Sarah Grace selected as Global Change Research Fellow

M.S. student Sarah Grace Lott was selected as a Global Change Research Fellow by the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. Sarah Grace will participate in the 2025-2026 cohort and receive training and collaborate with students from across disciplines in climate science.

The fellowship program is designed to train the next generation of global change scientists by providing financial, scientific, and professional development support for graduate students who are interested in multi-disciplinary research. They come together across disciplines to discover, collaborate, and share their knowledge with diverse stakeholders. Learn more about the program at the SECASC web site.

Congratulations to Sarah Grace!

Casey is Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor

Casey Dietrich was selected as an Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor. It is one of the most prestigious undergraduate teaching awards at NC State, and winners retain the title for as long as they remain a member of the NC State faculty. Finalists are nominated by their colleges, and then winners are selected at the university level. During 2024-2025, the award was given to 6 instructors, or less than 1 per 400 faculty members.

Casey received the award from Dr. Helen Chen, Senior Vice Provost for Instructional Programs, at the University Teaching Awards Luncheon and Ceremony.

Nahruma wins People’s Choice Award at EWC Symposium

Nahruma Pieu won the People’s Choice Award at the Environmental, Water Resources, and Coastal (EWC) Engineering Graduate Research Symposium, hosted by the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering (CCEE) at NC State University. She was one of two presenters to win the award, which was voted by attendees at the symposium.

Nahruma received the People’s Choice Award from CCEE Department Head, Dr. Gibson.

“I’m thankful that my work was well received by the community,” Nahruma said. “I’m especially grateful to my advisor, Dr. Casey Dietrich, whose guidance and support made this possible. I’m also thankful to the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) for funding my work on predicting coastal dune erosion, which will be necessary given our recent climate change scenario, as storms increase in frequency and intensity.”

Congratulations to Nahruma!

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Brandon wins Outstanding Senior Award for Scholarly Achievement

Undergraduate student Brandon Tucker won an Outstanding Senior Award for Scholarly Achievement, which recognizes exceptional academic performance including participation in undergraduate research. Brandon was among four outstanding seniors recognized by our department.

[H]he continued undergraduate research as part of the Coastal and Computational Hydraulics Team with Associate Professor Casey Dietrich and graduate student Tomás [Cuevas] López. The project was related to predictions of coastal flooding due to hurricanes.

“I helped run more than 1 million CPU hours of hurricane models to train our machine-learning model called Concorde, which can predict storm-driven flooding in seconds,” Tucker explained. “I also created detailed Python examples for Kalpana, an intermediary model used by researchers across the country.”

“This was a lot of work,” Dietrich emphasized. “Each hurricane simulation can take several hours on a parallel computing cluster and generate gigabytes of data, and so it took about two months to complete the simulations. It would have taken much longer without Brandon’s help and creativity. He wrote scripts to automate the process to submit, monitor, and archive the simulations, and he contributed to a post-processing visualization script. His documentation and examples are now shared widely with all users of the software. Brandon is strong at the technical skills of computing and programming, but he also sees the larger picture and looks for ways to contribute.”

After graduation, Brandon will pursue a Master of Civil Engineering at CCEE with a focus on transportation systems, while also completing a Graduate Certification in City Design from the College of Design.

Congratulations to Brandon!

Jack selected for Climate Leaders Program

CCHT undergraduate researcher Jack Voight was selected for the 2024 cohort of the KIETS Climate Leaders Program. KIETS offers programming about climate change and adaptation, and the cohort of student/faculty teams will work with their internship partners to develop solutions that mitigate and adapt to the challenges of climate change. Read more about the program in the KIETS announcement.

Congrats to Jack!

Tomás wins Scott C. Hagen Excellence in Scholarship Award

MS Student Tomás Cuevas López won the Scott C. Hagen Excellence in Scholarship Award at the ADCIRC Users Meeting. The award is for the most outstanding oral student presentation at the conference, as judged by a panel of Scott’s former students. Tomás presented about his MS research to develop a deep neural network for the prediction of coastal flooding maps.

Congratulations to Tomás!

Tomás accepts the award from Denise Delorme and Robert Twilley

Scott Hagen was a professor at UCF and LSU, a leading researcher in the development of models for coastal circulation and flooding, a devoted educator and mentor to hundreds of students in his career, and a great friend. This award is a great way to honor his memory.

Jessica is CoE Masters Scholar of the Year for Research

M.S. student Jessica Gorski was recognized as the Masters Scholar of the Year for Research by the NCSU College of Engineering (CoE). Students were nominated by departments within the CoE, and Jessica was selected for this award to recognize outstanding scholarly achievement and dedication to the NC State community and beyond. The award includes a cash stipend.

Jessica’s research is centered on finding answers to this question: During a hurricane, where will the beaches and dunes ‘fail’ along our coast? These systems are heavily engineered – communities invest in and rely on beaches and dunes to protect homes and lives during storms. She has become a leader in research with computational models to advance understanding of storm-driven erosion and flooding of coastal regions.

This award was publicized by both the CoE and our department.

Congratulations to Jessica!

Jenero selected as Global Change Research Fellow

Ph.D. student Jenero Knowles was selected as a Global Change Research Fellow by the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. Jenero will participate in the 2023-2024 cohort and receive training and collaborate with students from across disciplines in climate science.

Congratulations to Jenero!