Johns Hopkins Department of Civil and Systems Engineering

CaSE’s Michael G. Callas Chair Professor, Somnath Ghosh, recently co-organized and hosted a symposium The Johns Hopkins University in honor Dr. Byung-Lip “Les” Lee, a pioneer in the field of Multifunctional Materials and Structures who has led the Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s Mechanics of Multifunctional Materials and Microsystems Program for more than two decades. The symposium celebrated Lee’s tremendous contributions to the field and community upon his retirement from AFOSR. The two-day event featured presentations from leading researchers in academia, government, and industry who have benefitted from his vision and continuous support. The attendees joined a celebratory dinner where they shared their personal experiences with Lee.     “I realized that this meeting could give us the chance to reassess the current status and define future directions of our small, vibrant community on multifunctional materials and structures,” said Lee. “I was truly honored to become a focal point of this special occasion.”    A special thank you goes out to all the event organizers, including Ajit Roy and Gregory Reich (Air Force Research Laboratory), Leif Asp (Chalmers University of Technology), Ioannis Chasiotis (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Martin Dunn (University of Colorado Denver), Walter Lacarbonara (Sapienza University of Rome), Giulia Lanzara (University of Rome), and workshop facilitator Tina Mester (Johns Hopkins University).    📸 Alec Zabrecky, CMTS, WSE 

Johns Hopkins University was ranked No. 16 in the world in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2025. https://bit.ly/4eHub9m The rankings compared nearly 2,100 colleges and universities from 115 countries and territories, evaluating them based on 18 key performance indicators designed to assess teaching, research quality, and research influence.

Two Johns Hopkins engineers are investigating how the brain responds to severe impacts like those in car crashes, explosions, and head-to-head collisions. With support from a three-year NSF Collaborative Research grant, Associate Professor Michael Shields and Assistant Research Professor Dimitris Giovanis from the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering (CaSE) are working with researchers from LSU and the University of Delaware to map the brain's response to traumatic injuries. Their goal? To develop #machinelearning models that predict how the brain deforms under extreme conditions, offering new insights into traumatic brain injuries. https://lnkd.in/eEwc2vpU

Join us in congratulating Associate Teaching Professor Rachel Herring Sangree on her election as the ASCE Maryland Section President! Her new role begins in October and follows her term as the Maryland Section's Vice President. Congratulations, Rachel! #civilizationengineered

A team of Johns Hopkins systems engineers that includes CaSE faculty Kimia Ghobadi and doctoral candidates Fardin Ganjkhanloo and Farzin Ahmadi used a new and comprehensive methodology to uncover insights in COVID-19 mortality patterns. Based on U.S. data from August 2020 to March 2023, the team had a holistic perspective of how various factors influenced mortality at different stages of the pandemic. While some risk factors, like education level and income, maintained a consistent association with mortality, the team found that factors such as race, environment (urban vs. rural), and age shifted over time, likely reflecting evolving health policies and interventions. “The significance of this study underscores the need for adaptive public health strategies. Understanding both persistent and dynamic factors is necessary for developing targeted and effective public health strategies,” said Ghobadi. https://lnkd.in/e2cnSmSS

What do the Paris 2024 Olympics aquatic center and the I-95 Philadelphia bridge fire investigation have in common? Both were analyzed with the software #SAFIR. To learn more about these projects and others in #structural #fire #engineering (on buildings, tunnels, and bridges), have a look at the videos from the 2024 SAFIR Day: https://lnkd.in/eGavMUrm A huge thank you to the speakers for their excellent contributions which made this event such a success. We look forward to seeing you for next year's edition! Johns Hopkins Department of Civil and Systems Engineering

In Johns Hopkins Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, we equip students with versatile skills so they can adapt and thrive as engineers anywhere–and so they can dodge the Sunday scaries! We're happy to see so many of our alumni thriving, including Liam Fontes below.

"Until the Key Bridge collapsed, there wasn't a significant impetus to ask how many large ships pass under these enormous bridges." Now there is. And Assoc Prof Michael Shields and team have undertaken a massive, NSF -supported data mining effort—the first step in an urgent assessment of the nation’s bridge vulnerability. They collected and mined six years of U.S. Coast Guard data and cross-referenced the geolocated shipping information with port data and bridge data from the National Bridge Inventory. The team will next determine how frequently ships that pass under these bridges stray off course. That will allow them to determine the aberrancy rate for ships in the U.S., and the aberrancy rate near highly trafficked bridges. The full traffic analysis is available for download at https://lnkd.in/eKUYcDph. The site includes traffic trend data for more than 200 bridges. Results will be regularly updated. Additional members of the RAPID: Assessing Bridge Collapse Risk team: -Prof Benjamin Schafer, -Associate Teach Prof Rachel Herring Sangree -PhD students Promit Chakroborty and Damir Akchurin, -Undergraduate and master’s students Diran Jimenez, Natalia Dougan, Yile Wang, Jenna Halpin, and Diana Arizmendi; -Morgan State undergrad Esther Ezeigbo #KeyBridgeCollapse #CivilEngineering #CriticalInfrastucture #BridgeEngineering #RiskAssessment

#HopkinsEngineer and JHU CaSE Professor Benjamin Schafer is the co-PI on this unique project that involves seismic testing of a 10-story cold-formed steel building.

Johns Hopkins rose to No. 6 among national universities—our highest-ever position in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation's #BestColleges for undergraduates! Our Biomedical Engineering program is number 1. We're 13th overall in engineering and 6 Hopkins Engineering disciplines were ranked! This year Hopkins had the lowest median student debt among all national universities, an ongoing reflection of the transformative $1.8 billion gift from philanthropist, business leader, and Johns Hopkins alumnus Mike Bloomberg to support undergraduate financial aid. The funds have helped to cut the average Hopkins graduate's federal loan debt in half since 2018. U.S. News also ranked Hopkins No. 10 for value, based on a combination of academic quality and net cost of attendance. The complete list of top 20 individual undergraduate program and discipline rankings: No. 1 in biomedical engineering No. 5 in biocomputer/bioinformatics/biotechnology No. 13 (tied) in engineering No. 14 (tied) psychology No. 16 in environmental/environmental health engineering No. 18 in artificial intelligence No. 19 in computer science No. 20 in mechanical engineering No. 20 in chemical engineering Hopkins ranked No. 10 for innovation and No. 12 for undergraduate research/creative projects. More than 80% of Hopkins undergraduates participate in at least one research experience during their time at the university, and students average eight to 10 hours per week participating in research opportunities, according to the Hopkins Office for Undergraduate Research.