RETTEW announces Ed Reese as new vice president

RETTEW, a multi-discipline engineering and consulting firm, has introduced Edward Reese as vice president. Reese’s responsibilities will serve a dual purpose: direct RETTEW’s offices in Pittsburgh, PA and Canton, OH and lead transportation business development firm-wide. As the regional manager, he will oversee 78 staff members in their daily operations and be responsible for developing, maintaining, and strengthening the growth of RETTEW in the region. In his role as business development lead, Reese will generate, maintain, and expand RETTEW’s presence in both the local region and within the transportation focus area. He will nurture relationships with key, strategic clients and develop new business to improve transportation infrastructure throughout western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.

Reese brings more than 25 years of experience in the engineering field, including business development, regional marketing, strategic planning, and senior leadership positions in the transportation, water and wastewater, civil and municipal, and environmental market sectors. Prior to joining RETTEW, Reese served as a senior vice president of HDR, an international engineering, architecture, and consulting firm. He was responsible for transportation marketing, strategic planning, government affairs management, and business development. A Pittsburgh-area native and resident, Reese is a graduate from Penn State University with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree.

RETTEW began in 1969 as a single-person office and today has more than 400 employees and 11 offices in Colorado, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.rettew.com.

Chemical engineers publish vision for the future

Possible solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges are outlined in a new report published recently by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). Chemical Engineering Matters focuses on securing sustainable energy supplies, food and nutrition, access to clean water, and health and wellbeing, four areas where chemical engineers can make a positive impact. The report explores the application of chemical engineering and presents current thinking on safety and risk, education, training, and research. It maintains that there will be no universal solution to meet growth in global energy demand. The report acknowledges that fossil fuel assets will maintain a central position in the world’s energy economy for decades but warns that a shift towards decarbonisation and sustainable energy use is required.

Population growth, industrialization, and urbanisation are cited as the main factors increasing pressure on water supplies. The report suggests that the role of the chemical engineer in delivering sustainable water solutions is underplayed and that chemical engineers must explore new ways of promoting process technology in securing viable industrial and municipal water supplies.

Published in Manchester, UK, the document insists that the Institution remains politically neutral but does cite the need for greater engagement with policymakers to ensure decisions that impact funding and regulation be evidence-based.  It also highlights the need for increased public engagement to overcome a negative, often inaccurate, public perception of chemistry, chemicals, and chemical engineering. The report is an update of the Institution’s technical strategy, first published in 2007, and identifies ten priorities for IChemE:

• Safety – Promote a thorough understanding of hazard, risk, and reduction at all stages in the process lifecycle and introduce a new international qualification for process safety professionals

• Education – Support a global professional community via integrated training and professional development

• Research – Press for investment in applied research

• Energy – Support chemical engineers in all parts of the energy economy from world-scale carbon management to renewable energy

• Water – Provide support to chemical engineers in the water community and explore ways of securing viable industrial and municipal water supplies

• Food and Nutrition – Promote the role of chemical engineering in the delivery of sustainable food solutions

• Health and Wellbeing – Deliver more healthy and sustainable lifestyles and highlight the impact of the discipline in the pharma and bioscience sectors

• Political dimension – Work with groups and leadership around the world to develop coherent policy goals

• Economic dimension – Continue to highlight the role of chemical engineering in improving process efficiency and reducing costs to deliver cheaper, more sustainable consumer products

• Public understanding – encourage members to engage productively in public conversation about the impact of chemical process and products.

IChemE chief executive David Brown says Chemical Engineering Matters will help steer the future direction of both the Institution and the profession: “This is not just a document that will sit on our desks. It will guide policy development and how we plan our work for the future." He adds, “Chemical engineers have a long history of action. They are innovators who have brought numerous benefits to society from pharmaceutical developments such as the scaling up of penicillin to the production of high-power rechargeable batteries used in many of our devices from mobile phones to laptops."

The report was unveiled at the opening of Manchester University’s new home of chemical engineering, the James Chadwick building. Go to www.icheme.org to download Chemical Engineering Matters.

