News & EventsDepartment Events
Events
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Sep30
EVENT DETAILS
lessBuildings increasingly need to provide acceptable thermal conditions and indoor air quality while reducing energy use and remaining resilient to extreme weather events and grid disruptions. This presentation examines thermal, air quality, and energy resilience in the built environment using metrics, experiments, and modeling. It emphasizes thermal and air quality resilience during extreme heat and cold, indoor air quality and human exposure, and the performance of older existing buildings with aging systems and envelopes. Several examples, ranging from Chicago’s existing housing stock to broader measurement and modeling studies, will be presented to characterize resilience, evaluate existing metrics and limits, and develop improved strategies and guidelines for buildings facing extreme weather and indoor environmental quality challenges.
TIME Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Ezri Alfie ezri.alfie@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct2
EVENT DETAILSmore info
lessManufacturing with Embodied AI
Celebrating manufacturing-related R&D achievements and their business impacts on National Manufacturing Day!
Leadership Remarks
-Northwestern University President Mung Chiang
-National Center for Manufacturing Sciences President and CEO Lisa Strama
-Northwestern University Provost Erik LuijtenCorporate Panel, Stan Rendon, 3M VP of R&D, Yu Cao, Applied Materials Chief AI Officer and Amey Deosthali, AMD Head of Robotics, Industrial & Healthcare (Physical AI)
NU Faculty Panel, Prof. Jian Cao, Prof. Ed Colgate, Prof. Mark Hersam, Prof. John Rogers
Founders/SME Panel, Jason Sebastian, Executive VP QuesTek Innovation, Demeng Che, co-Founder & CEO Converge Lab, Gino Domel, CEO HiDeNN-AI, Joe Mullenbach, co-founder Fluid Reality
Ecosystems Panel, Tom Kurfess, CTO, NCMS & Executive Director of Mfg Institute at Georgia Tech, Berardino Baratta, CEO MxD, Allison Fisher, Chief of Staff mHUB
TIME Friday, October 2, 2026 at 8:15 AM - 5:00 PM
LOCATION 2001 Sheridan Road map it
CONTACT Maegen Gregory maegen.gregory@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation
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Oct2
EVENT DETAILS
lessSingle-cell to pore-scale insights into manganese biomineralization for metal recovery
TIME Friday, October 2, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct3
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering's 2026 Fall Career Fair.
TIME Saturday, October 3, 2026 at 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION Louis Room, Norris University Center map it
CONTACT Andrew Liguori andrew.liguori@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct7
EVENT DETAILS
lessFaults that accommodate earthquakes are often embedded in hundreds-meter-thick fractured rocks, i.e., fault damage zones. The San Andreas fault, for example, is surrounded by a 150–200 m wide fault damage zone with 30–40% seismic wave reductions. Because such major faults can host M7 earthquakes that cause strong ground shaking in nearby populated regions, it is essential to understand how earthquakes grow in fault damage zones and whether their source properties and ground motions are strongly modulated by the fractured rocks. My talk will demonstrate how seismic waves in damage zones can profoundly affect how fast earthquakes grow and how quickly slip arrests on the fault in dynamic rupture simulations. I will also discuss the theoretical prediction that earthquakes in damage zones can rupture faster than the shear wave speeds of host rocks. Such supershear rupture can propagate stably at a range of speeds usually considered as unstable and cause large ground motions at long distances.
