Several students from the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering participated in the 2017 Texas A&M University Student Research Week (SRW). Civil engineering undergraduate student Gabriella Morales and doctoral student Kambiz Rasoulkhani won the Melbern G. Glasscock Humanities Special Award for poster presentations. Civil engineering students Mohsen Aghashahi, Andrew Richardson, Jenny Truong, George Gillette and Yash Menaria also took part in the event.
Student Research Week is a four-day competition that highlights research occurring on the Texas A&M campus with an emphasis on research in which students participate. SRW provides a venue for students to present their work, both through oral presentations and posters. This event allows students, faculty and the community to see the depth and breadth of research conducted at Texas A&M, and is a valuable tool in meeting the university’s mission of academic, research and service excellence.
The Melbern G. Glasscock Humanities Award is given for a project that explores the meaning and understanding of the human experience and has an interdisciplinary scope.
Rasoulkhani is a member of assistant professor Dr. Ali Mostafavi’s Infrastructure System-of-Systems research team. He and Morales worked together on their research project, which focused on water conservation technology in households.
“It was exciting for me as I presented my project for the first time in a poster format,” said Rasoulkhani. “Student Research Week was a great chance for me to be tested for the presentation of my research so far.”
Their project focuses on agent-based modeling of household water conservation technology adoption. The objective of the project was to examine the behavior of households regarding the installation of water conservation technologies and evaluate strategies that could potentially increase water conservation technology adoption at the household level. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation under the Urban Water Innovation Network.
“Student Research Week was laid back and fun, yet competitive,” said Morales. “I was motivated to produce a final result that was accurate and helpful, especially since it was the first project I had done that could actually make a difference in people’s lives.”