with a CBBG mentor on a project of their own in a laboratory at one of the four CBBG partner universities. In the YS program, 8 high school students from the greater Phoenix area worked in the ASU CBBG laboratories with a mentor on a project of their own. The REU students will be invited to present posters on their projects at the CBBG Annual Meeting in October. Highlights of these summer programs, which ran concurrently, included a variety of webinars coordinated by the CBBG Education Team, the Student Leadership Council, and the Industrial Partner program. During the first week of the program, the Student Leadership Council delivered a series of webinars on “Biogeotechnics 101,” which introduced participants to the Center’s fundamental principles. During subsequent weeks, Senior Investigators delivered presentations about their CBBG projects, and CBBG Industry Partners made presentations on career opportunities. These webinars were attended not only by summer program participants, but also by CBBG researchers and staff.

Other IDEA activities in this first year of CBBG operation have included: a series of webinars on innovation, leadership, and diversity for CBBG students, faculty, and staff; demonstrations and

presentations about CBBG concepts in elementary schools in all four University communities; visits to CBBG headquarters and laboratories by students from the Phoenix Indian Center on two occasions by a total of 130 students; participation in Engineering School-sponsored community outreach activities at ASU (Night of the Open Door and Discover-E Day) and NMSU (Rube Goldberg, Robotics, and Adobe Architecture summer camps and Science Saturdays), including hands-on experiments and displays; and participation in a summer camp for girls and a summer teachers workshop at UC Davis. CBBG staff also hosted Career and College booths at the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) Region 3 conference in Farmington, New Mexico and at the American Indian/Indigenous Teacher Conference in Flagstaff, Arizona, and met with the Navajo Trails Task Force in Window Rock, Arizona to discuss collaboration with teachers and community leaders of the Navajo Nation. The IDEA working group also has begun work on undergraduate curriculum development, starting with a module for first-year university “Introduction to Engineering” courses, and initiated discussions on collaboration with elementary and secondary schools and community colleges in the local communities of all four CBBG partner Universities. More information on these IDEA initiatives is provided later in this newsletter.

What a truly wonderful IDEA (working group) it is!

Center for Bio-mediated &Bio-inspired Geotechnics

Edward Kavazanjian, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., D.Ge, NAERegents’ Professor and Professor of Geotechnical EngineeringDirector, Center for Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired GeotechnicsSchool of Sustainable Engineering and the Built EnvironmentIra A. Fulton Schools of EngineeringEmail: edkavy@asu.edu

Important DatesAugust 15, 2016 Project Center Closes for Grant Year 1

September 21, 2016 CBBG Annual Report Due to NSF

October 22, 2016 ASU Homecoming (CBBG Outreach Activity)

October 25, 2016 CBBG Rehearsal Day for NSF Site Visit

October 26-27, 2016 NSF Site Visit to CBBG

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Cultivation System Developed by Georgia Tech Graduate Student

Ph.D. student Xiaoxu Sun of the Kostka lab at Georgia Tech, working in collaboration with CBBG senior investigator, Dr. Sheng Dai, has developed a cultivation system for testing the bio-mediated transformation of fluids and gases exposed to high pressures in the subsurface. Ongoing experiments are being conducted with this new system.

New Publication on Microorganism

Dr. Ferran Garcia-Pichel, Dean of Natural Sciences at ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and CBBG Researcher, and Brandon Guida, doctoral candidate in the ASU School of Life Sciences, have published their findings on how one microorganism erodes coral reefs in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/04/28/1524687113.abstract).

2016 Fulton Faculty Exemplars

2016 Fulton Faculty Exemplars recently were announced by Kyle Squires, Dean of the ASU Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. These faculty are associate or full professors who have a combination of high research productivity, instructional load, student evaluations, and doctoral student mentoring. This year’s awardees include:

ResearchHighlights

New Beginnings

CBBG Student Leadership Council Vice President, Alejandro Martinez, who graduated in December with his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech, and who has been working there

as a post-doctoral fellow since December will be leaving Georgia Tech to assume his new position as an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of California, Davis. Alejandro’s research specialty includes bio-inspired geotechnical engineering. He will continue to be involved with CBBG.