GeoDesign's Kelley named UMass Outstanding Junior Alumni

Shawn Kelley, Ph.D., an associate and shareholder with GeoDesign, was recognized as an Outstanding Junior Alumni by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s College of Engineering. Recipients of this award are considered worthy ambassadors for the college and have shown extraordinary effort and notable success in their careers. Kelley graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in civil engineering. 

Kelley specializes deep and shallow foundation design, earth retention and slope stabilization projects, and in-situ soil testing, among other areas. He works out of GeoDesign’s Windsor, VT office, where he manages the soil-testing laboratory and a number of different projects, including geotechnical engineering design work, construction observation services, and geotechnical instrumentation. 

Since his undergraduate career at UMass, Kelley has been active in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), serving as student chapter treasurer and team leader for the concrete canoe team. In 2009, Kelley was named Governor for Region 1 of ASCE. He represents civil engineers in the Northeast United States, including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico. Kelley has served in various board-level positions, culminating in being president of the Vermont Section in 2007-2009 and was on the formation committee of the Geo-Institute Chapter for Vermont. As a volunteer, Kelley has worked on Habitat for Humanities projects, Listen Community Center Dinners, and the board of directors for the Stony Creek Condo Association.

Established in 1995, GeoDesign (www.geodesign.net) is a privately held engineering consulting firm with offices in Vermont, Connecticut, and New York. They complete geotechnical projects, construction engineering services, and environmental investigation and remediation projects throughout the Northeast for private clients, industry, developers, contractors, and municipalities. 

TDKA works on expanding light rail train maintenance facility to pave way for Central Corridor Line

TKDA is finishing work on the expansion of the Hiawatha Light Rail operations and maintenance facility in Minnesota's Twin Cities to serve the new Central Corridor line, expected to come online in July 2014. The $16 million expansion will make room to store and service additional trains and longer train configurations for both the Hiawatha and the Central Corridor.

With construction rapidly advancing on the Central Corridor and the arrival of the additional light rail vehicles needed to serve it, Metro Transit called for the expansion of the operations and maintenance facility in 2009. In addition, the Hiawatha Line will transition from two-car to three-car trains, and the original facility did not have the capacity to accommodate this switch. With these considerations in mind, TKDA completed design services for the expansion in December 2010, and construction commenced in June 2011.

Highlights of the expansion include a new 43,000-square-foot vehicle storage building, a 16,000-square-foot maintenance addition, a 1,200-square-foot addition to the rail control center, and the addition of a light rail vehicle lift, hoists, cranes, and a geothermal heating and cooling system. Modifications to the yard track, traction power, overhead centenary, and signal systems were also included in the project.

An area of particular interest in the age of going green is the new geothermal system. Metro Transit has embarked on an initiative to reduce its consumption of fossil fuels to reduce CO2 emissions and save on energy costs. TKDA designed a geothermal system that will both heat and cool the expanded area and portions of the existing facility. The system is expected to save Metro Transit $45,000 a year in energy costs and prevent 136 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere every year.

“The Central Corridor Line will become an integral part of the overall transit system in the Twin Cities,” says Bill Deitner, TKDA’s CEO. “We have been delighted to be a part of the team that has reintroduced rail transit to the metro area and are proud to team with Metro Transit to make the light rail system as efficient and environmentally clean as possible.”

TKDA has played a role on many of the projects involving the development of the light rail system in the Twin Cities. The company was part of the multi-firm team which designed and built the original Hiawatha Corridor Light Rail Transit Project in Minneapolis. TKDA also designed and provided construction oversight for the original light rail operations and maintenance facility and is on the team rehabilitating downtown Saint Paul’s Union Depot, the eastern terminus of the future Central Corridor Line.

With over 200 employees, TKDA is a nationwide employee-owned engineering, architecture, and planning firm headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota. For more information, visit www.tkda.com.

Schnabel Engineering announces new offices, hirings, and promotions

Schnabel Engineering of Glen Allen, Virginia announces the opening of its Raleigh, North Carolina, office. The office will provide all of Schnabel’s services, with local personnel having extensive geotechnical and environmental engineering experience. Nigel Miller, PE, an associate with the firm, will manage the office. He has more than 15 years of experience in transportation, energy, and infrastructure projects, including work for North Carolina Department of Transportation, Progress Energy, and major universities in the area.

