Dear CEE Community and Friends,

As the fall term comes to an end, I would like to first wish you all a happy and healthy holiday break.

December’s newsletter highlights an agreement made at the 2022 United Nations climate change conference and a new joint research project between MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, UMass Dartmouth, and Michelin DDi to improve road safety measures. We share new research co-authored by Prof. Markus Buehler that uses nature to design more sustainable materials, and a new study from Prof. Cathy Wu focuses on task underspecification in deep reinforcement learning. 

Also in this issue, we share a profile on Prof. Otto Cordero and his research on microbial ecosystems, and postdoc Muchun Liu discusses her research and a fun fact about how she stays refreshed in our Postdoctoral Spotlight. 

Lastly, we share a recording from the November 28th C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker lecture with Alan Needleman, and we remember Reza Mirzaeifar, a former postdoc in Prof. Buehler’s lab.

Sincerely,

Ali Jadbabaie

JR East Professor

Department Head, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering

Core Faculty, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

After two weeks of international negotiations, the 2022 United Nations climate change conference (COP27) reached a historic agreement to provide low-income countries compensation for "loss and damage," however progress on plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions was limited. Prof. Elfatih Eltahir was also in attendance to present plans for Jameel Observatory Climate Resilience Early Warning System (CREWSnet).

Road safety joint research project begins

Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm and PhD student Meshkat Botshekan, both MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub members, have teamed up with Michelin DDi and UMass Dartmouth to research road safety. In particular, the partnership is studying how near-miss data can inform preventative road safety measures.

A new study co-authored by Prof. Markus Buehler highlights recent developments in bio-inspired nanocomposites, and how engineers are using nature to design tougher, more sustainable materials.

The Impact of Task Underspecification in Evaluating Deep Reinforcement Learning

New research from Prof. Cathy Wu shows that despite the hype around deep reinforcement learning (DRL), these methods remain highly brittle. In this paper, Prof. Wu explores the problem of task underspecification in relation to traffic signal control.

Faculty Spotlight: Prof. Otto Cordero

Prof. Otto Cordero answers some of life's most basic questions through his studies of microbial ecosystems and the fundamental factors and constraints that shape living communities. "The challenge is discovering something that applies across organisms and across environments," he says.

Postdoc Spotlight: Muchun Liu

Postdoc Muchun Liu discusses her research and development of biodegradable silk-based microcapsules to replace microplastics found in agricultural and cosmetic products.

C.C Mei Distinguished Speaker Series: Prof. Alan Needleman

Alan Needleman, Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, gave a talk on “Discrete defect plasticity & implications of requiring non-negative dissipation” on November 28.

Reza Mirzaeifar (1982-2022)

Reza Mirzaeifar, former postdoc in Markus Buehler’s LAMM lab, passed away on October 19. After completing his postdoctoral work at MIT in 2014, he joined the faculty of Virginia Tech as a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Learn more about his life and career.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Civil 

and Environmental Engineering

77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 1-290 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 

(617) 253-7101

CEE.MIT.EDU