Updates and Announcements
Digital Twin Workshop
the C2SMART Team at UTEP hosted a workshop focused on Digital Twin Technologies and how they might be adopted in El Paso. We had attendees from the City of El Paso, TXDOT El Paso District, the El Paso MPO, and UTEP with facilitation by the Texas Innovation Alliance Team out of UT Austin. All in all, a very successful event. Looking forward to Phase II.
PASS in Seattle
PASS Labber Jose Lugo presented his Digital Twin work, along with Julio Gallegos at the ASCE Transportation & Development Institute ICTD conference in Seattle. Honorary PASS Labber Lauren Brown also presented her poster. We also got noodles with some colleagues from Cal Poly.
Congrats Jose!
Long-time PASS Labber Jose Luis Lugo successfully defended his thesis titled “Reconstruction of As-Built Civil Infrastructure using LiDAR to Support Digital Twin Visualization.”
Way to go Paola!
Congratulations to Paola Saenz (Karen P.). I have known Paola since my second term here at UTEP (Spring 2017) and have seen her progress through her Bachelor’s Degree and now her Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering degree. Good luck Paola! Make us proud.
Congratulations!
The first cohort of students in the Smart Cities Dual Master Program, a collaboration between Czech Technical University and The University of Texas at El Paso, has passed their thesis defense and state examination! Congrats to Eliska, Katerina, and Martin! We will miss you all…
Research & Collaboration Pipeline
Dr. Weidner is partnered with Dr. Walker and Joe Feuille on a unique project for the El Paso Water Department. The RCP project will help EP Water maximize the benefits of a long history of research with UTEP and create a roadmap for future collaboration. Dr. Weidner will focus on feasibility and sustainability assessment of pilot research projects.
New Community Project
In January, we kicked off a collaborative community-centered effort that will start as a Senior Design project but will hopefully grow beyond that in the future. The goal is to help create housing for homeless vets in El Paso. The team visited the site and met with stakeholders in early February.
Congrats to
Paola Santillano!
Paola successfully defended her M.S. thesis titled “Building Energy Model Simulation of a Single Building in Comparison to a Broader Building Stock” in December of 2021. Paola explored Building Energy Modeling at the single building and urban scale to understand how building inventories could help cities not only become more climate resilient but also more energy efficient. Her case study focused on the UTEP campus.
Accelerated Bridge Construction
Dr. Weidner is partnered with several faculty at Texas A&M University on a three-year research project focused on developing continuous for live load details for accelerated bridge construction of steel multigirder bridges.
New Publication!
Check out what happens (analytically) when you put eccentric load on multigirder bridges with constrained bearings. TLDR; it’s not great. The question is “Does this happen on actual bridges?” Click here to see the paper.
Congratulations to Sarah Ballard!
Sarah successfully defended her Master’s Thesis titled “Bridge Prioritization and Preservation along Route 66” on April 16, 2021. Sarah modified a risk-based approach to prioritization for bridge management to incorporate risks associated with loss of historical significance for bridges. Her project was partially sponsored by the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program. Sarah is the newest alumnus of the PASS Lab and is now teaching mathematics at Coronado High School.
Green Transportation Infrastructure
Dr. Weidner, Co-PIs Dr. Alex Mayer and Dr. Kelvin Cheu, and industry partner Quantum Engineering, were awarded a grant from the CTECH University Transportation Center to develop a framework for identifying locations for green infrastructure implementations in urban desert environments. Specifically, the project will focus on identifying locations that maximize benefits across a range criteria including pedestrian and vehicular safety, reduction of heat island effects, pavement management, and of course, stormwater management.
Digital Twins
Dr. Weidner, along with Co-PIs Dr. Adeeba Raheem and Dr. Kelvin Cheu, were recently awarded a grant from the C2SMART University Transportation Center to study how Digital Twin technology can be used for infrastructure management. The project will focus on developing a digital twin model of the UTEP campus and exploring how the technology can be used to in conjunction with transportation infrastructure.
History of Engineering on Route 66
In the Spring 2021, I have finally started to teach the course I’ve developed out of a grant from the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program. We are using the Mother Road as a lens through which we exploring the past as well as the future.
Welcome to FRONTIER
In the Fall of 2020, the new Interdisciplinary Research Building opened on the UTEP campus and I was fortunate to be a PI on a new research group, the FRONTera Intraplate Earthquake Research collaborative. We are focused on the geophysical, infrastructural and societal challenges that are associated with earthquakes that occur where we don’t expect them, as opposed to plate boundaries.
Remote Teaching
Since the COVID19 restrictions were put in place, this has become the hub of teaching and research for the PASS Lab. This is the home office, or as my sons call it, the LEGO room. You can see the Millenium Falcon from Solo and Rexcelsior from LEGO Movie 2, along with some of our collection of bricks. LEGO has helped me and the boys creatively pass some time at home, along with exercise, schoolwork, chores, gardening, art, and of course iPad time. Everyone stay safe.
UTEP Student Steel Bridge Team competes in Arlington.
The SSBC team competed in the AISC Steel Bridge Competition. Challenging connections and some last minute damages led to a disappointing finish for the team, but we represented UTEP well. We’re on to 2021.
Meeting Bill Baker
PASS Lab alum Bryan Stephens (far right), now living in Chicago, recently had the opportunity to meet William Baker (2nd from left), the Chief Structural Engineer of the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai at a Structural Engineer’s Association of Illinois meeting. Also pictured are UTEP alumni Jonathan Tavarez and Ana Guzman. Bryan did not have the opportunity to relay to Bill that I teach an entire lecture using only quotes from him.
Senior Banquet Fall 2019
The Fall term has come to a close with the Biannual Senior Banquet. This year we honored a great group of students as they move on to bigger and better things. It was also my first class of senior design students and I was given the honor of giving a short speech and handing out awards. All in all, a very fun night. Shown here is PASS Lab undergraduate research alum and soon-to-be graduate student - Paola Santillano.
Senior Design 2019
The graduating seniors in the UTEP Civil Engineering class of Fall 2019 presented their final Senior Design Presentations on November 22nd. There were a total of seven groups who were tasked with identifying a piece of undeveloped or underdeveloped real estate in El Paso and developing that land to its highest purpose. Pictured here are the judges pulled from industry and government who provided feedback to individual Senior Design teams and the class as a whole on their designs and presentations. Dr. Weidner is the instructor of record for Senior Design II.
Texas Mobility Summit 2019
On November 17-19th, Dr. Weidner traveled to San Antonio with representatives from the City of El Paso, the El Paso TxDOT District Office, and the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization for the fourth annual Texas Mobility Summit. The Mobility Summit is the annual meeting of the Texas Innovation Alliance. The meeting focuses on bringing together diverse teams of regional stakeholders from around Texas to address mobility challenges through innovation. Find out more about the Alliance here.
MiniCAST
On October 19th, Dr. Weidner gave an invited talk at the MiniCAST conference hosted at UTEP. The conference brings together STEAM teachers from the region. This year the keynote took the form of lightning talks where 10 UTEP professors gave 20-slide five minute talks. Dr. Weidner’s talk was titled “Community Resilience in Low Probability, High Consequence Hazard Areas” and was focused on developing a building inventory specific to the El Paso area.