Miller has experience on highway bridges, roadway pavements, airport runways, retaining structures, highrise buildings, earth dams, energy transmission lines, and large-diameter pipelines. He has managed, reviewed, and performed design and construction phase engineering duties for projects with technical challenges such as soft soils, deep excavations, high seismic loads, landslides, dewatering, corrosion, and rock excavation.

Schnabel also announces the opening of its first New York State (NYS) office and the hiring of Dr. Gregory Daviero, PE as a principal engineer and Kevin Ruswick, CFM, PE as an associate engineer.

Schnabel’s NYS office is located in the Capital District region, approximately 20 miles north of Albany in Clifton Park, New York.  The office will provide dam engineering services, with local personnel having extensive NYS experience and specializing in dam and water resources engineering.  Schnabel’s geotechnical, geostructural, and tunnel engineering services will also be available to our NYS clients. 

The office will be managed by Dr. Gregory Daviero who for over 20 years has applied his expertise to a wide range of water resource engineering, hydraulic design, and hydraulic and hydrologic analyses for the benefit of state, federal, municipal, and industrial clients. A resident of Niskayuna, New York, Dr. Daviero has an A.S. in Mathematics and Science from Hudson Valley Community College, a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Hydraulics and Water Resources from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Daviero is joined by Ruswick who has 18 years of experience in water resources and dam engineering.  He provides a combination of education and experience in all phases of water resources related projects and proficiency in state-of-the-art hydrologic and hydraulic modeling.  A resident of Clifton Park, New York, Ruswick earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University and an M.S. in Water Resources Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.  

Lachel & Associates, a subsidiary of Schnabel Engineering, welcomes Kumar Bhattarai, PE to the firm. Bhattarai brings 18 years of experience in design, risk assessment, project management, and procurement management for tunnel and large infrastructure projects in the United States, Canada, Russia, and the Far East.  His experience includes work on many phases of transportation, rail, and water/wastewater tunnel projects, including the Washington Dulles International Airport Automated People Mover System; the Canada Line Rapid Transit Public Private Partnership (P-3) project; railway and highway tunnel projects between Adler and Krasnaya (Sochi), Russia for the 2014 Winter Olympics; and the Westside CSO tunnel project in Portland, Oregon.

Bhattarai has served as design engineer, design manager, resident engineer, and technical specialist for these complex projects. He has provided concept and feasibility studies, preliminary and final design, constructability reviews, cost estimates, design reports, qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, engineering support during construction, and construction inspection and management. Bhattarai received his Master's degree from the University of Hong Kong and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Texas, Washington, and British Columbia.  He is based in Lachel’s Dallas, Texas, office.

Schnabel's Rockville, Maryland office announces the promotion of Dr. Mohammed Nasim, P.E. to senior associate of the firm. Nasim is the Operations and Business Development Manager for Schnabel’s geostructural group in the Maryland office.

Nasim has field, project engineering, and management experience for a variety of projects in the United States, Far East, and Southeast Asia. He specializes in numerical modeling of soil behavior, slope stability, recycled materials, geosynthetic application, ground improvement, geostructural analyses and design, shallow and deep foundations, and groundwater management. He has performed site-specific seismic hazard assessments for variety of projects, including dams, waterfront structures, embankments and bridges, commercial buildings/stadiums, and U.S. government buildings abroad. Nasim has also worked on several research projects with concentration on soil behavior and soil-structure interactions under static and dynamic loading. 

An employee-owned company, Schnabel employs more than 300 in offices coast to coast. Schnabel specializes in geotechnical, geostructural, dam, and tunnel engineering as well as environmental, geophysical, geosciences, construction monitoring, and resident engineering services. For more information, visit schnabel-eng.com.

Colorado State University offers two new online Master's of Engineering degrees

Colorado State University OnlinePlus announces two new Master’s of Engineering degrees to meet the needs of today’s workplace. The Master’s of Engineering degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Engineering Management have both been designed with industry input and are taught by faculty on the forefront of engineering research.