TIME Wednesday, October 7, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct9
EVENT DETAILS
lessRecent Developments Using DIC Measurements and Advance Algorithms for Material Characterization
TIME Friday, October 9, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION Hive, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center map it
CONTACT Ezri Alfie ezri.alfie@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct9
EVENT DETAILS
lessExploring the Metabolic Architecture of Wastewater Comamonas
TIME Friday, October 9, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct14
EVENT DETAILS
lessPatterns in Porous Media
TIME Wednesday, October 14, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Charles Martell charles.martell1@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct16
EVENT DETAILS
lessABSTRACT: Pathogenic viruses are responsible for the majority of infectious disease risk from sewage-contaminated water, yet our current monitoring systems were not designed to detect them. Regulatory frameworks rely on bacterial indicators that poorly predict viral risk, and direct viral detection at health-relevant concentrations remains technically challenging given the extraordinary diversity of human viral pathogens. This talk presents our group's work developing quantitative viral metagenomic approaches and identifying robust novel viral indicators for environmental waters, and discusses how this work connects to wastewater-based epidemiology, showing how the same molecular tools that improve water quality monitoring can enable real-time tracking of community disease dynamics as demonstrated during COVID-19 and beyond. I will close with a perspective on how quantitative viral surveillance will reshape both water safety regulations and proactive public health intervention.
BIO: Kyle Bibby, PhD, PE, BCEE is the Keating-Crawford Collegiate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, where he also serves as Director of the ECI Water Initiative. His research group focuses on molecular tools for environmental pathogen detection, novel fecal indicator development, and wastewater-based epidemiology. His work has been recognized with an NSF CAREER Award, the 2025 AAEES University Research Grand Prize, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher designation in 2023 and 2025. He currently serves on the WHO roster of experts updating the global drinking water quality guidelines.
TIME Friday, October 16, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Charles Martell charles.martell1@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct16
EVENT DETAILS
lessMolecular Tools for Water Quality and Public Health Surveillance
TIME Friday, October 16, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Charles Martell charles.martell1@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Oct23
EVENT DETAILS
lessEpigenetics, Biological Aging, and Epidemiology
TIME Friday, October 23, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Nov4
EVENT DETAILS
lessOn the Role of Large Language Models and Agents from the Scientific Record to Certified Mechanics and Our Classrooms
TIME Wednesday, November 4, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Nov6
EVENT DETAILS
lessHow the exposome in infancy influences trajectories of chronic inflammation, aging, and disease
TIME Friday, November 6, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Nov11
EVENT DETAILS
lessCould we use instabilities instead of avoiding them? Mechanical instabilities are usually seen as failure modes. However, recent work shows they can instead be harnessed to give structures rapid, switchable, and adaptive behaviors. Snapping instabilities, for example, allow sudden transitions between stable shapes. In this talk, I introduce countersnapping, a new type of snapping instability in which a structure becomes stronger and stiffer as it snaps, giving rise to programmable stiffness, tunable natural frequency, and hinting toward the possibility of domino-like wave propagation. I will discuss some avenues on how mechanical instabilities could be used to reach structural adaptability using propagation waves.
TIME Wednesday, November 11, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Nov13
EVENT DETAILS
lessManagement of powerline corridors affects biodiversity and provision of ecosystem services in the Chicago metropolitan region
TIME Friday, November 13, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Nov18
EVENT DETAILS
lessPermeability is a key property governing fluid transport in geomaterials and plays an important role in subsurface energy technologies such as deep geothermal stimulation, geological CO₂ sequestration, and hydrogen storage. In low-permeability rocks, however, conventional permeability measurements such as the classical transient pulse-decay test can take days, making rapid and reliable characterization challenging. This research seeks to infer permeability from the early-time portion of transient pressure measurements using the Integral-Balance Method. The early-time pressure distribution within the rock specimen is first represented by an assumed profile function, and global mass conservation will be then enforced by integrating the governing equations over the evolving difusion front. This technique reduces the original system of partial differential equations describing the test to a system of ordinary differential equations, leading to a robust regression procedure for determining rock permeability from early-time pressure data. A laboratory test using Vermont serpentinite successfully validated the method. Further extension of the framework to field-scale diagnostic tests, such as pressure fall-off test, will also be discussed.
TIME Wednesday, November 18, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Ezri Alfie ezri.alfie@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)
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Nov20
EVENT DETAILS
lessInvestigating Stream Connectivity and Water Quality Across Space and Time
TIME Friday, November 20, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Logan Hart logan.hart@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)