Katerina Ziotopoulou, Ph.D, has been hired by the Geotechnical Engineering Group at the University of California, Davis as an Assistant Professor. Her expertise is in numerical modeling and centrifuge testing. She will become involved in modeling the constitutive engineering properties of bio-improved soils and in evaluating the effectiveness of bio-cementation and bio-film to reduce liquefaction hazard susceptibility.

Mike Gomez, a former Ph.D. student and Student Leadership Council President at the University of California, Davis has been hired as a new faculty member at

the University of Washington. Mike plans to continue his work on bio-mediated soil improvement and remain engaged in the CBBG ERC.

Gabby Hernandez, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Davis has graduated and has decided to continue her graduate work at University of California, Davis as part of the CBBG ERC.

Xiaoxu Sun of Georgia Tech (left) develops new cultivation system (right)

Dean Garcia-Pichel

Associate Professor Cesar TorresCBBG Researcher in the ASU School for

Engineering of Matter, Transport, and Energy

Associate Professor Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, CBBG Thrust Leader, in the School

of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment

Professor Enrique Vivoni, CBBG Researcher in the ASU School of Sustainable Engineering

and the Built Environment

Professor Narayanan Neithlath CBBG Researcher in the ASU School of Sustainable

Engineering and the Built Environment 2

Awards and Recognition

CBBG senior investigator and Bio-THCM cross-cutting lead Dr. Chloe Arson has been pro-moted to Associate Professor and granted tenure at Georgia Tech. Chloe’s current CBBG research is seeking to understand accommodation, adaptation and competition of biological networks such as roots and similar systems to optimize the efficiency, resiliency and versatil-ity of underground utility networks. She is currently working with the City of Atlanta and several private companies to explore potential applications of the research.

CBBG co-PI and Resource Development Thrust Leader, Dr. David Frost, was appointed as the Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor of Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech. Bill, who is a Georgia Tech BSCE graduate, is President and CEO of ET Environmental, an environmental and energy design-build firm. ET Environmental is the eight entrepreneurial venture for Higginbotham, who has founded several other successful businesses that he has sold. Elizabeth, his wife of more than 25 years, had a successful career in corporate accounting and mortgage banking. We look forward to their future involvement with CBBG.

Dr. Ximin He, Assistant Professor and CBBG Researcher, received a $37,500 research award from the U.S. Department of Energy for her project, “Harnessing Chemo-mechanical Energy Transduction to Create Systems that Selectively ‘Catch and Release’ Biomolecules.”

CBBG Senior Investigator, Dr. David Hu, who is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Biology at Georgia Tech, recently gave a lecture at Renaissance Weekend (http://www.renaissanceweekend.org/home.htm) in Banff, Canada on his bio-inspired research. Late last year, Hu was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize at Harvard University. The award was given by Improbable Research, which celebrates research that “makes people laugh and then think.” The idea is to challenge what is considered important scientific research and illustrate that valuable information can come from more trivial subject matters.

On April 28, 2016, the ASU Fulton Student Organizations (FSO) presented CBBG Center Director, Dr. Ed Kavazanjian, with the Outstanding FSO Faculty Advisor award for his work with Engineers Without Boarders (EWB), noting that Ed is a strong presence in the EWB team, always available to support the project teams with the civil engineering design work, supports students participating in EWB conferences countrywide, and is very responsive to questions posed by the EWB Technical Activities Committee.

Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, Associate Professor, Co-PI of CBBG and Environmental Protection and Ecological Restoration Thrust Leader, will utilize her expertise as part of the research team in a new $2 million grant project from the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office to significantly increase yields of algal biomass feedstock to ramp up production of biofuels. Dr. Peter Lammers, a research professor with the ASU Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, leads the research team.

Dr. Narayanan Neithalath, Professor and CBBG researcher, will be awarded the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) at their annual meeting in Portland, Oregon September 2016, in recognition of his enormous strides in research to improve the design and development of sustainable infrastructure and construction materials.

Professor Jason DeJong and Mike Gomez of the University of California, Davis, and Brian Martinez, Chris Hunt, Len deVlaming, David Major, and Sandra Dworatzek of Geosyntec Consultants were awarded the Telford Premium Journal Prize for the journal paper “Field-scale bio-cementation tests to improve sands” in the Ground Improvement Journal (Volume 168 Issue 3, August 2015). The paper presents results from an MICP field trial experiment completed by UCD and Geosyntec Consultants. The award presentation will take place on October 7, 2016, at the Institution of Civil Engineers ceremony in London.