“Electrical and computer engineers are in demand across virtually every industry, allowing students to pair their passion with this advanced education,” says Dr. Tony Maciejewski, department head and ECE professor.

As one of the few online graduate degrees in this discipline, this program features areas of focus, including computer engineering, power and energy Engineering, and systems engineering.

The new online Master of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering with an Engineering Management Specialization features a curriculum that blends engineering processes with business elements to give students the combination of management concepts and technical focus. The curriculum follows the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Knowledge Base standards and covers concepts in engineering project management and maintenance; business analysis, communication, finance, and marketing; and systems engineering foundations and architecture.

To learn more about these degree programs, visit www.online.colostate.edu/degrees/electrical-computer-engineering orwww.online.colostate.edu/degrees/engineering-management for faculty bios, course descriptions, registration dates, and more. Contact Michael Macklin at CSU OnlinePlus with specific questions, 970-491-7583.

Colorado State University OnlinePlus programs and educational opportunities, offered through the Division of Continuing Education, support the University's land-grant mission by providing graduate and undergraduate degrees, professional development training, certificate programs, online credit and noncredit courses, and industry-specific training online and at learning centers across the Front Range. For more information, visit www.online.colostate.edu or call 970-491-5288.

New profile posted: As a mechanical engineering professor, Shanon Reckinger researches ways to improve ocean modeling and crusades for women in engineering

Shanon Reckinger

STEMming the Tide

In a dual role, the mechanical engineering professor at Fairfield University aims to improve computational methods for modeling oceans and climate while she advocates for women in engineering.

By Tom Gibson

As a mechanical engineering student, Shanon Reckinger could’ve pursued a conventional career of designing cars, airplanes, or some other product in a manufacturing and industrial setting. Or she could’ve steered toward designing MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) and HVAC systems for buildings, like many consulting engineers do. “None of that interested me. I really liked working on projects that had more of a societal impact, and that was really natural with ocean modeling because most of the work is done to further understand the climate and climate change,” she relates.

A unique and noble career choice indeed, but the interesting part is that it may involve another factor besides helping society. “I think that’s really common for most women,” Reckinger says. She would know about this from her vantage point as the Clare Boothe Luce Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Fairfield University in Connecticut, a position that has her advocating for women in engineering.

Across the nation, growth in the number of women enrolling in engineering curriculums has stagnated and shown inconsistencies. For example, Fairfield’s Mechanical Engineering Department has 55 freshmen, and 8 are women. “That’s pretty low,” Reckinger says. “It’s very discipline specific. Some of the engineering disciplines like civil, biomedical, environmental, chemical are really popular with women. Lots of places you can find a fifty-fifty split, but for disciplines like mechanical engineering or electrical or computer/software engineering, the ratio is still really off.” Why? “There are still not many women in faculty positions in those disciplines. I think it’s hard for female students to connect, and sometimes they might feel like they’re not in the right place because they’re so different from everyone around them.”

But Reckinger doesn’t think we should focus just on increasing the percentage of women in engineering. She acknowledge that there may be times a woman is exposed to science and engineering and fully understands the possibilities but just doesn’t have an interest in it. “I don’t want women to be scared or uncomfortable or unwelcome. Or anyone, because there are many minority groups that are underrepresented in engineering,” as she puts it. “I really enjoy being a role model and just encouraging everyone to find their path in life.”

Reckinger, 28, grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and her father was a civil engineer.“I always liked math and physics in high school,” she recalls, and her guidance counselors helped her select a college that offered engineering. This led her to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she tried engineering. “I really liked it.”

Then Reckinger further narrowed her career choice. “I really like the breadth of mechanical engineering, and it’s also the field that has fluids, which I really like because of its strong math and physics,” she explains. St. Thomas didn’t have any fluids courses when she went there, “but I had little peeks of it here and there, and then I took it my first year of graduate school. That’s when I really started to get into it.” She got her M.S. in mechanical engineering and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. Her advisor in graduate school specialized in applying computational methods to fluids and showed her a project he was working on, Reckinger recalls. “When I saw it, it was by far the most interesting of the ones I had seen.”

