Rail transportation depends on infrastructure that is both resilient and reliably maintained. Yet across the United States, track-related failures remain a significant safety and operational challenge. Over the past two decades, more than 13,000 track-caused accidents resulted in over 960 injuries and $2.6 billion in reportable damage. While they represented about one-quarter of reportable rail […]
Read MoreFor Rupesh Uprety, earthquake engineering isn’t just an academic discipline—it’s personal. When the 2015 Gorkha earthquake devastated his home country of Nepal, Uprety was a second-year undergraduate student. Witnessing the destruction inspired him to dedicate his career to designing safer, more resilient buildings for communities in earthquake-prone regions. Today, as a Ph.D. student at the […]
Read MoreLuis Ibarra, assistant professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, is one of six professors from the University of Utah that have been named Fulbright Scholars for the 2026-27 academic year. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and administered by the Institute of International Education, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program selects over 800 […]
Read MoreThe University of Utah is taking a leading role in advancing smart mobility and rail safety with the launch of a new $1.5 million Odometry Lab, funded by the Utah Legislature in 2025. Led by CvEEN faculty Drs. Cathy Liu, Xuan (Peter) Zhu, and Chenxi Liu, the lab is a cross-disciplinary collaboration that unites engineering faculty, students, and […]
Read MoreWe’re proud to announce that a team from the University of Utah’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has received the Best Poster Paper Award at the International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, held at Stanford University from September 9–11, 2025. The award-winning paper, titled “Locating crack tip in Mode-I fracture tests of engineered wood by acoustic emission and […]
Read MoreIn 2023, a 9,300-foot freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, OH, causing chemical fires, evacuations, and major disruption. This disaster was largely attributed to outdated brake regulations and the shortcomings of the current railroad safety and operations protocols. Since 2020, over 4,000 trains have derailed in the U.S., with nearly 70 percent […]
Read MoreDesigning effective pavements—an essential infrastructure component used extensively—requires detailed information about material properties. Unfortunately, gathering this information involves complex, time-consuming tests. As a result, engineers frequently forego these tests and instead rely on average or default values, which might not accurately reflect the properties of the materials used. This can lead to incorrect predictions about […]
Read MoreCivil & Environmental Engineering (CvEEN) professor Dr. Chris Pantelides’s research is revolutionizing wood construction. Sitting in his office in the Meldrum Civil Engineering Building, Dr. Pantelides holds up a block of composite wood, about 12 inches long and 10 inches wide, and smiles. “What you’re looking at here is the future,” he says. The deceptively simple […]
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