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Out & AboutDr. Jason DeJong, CBBG Co-PI, Hazard Mitigation Thrust Leader, and Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering department at the University of California, Davis, gave a presentation on April 27, 2016, entitled “The Emergence of Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnical Innovation” to the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University.

On May 9-11, 2016, Dr. Jason DeJong, gave a presentation on “Sustainable Biogeotechnics” at the University of Dundee. While there Professor DeJong also discussed collaborating for bio-inspired geotechnical design and organizing at 2017

workshop on bio-inspired design.

On July 7, 2016, Dr. Jason DeJong was invited to speak as part of the three week short course held at the Technical University of Delft in The Netherlands, and organized by TU Delft and ETH Zurich. DeJong’s presentation was entitled, “Sand: An (in)finite resource?”

On April 9, 2016, Dr. Alissa Kendall, CBBG Researcher and Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Davis, made a presentation entitled, “Engineering Careers” to high school and middle school students on pursuing careers in Engineering, including geotechnical engineering and themes from CBBG (bio-inspired geotechnics). The Cesar Chavez Youth Leadership Conference was held at the University of California, Davis.

Mohammed Nassar, a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of California, Davis attended the 2016 Interpore Conference in Cincinnatti, Ohio on May 9-12, 2016 where he gave a presentation on numerical modeling of biocementation experiments. This is an international conference for porous media. It aims to unite diverse disciplines who study and work with porous media.

Dr. Colleen Bronner, CBBG Researcher and Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Davis, organized a panel session, “Strategies for Recruiting and Retaining Underrepresented Groups (URGs) in Engineering” at the 2016 Environmental and Water Resources Institute Congress on May 24, 2016. Speakers included Monica Paloma (Cal Poly Pomona), Cecilia Elmore (Missouri S & T) and Bronner.

On June 3, 2016, Dr. Doug Nelson, CBBG Researcher and Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Davis, presented at the CBBG Summer Program Orientation for REU students, teachers, and young scholars on “ Bio-mediated geotechnics through bio-stimulation of bacteria: Introduction to bacterial enrichments and two case studies.”

Deviyani Gurung, at Masters’ student at the University of California, Davis attended the 2016 Goldschmidt Conference in Yokohama, Japan on June 26-July 1, 2016. She gave a presentation on numerical modeling of biocementation experiments. Goldschmidt is the largest conference for geochemistry and other related fields.

From July 17-19, 2016, Dr. Ed Kavazanjian, CBBG Center Director and Regents’ Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University, attended the NSF Workshop on “Geotechnical Fundamentals in the Face of New World Challenges.” Ed and Jason DeJong, CBBG Co-PI and Hazard Mitigation Thrust Leader, co-authored the white paper on biogeotechnics for the workshop. Professor Kavazanjian delivered one of the keynote talks and mediated the breakout session on biogeotechnical engineering. The invitation-only workshop was attended by 50 geotechnical researchers from around the United States.

CBBG Co-PI and Resource Development Thrust Leader and Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Dr. David Frost, gave a plenary keynote lecture at the Inaugural Transportation Research Conference in Beijing in June, 2016 to an audience of more than 1500 attendees. Frost’s lecture entitled, “The Evolving Role of Materials in Infrastructure Engineering,” highlighted materials innovations inspired by nature and the role of CBBG in the emerging field of bio-geotechnics. Frost will be giving a similar lecture at the Civil Engineering Research Conference in Ireland in August, 2016.

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Meet Some of Our Students

Abdullah AlmajedAdvisor: Edward Kavazanjian

Arizona State UniversityEnzyme Induce Carbonate Precipitation for

Soil Improvement

Megan AltizerAdvisors: Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown,

Cesar TorresArizona State University

Electrokinetic Sub-surface Transport for Mineral Precipitation and Bioremediation