This sampling of Reckinger’s ocean modeling work shows a simulation of the 2010 Chile Tsunami.

Ocean modeling requires a strong fluids background, and this in turn requires a strong math and physics background. “I was taking a ton of applied math courses. Then there’s a ton of programming,” Reckinger recalls. “I became familiar with large parallel machines and computing. I had to also get the general ocean knowledge versus general fluids – what’s different about the ocean; how do the equations change?”

Most of Reckinger’s research focuses on developing advanced numerical techniques to improve the accuracy and efficiency of ocean models. “You change these equations that are analytic in such a way that you can solve them on the computer. There are all these numerical methods that have to be formulated to do that,” she says. “I’m improving methods that can be used in some of these big ocean models used at the lab.”

Reckinger says she sees it as filling a need. “There’s a general mechanical engineering fluids CFD community, and then there’s this totally separate ocean community, and they don’t always share information. The general fluids area is much further advanced in their numerics than the ocean community. That was part of the motivation for the projects I worked on.” The gap is closing. “The ocean models used for the last 50 years are considering these new methods that have been used for quite awhile now in the other community.”

With her doctoral thesis entitled "Adaptive Wavelet-Based Ocean Circulation Modeling," Reckinger takes an integrated approach for modeling common ocean phenomena such as tsunamis, boundary currents, and sea ice. Her research has taken her to the Los Alamos National Research Lab in New Mexico and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland. At Los Alamos, she worked with a researcher doing ocean modeling in an effort to simulate the entire global climate.

After getting her doctoral degree, Reckinger conducted a full national search to find a faculty position. She sought a teaching school but also wanted to do research, and “I’ve always wanted to live on the east coast,” she adds. Having landed at Fairfield, she’s excited about the Clare Booth Luce program and the funding and opportunities it presents. She teaches fluid dynamics and numerical methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including courses in numerical methods, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, computational fluid dynamics, and gas dynamics.

The Henry Luce Foundation's Clare Boothe Luce Program awarded Fairfield a $404,439 grant to create the professorship Reckinger holds. It was earmarked for mechanical engineering and covers three years of salary, three years of benefits, and five years of support for a career development fund.

Reckinger (second from left) is mentoring mechanical engineering students on a project to collect rainwater from a campus building roof for watering lawns and shrubs on campus as part of a senior design course taught by Shahrokh Etemad (left).

In Clare Boothe Luce's bequest establishing this program, she sought "to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach" in science, mathematics, and engineering. The 21-year-old program has become the single most significant source of private support for women in those fields. Clare Boothe Luce was a playwright, journalist, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, and the first woman elected to Congress from Connecticut as well as the widow of Henry R. Luce, the magazine publisher who created icons such as Time, Fortune, Life, and Sports Illustrated.

Reckinger works in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines with engineering faculty and colleagues in the College of Arts & Sciences. She works closely with female students in the School of Engineering and elsewhere at Fairfield. “I just try to connect with them personally and have them be comfortable around me. Since we have such a small school and small population of women, I’m doing it more on a personal level,” she says.

As Reckinger puts it, “I’m trying to give them some perspective and broaden their view of these fields and have them not think of mechanical engineers as one particular type of person in one particular field. It’s so broad. It’s just about making people feel comfortable and making them understand that a variety of personalities and experience levels and perspectives are welcome in the field.”

Her advocating work has Reckinger getting involved with a WISTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program, and she wants to start a Society for Women in Engineering chapter at Fairfield. She interacts with high schoolers that come to Fairfield and carries out community events like the Discovery Museum and an event for Women’s History Month at nearby Bridgeport. A camp on Fairfield’s campus for high school women has them learn about science and engineering, and Reckinger has a group of five or so from Bridgeport do a research project with her for two weeks.

In the final analysis, Reckinger says, “I really just want people to do whatever they like. I don’t like them to be scared away for the wrong reasons. Maybe you just don’t know exactly what interests you and how to apply it. I feel like that’s part of the faculty’s job to explore that with the students and let them think about it.”