CEE Investiture Ceremony honors leading engineering faculty

Rooted in long-standing tradition, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison celebrated a milestone moment with one of the largest investiture ceremonies in the College of Engineering on December 5. Highlighting incredible achievements and unwavering dedication, five faculty members were honored with named professorships at the event, reflecting their impact on teaching, research, and the broader engineering community.

“As dean of this great college, and a longtime faculty member, I deeply appreciate the high-level of innovation, motivation, commitment—and most of all, time—that are required to be successful as a professor at a major research institution,” shared Dean Ian Robertson.

The named professorships and faculty honorees recognized include:

• M.A. Mortenson Company Construction Engineering & Management Assistant Professorship – Dr. Zhenhua Zhu is an Assistant Professor in the area of construction engineering and management. He joined us in 2019 after receiving a PhD in Civil Engineering from Georgia Tech followed by a stint on the faculty at Concordia University in Canada. He is the co-director of the Construction Technology Lab and leads the Digital and Robotic Construction research group. His research focuses on advancing information and robotic technologies to drive automation and innovation in construction project delivery. His work has been supported by various federal and industrial funding agencies and recognized with awards, including the Best Overall Paper Award at the 2024 Construction Research Congress and the Best Academic Paper Award at the 2022 Conference of Transforming Construction with Reality Capture Technologies.

• Alain H. Peyrot Associate Professorship – Dr. Hannah Blum is an Associate Professor in the area of structural engineering. She joined us in 2018 after receiving a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Sydney in Australia. She has a wide range of active research on metal structural systems including steel, cold-formed steel, and stainless-steel members, steel joist and deck systems, metal buildings, and extended reality in structural steel fabrication. Her approaches include member and large-scale experimentation, advanced computational analysis, structural stability, structural reliability, and data-driven design approaches. She has received several early career research awards in addition to multiple teaching innovation awards for her pioneering development and use of extended reality technology in structural engineering education. She actively serves on multiple professional committees related to the development of design standards for steel, cold-formed steel, and stainless-steel structures.

• Arno Lenz Memorial Associate Professorship of Water Resources Engineering – Dr. Daniel Wright joined us in 2016 after receiving a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University. His research, teaching, and outreach focus on extreme rainfall, floods, and how both are influenced by meteorology, urbanization, and climate change. His work has been supported through numerous research grants including a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellowship at Goddard Space Flight Center and a National Science Foundation CAREER award, while his research achievements have been recognized via an American Geophysical Union Early Career Award and a Vilas Early Career Investigator Award, among others. He co-founded the Infrastructure Working Group within the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts and is a co-author on the 5th National Climate Assessment, which provides a comprehensive overview of climate change and its past, present, and future impacts on the United States. His team’s pioneering work on probabilistic rainfall and flood hazard simulation has formed a centerpiece of FEMA’s Future of Flood Risk Data, which is a multi-billion-dollar initiative to map flood hazard and risk nationwide.

• Keith and Jane Nosbusch Associate Professorship in Engineering Education – Dr. Andrea Hicks is an Associate Professor in the area of sustainable systems engineering. She joined us in 2015 after receiving a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work focuses on the environmental impacts and sustainability implications of emerging technologies, with a goal to understand the environmental impacts prior to widespread adoption. She studies emerging technologies because there are greater opportunities for design changes the earlier a technology is in the design process. She sincerely wants to make the world a better place through engineering. Andrea also holds the Hanson Family Fellowship in Sustainability and is the Director of Sustainability Education and Research through the Office of Sustainability.

• Harvey D. Spangler Professorship – Dr. Xiaopeng Li is a professor in the area of transportation engineering and an affiliate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He joined us in 2022 after receiving a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign followed by a stint on the faculty at the University of South Florida. His team is working on modeling and field tests of emerging transportation technologies, including autonomous vehicles, connected vehicles, and electric vehicles. He leads the Connected and Automated Transportation Systems Lab (CATS) Lab. The CATS lab developed a multi-scale connected and automated vehicle testbed including multiple full-scale and reduced scale connected and automated vehicles and associated units.

• Distinguished Professorship of Water Resources Engineering – Dr. Steven Loheide has been a faculty member for 18 years, joining the department immediately after completing his PhD in Hydrogeology from Stanford University in 2006. He has been an integral player in building the water resources engineering group over that time. He has an unwavering and unselfish commitment to the department, having stepped-up to serve on countless committees over the years and currently providing leadership as an Associate Department Chair where he always approaches issues with a holistic approach that considers the interests of the entire department. Steve is an ecohydrologist–his research focuses on the interactions between ecological and hydrological processes in natural and built systems. His approaches use a combination of field data, remote sensing, and numerical modeling to promote water security and sustainability. The interdisciplinary nature of his research has led him to build strong connections across campus, leaving an indelible mark on the University through his co-founding of Water@UW which fosters connection, communication, and collaboration among members of the diverse UW-Madison water community.

Congratulations to all, and thank you to the donors who made these professorships possible!