PRANESH B ASWATH: Hi Welcome back.

Today we're going to be talking about civil engineering as a discipline.

As we saw earlier when we were discussing the history of engineering,
civil engineering is actually one of the oldest fields in engineering.
And that's manifested by structures such as the pyramids in Egypt--
which date back almost 5,000 years-- and the Roman aqueducts-- which
are over 2,000 years ago.
So most of the aspects of civil engineering in those days
were largely in the area of structures-- building buildings and water transport.
Today when you think of civil engineering,
it's much broader than that.
It encompasses a number of additional fields.
These may include topics such as new building development, bridges, dams,
earthquake mitigation studies.
Will also include things like air pollution,
water management, and so forth.
And more recently-- I would say in the last 100, 150 years--
topics such as transportation, transportation management
are all fields which have evolved within the civil engineering field.
In addition, you find that today-- with the advent of cheap computing
powers, cheap electronics and so forth-- it
is possible to have what we call smart buildings, smart hospitals.
These are all systems where not only are you dealing with the structure
aspect of the building, but we're also using the building
as a living system where you can monitor multiple things
and manage them adaptively.
In other words, where based on certain specific preset conditions
you can change the temperature in the building
or you can changed the lighting in a building, and so on and so forth.
Or even music in a building.
So these are all areas that bring in interdisciplinary nature
in civil engineering, including fields such as architecture, chemistry,
physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, material
science, and also fields such as art come into this picture.
So civil engineering today is a much more interdisciplinary field,
and that has manifested itself in the type of degree offerings
that you can get.
Traditional civil engineering degrees have all the normal things,
such as structures, water.
It also includes design, mechanics, transportation, and so forth.
But today you can also specialize in new areas like architectural engineering
and so forth.
In order to give you a better perspective
on the field of civil engineering, we have four faculty members
who will be discussing some of their areas of research
so that you get a different perspective on all the different areas
that you can work in if you get a degree in civil engineering.
The first faculty member you will be exposed to
is Professor Melanie Sattler.
Professor Sattler got her bachelor's degree in civil engineering
from Texas A&M University and her master's and Ph.D. degrees from UT--
University of Texas at Austin.
Her area of research is in two focal areas.
The first area she focuses primarily on air pollution and air pollution
mitigation and control.
And in the second area she works in the area of energy conversion,
particularly converting biomass into useful fuel.
Now you can see that this is not your traditional civil engineering,
but one of those hybrid areas between civil engineering
and environmental engineering.
And in her presentation she's going to talk about energy conversion from waste
to treasure in a sense, converting waste mass into bio gas.
The second faculty member, you'll be hearing from
is Professor Stephen Mattingly.
Professor Mattingly got his bachelor's degree
in civil engineering from Rice University,
and master's degree in civil engineering from University of Texas at Arlington,
and a Ph.D. from University of California in Irvine.
His area of research is in transportation.
And he's associate professor in civil engineering department
here at UT Arlington.
And this presentation is primarily going to focus
on the application of high-speed, on the feasibility of high-speed rail.
And in particular he'll be focusing on high-speed rail as an alternate
to car transportation, air transportation,
and other traditional modes of transportation.
The third faculty member I will be introducing you to
is Professor Anand Puppala.
He is also a professor in civil engineering and associate
dean of research in the college of engineering.
He earned his bachelor's degree in civil engineering
from Andhra University, a master's degree in civil engineering
with a specialization in geotech from the Indian Institute of Technology
in Madras, and a Ph.D. in civil engineering
again with a geotech focus from Louisiana State University.
His area of research is in soil mechanics.
In particular, he looks at expansive soils, soil management-- essentially
looking at soil modification and sustainable
use of soil in civil structures.
And his presentation is going to primarily focus
on sustainable buildings using methods by which you can reuse materials
for structural applications as well as for soil mitigation.
The last presentation you'll be hearing from is from Professor Sia Ardekani.
He got his bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. All from University of Texas
at Austin in the area of civil engineering.
And he also works in the realm of transportation.
However, his focus areas is a little bit different.
He focuses more on traffic flow theory, transportation-related issues
like traffic management, as well as public transportation.
And his presentation is primarily going to focus
on traffic flow related issues.
And so that way you'll get a little bit of a different perspective
on different areas of civil engineering.