Matthew BurrallAdvisor: Jason DeJong

University of California, Davis Root-Inspired Foundations

Charles GraddyAdvisors: Douglas Nelson, Jason DeJong

University of California, DavisMicrobial Ecology of Stimulated Ureolytic

Biocementation

Deviyani GurungAdvisor: Tim Ginn

University of California, DavisSubsurface Flow and Reactive Transport

Modeling

Alizée M. JenckAdvisor: Edward Kavazanjian

Arizona State UniversityCreation of a Low-Permeability Bottom

Barrier in Situ at Shallow Depth

Wencheng JinAdvisor: Chloe Arson

Georgia Institute of TechnologyHydro-Thermo-Chemo-Bio-Mechanical

Coupled Multiscale Fracture Propagation Modeling in Geomaterials

Seth MallettAdvisor: J. David Frost

Georgia Institute of TechnologyBio-inspired Plant Root Infrastructure

Foundations

Ali NasirianAdvisor: Douglas Cortes

New Mexico State UniversityGUSANO: Utilitarian Subterranean Annelid

Inspired Geo-Probe

Jose N. PasillasAdvisor: Paola Bandini

New Mexico State UniversityRoot Inspired Soil Reinforcement Systems

Alena RaymondAdvisor: Jason DeJong

University of California, DavisA Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

Framework for Geotechnical Engineering

Mark ReynoldsAdvisors: Hinsby Cadillo-Quiroz;

Rosa Krajmalnik-BrownArizona State University

Increasing Methane Composition of Biogas Collected from Landfills

Audrey SmithAdvisor: Lambis Papelis

New Mexico State UniversityZeolite Sorption for Remediation of Arsenic Oxyanions

Miriam WoolleyAdvisor: Ed Kavazanjian Arizona State University

Enzyme Induced Carbonate Precipitation (EICP) Application to Prevent Soil Erosion by Wind

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CBBG Summer 2016 Research Experiences

Out of 187 applicants, 29 highly qualified, innovative, and sustainably-minded participants were selected to participate in the first year of CBBG’s three summer programs: Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), Research Experience for Teachers (RET) and Young Scholars (YS). Thirteen undergraduates (REU), eight K-14 teachers (RET), and eight high school students (YS) were immersed in technical research working in CBBG labs, and exposed to a broad scope of projects this summer.

All 29 summer participants spent the first week of the program at Arizona State University for orientation. There they completed the required safety training, “Biogeotechnics 101,” and participated in various webinars from Thrust Leaders and other Center researchers, lab tours, workshops on leadership and design thinking, and fun, hands-on activities. Ten of the REUs spent the next seven weeks at the CBBG partner universities: Georgia Institute of Technology, New Mexico State University, and University of California, Davis, but remained in contact through weekly webinars on innovation, inclusion, professional development, and research topics. During the last week, the REUs from the four campuses each shared their research via Vidyo conferencing.

After working in the labs in the mornings, the RETs met to work on CBBG-based curriculum to take back to their classrooms. A session was arranged so the CBBG RETs could share their lesson plans with RETs from QESST (another NSF-funded ERC headquartered at ASU). The high school students in the Young Scholar Program worked each day in the CBBG labs, and worked with their mentors to create a research poster based on their project. A poster reception was held in the ASU University Club on June 29th, so the students could present their research to family and friends. All participants will be invited to participate in the NSF Site Visit to CBBG on October 26-27, 2016, and will continue collaborating as mentors in different outreach activities organized by CBBG.

Education & Outreach

Summer program participants with ASU faculty, students, and staff

Scott Currier, RET Participant

Summer program participants with NMSU faculty

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Rube Goldberg Summer Camp at NMSU

New Mexico State University invited students to explore engineering and creativity at its best by hosting a Rube Goldberg summer camp, May 31st to June 4th. Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist and inventor best known for creating crazy and complicated machines to accomplish very simple

tasks. During summer camp, students learned about Rube Goldberg Machines, chose a simple task, and designed and built machines that would make Rube proud.

Camp included speaking with CBBG researchers about the various engineering problems they were investigating and the solutions to these issues they were identifying. Several groups moved forward to design a Rube Goldberg solution to a CBBG problem.

Robots Rule at NMSU

On June 6 through June 10, 2016, students at New Mexico State University became members of the robotics revolution.

Robotics Camp was crawling with robots built by students. They used VEX IQ Robots, which are wirelessly controlled. Once

they built the robots, the students competed in challenges such as going different directions and taking samples of the soli for an engineer to examine.

Designing Adobe Architecture

During the last two weeks in June, 48 high school students from across New Mexico, as well as students from other states, spent two weeks on the NMSU campus. Student groups worked together to build walls using adobe blocks made from soil tested with the jar test (to determine the best soil to use based on correct ratios). They built adobe walls, designing ways to make the walls sturdier. Then, the walls were tested with the earthquake table as the students cheered while their walls were tested. Dr. Brad Weldon and Dr. Paola Bandini did an excellent job of presenting information about CBBG and the work that NMSU researchers were doing to identify ways to preserve adobe structures.

The PREP students were asked to develop and present posters based on one of the modules or topics that were covered during the summer academic program. Four of the 12 teams selected topics based on CBBG research. These teams placed among the top presenters!

Students participate in Rube Goldberg Competition

Students build robots at NMSU

Students at the NMSU build and test adobe wall structures

Participating in NMSU Rube Goldberg Competition

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upcoming eventsupcoming events

Summer Programs at Georgia Tech

This summer, four CBBG REU students (Briana Astorga, Kendra Jackson, Lindsay Leonard and Claire Stewart) and two CBBG RET teachers (Tara Jones-Lawrence and Angenette Planter), along with several other undergraduate students (Mykala Jones, Karie Yamamoto) and an RET teacher supported by an NSF Prime grant (Rebecca Reher) conducted research on bio-inspiration from ants and roots at Georgia Tech, along with graduate students Wencheng Jin and Olga Shiskov (working with Dr. Chloe Arson and Dr. David Hu) and Mahdi Roozbahani, Seth Mallett and Alejandro Martinez (working with Dr. David Frost).

Learning through LilyPad Arduino

Students at NMSU explored ways to design, code and program LilyPad Arduino. Through hands-on activities, the students learned about current technologies such as LED, conductive thread the microcontrollers.

The students created interactive objects that can sense the physical world. This helped them develop an understanding of robotics, computing, and engineering.

Phoenix Indian Center Visits CBBG

The Phoenix Indian Center (PIC) brought 115 high school students from their Summer Academy to visit CBBG on July 14th, 2016. Students were first treated to an interesting talk by Dr. Otakuye Conroy-Ben, Assistant Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at ASU. The PIC students sent questions in advance for Dr. Conroy-Ben, ranging from “What tribe are you?” and “What are your hobbies?” to “Why did you choose this job?” and “What classes should I take to prepare for this career?” Dr. Conroy-Ben enthusiastically answered all of the questions, in addition to discussing the native culture/science overlap. The students then were divided into four groups and toured several CBBG labs. Dion Shurley, one of the PIC high school students, was also a CBBG Young Scholar, and spent five weeks this summer working on a research project in a CBBG lab. Dion led his peers on a tour of the Geotech Lab, and presented his research findings from his CBBG project, “Monitoring pH and alkalinity changes for a dilution series of the low-activity Jack Bean Urease enzyme.” Farouq Hanoon, one of the CBBG Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program participants, also explained his research to one group on the effectiveness of using microbes to repair cracked concretes.

Several CBBG undergraduate and graduate researchers at Georgia Tech with plants and ant hill structures that they have been studying. Included in the picture from L. to R. are Mahdi Roozbahani (PhD), Karie Yamamoto (BS), Claire Stewart (REU), Kendra Jackson (REU), Lindsay Leonard (REU), Mykala Jones (SURE) and Alejandro Martinez (Post-doctoral Fellow).

Dr. David Frost and Summer Program Participants

Dion Shurley presents poster on his research project

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Partner Universities

How does nature do it?Nature has developed elegant, efficient and sustainable biologically-based solutions to many challenges that vex geotechnical infrastructure systems. Examples include ant excavation processes that are 1000 times more energy efficient than man-made tunneling machines, carbonate cemented sand that is exceptionally resistant to erosion and earthquakes, and self-sensing and self-healing tree root structures that are 10 times more efficient than any mechanical soil reinforcing/foundation system yet devised.

The NSF Engineering Center for Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics (CBBG) will focus on ecologically friendly, cost-effective solutions, inspired by nature, for development and rehabilitation of resilient and sustainable civil infrastructure systems. It will serve as a nexus for two transformative trends in engineering: biologically-based design and sustainability.

biogeotechnics.org

CBBG is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center funded in 2015 under cooperative agreement EEC-1449501, and headquartered at Arizona State University.