Articles

Technical Sessions - July 2019

Five Concurrent Technical Session Tracks will run from 9:00 am - 11:50 am
Speaker bios are below following the posted schedule

Construction Institute (CI)

• 9am - Topic: Asphalt Presentation - Speaker: Kemp Akerman (TSIT, LLC)
  
• 10am - Topic: TBA - Speaker: Dr. Mohammad Najafi (UTA)
  
• 11am - Topic: Pipe Trench Backfill Compaction Revisited - Speaker: Dr. Dorairaja Raghu (NJIT)
  

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Geotechnical Institute (GI)

• 9am - Topic: LRFD Calibration of Resistance Factors of Deep Foundations - Speaker: Dr. Xinbao Yu (UTA)
  
• 10am - Topic: TBA - Speaker: TBA
  
• 11am - Topic: Three Prominent Problems of Soil-Pile Interaction -  Speaker: Antonios Vytiniotis, PhD., PE
  

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Environmental Water Resource Institute (EWRI)

• 9am - Topic: Prioritization of manholes in the City of Arlington based on factors affecting corrosion rates - Speaker: Sunakshi Hada & Brendan Hamilton (City of Arlington)
• 10am - Topic: Enhancing Anaerobic Oxidation of Methane in Landfill Cover Soil - Speaker: Dr. Arpita Bhatt (UTA) & Dr. Niloofar Parsaeifard (UTA)
  
• 11am - Topic: Water Conservation-Rainwater Harvesting & Greywater/Condensate Recycling Systems - Speaker: Gregory Aymong (Highland Tank)
  

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Structural Engineering Institute (SEI)

Dr. Antonios Vytiniotis is a Managing Engineer at Exponent and a former lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of Geoinstitute's computational geotechnical and deep foundation committees and a regional director of the Society of Construction Law - New England. He has background in structural and geotechnical engineering and geotechnical earthquake engineering. He has worked on numerous projects in more than 20 states and multiple countries, assisting project owners, law firms, insurance companies and developers. His analyses consist of, among others, assessing conditions in LNG facilities, effects of adjacent construction, soil-structure interaction, earthquake drains, assessing soil improvement, dam safety, causation of MSE wall failures, soil heave or settlements, pipeline installation, water intrusion, and backfill quality.

Sunakshi Hada is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in the field of Environmental Engineering with a prime focus on wastewater treatment and handling. She earned her Master’s degree in environmental science, and Bachelor’s in Biotechnology. She won an Innovative Project iQuest award from the Central Leather Research Institute in India for her project that dealt with phytoremediation of tannery effluent discharging from leather industries. She has also worked as an intern for the Natural Resources Management Division in Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Currently she is working on prioritizing the manholes by assessing factors that affect corrosion rates and hydrogen sulfide gas generation.

Brendan Hamilton, EIT, graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. He has 5 years of experience in the water and wastewater industry, both in municipal engineering and private potable water tank and pipeline inspection services working as a commercial diver. He has been working at Arlington water Utilities since 2015, where he managed the daily operations of the large diameter sanitary sewer assessment program. Currently he provides data analysis large diameter inspection coordination, asset management analysis, and wastewater model support for AWU planning team projects.

Dr. Arpita Bhatt (Gandhi) has received her Masters and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering with major in environmental engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. She worked as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for many semester during her masters and Ph.D. Her research focus was in the field of solid waste management, specifically, leachate charaterization and statistical models development.

Prior to pursuing her Ph.D. at UT Arlington, she worked in environmental consulting as a staff engineer and worked as an intern at Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the City of Lancaster.

Niloofar Parsaeifard earned her PhD in environmental engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. In addition to conducting experiments on anaerobic oxidation of methane in landfill covers, she worked as a research assistant on a project with The City of Arlington as well as a teaching assistant for different courses. The project focused on the sulfide corrosion of sewer manholes and aimed to reduce the chemical deterioration of concrete manholes due to hydrogen sulfide gas. Since August 2018, she has been working as an adjunct faculty member at UTA.

Gregory G. Aymong is Vice President of Sales for Highland Tank, the largest producer of Storage and Wastewater Treatment Tanks and in the United States. He is also the inventor of the patented Highland Tank Oil/Water Separator and Corella® enhanced coalescer technology and has worked for Highland Tank for 33 years. His numerous equipment and process patents and designs are used extensively by petroleum, industrial, municipal, military and commercial facilities worldwide for the prevention of oil, grease, and hazardous materials spills into the environment.

Mr. Aymong has worked in the industry in the United States and overseas for almost 38 years and has authored numerous articles on oil/water separators and storage tanks and vessels. Gregory has lectured on "Water Storage Tanks: From Construction to Rehabilitation" for Lorman Education Services. He has spoken about storage and wastewater treatment tanks at many Petroleum Equipment Institute (PEI), National Petroleum Management Association (NPMA), National Institute for Storage Tank Management (NISTM), American Society of Plumbing Engineers (ASPE), American Society of Sanitary Engineering (ASSE), Constructions Specifications Institute (CSI), Water Environmental Association (WEA) and American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) chapter meetings in the United States and Canada.

Gregory Hunsicker is the founder and Managing Member of OnPoint Engineering and Technology. He has been engaged in the post-tensioning industry since 1999 shortly after graduating from the University of Massachusetts. He is an active member of the American Segmental Bridge Institute (ASBI) and Post-tensioning Institute (PTI). He is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in the State of Texas and North Carolina.

He has worked on many types of structures including both new construction and repair / strengthening. This includes bridges, parking structures, containment structures, residential and office buildings, strand jack heavy lifting and foundations. While most of his experience has been in the field of post-tensioned concrete he has been involved with other materials as well as various construction methods and equipment.

Dr. Nur Yazdani is a past Chairman of the Civil Engineering Department at UT Arlington. A Fellow of ASCE, ACI and SEI, he is the author or co-author of more than 160 articles in journals and proceedings, and an invited speaker at conferences and seminars.

Dr. Yazdani is well known for his research on concrete/timber bridge design and rehabilitation, hazard mitigation in civil infrastructure, nano-concrete and engineering education. During his career, he has received numerous awards for his teaching and research abilities and has secured more than $13 million from externally-funded research projects, on most of which he is/was the principal investigator.

Dr. Maria Konsta-Gdoutos, is Professor of Civil Engineering and the Associate Director of the Center for Advanced Construction Materials of the University of Texas at Arlington. She develops nanoengineered, smart cementitious nanocomposites, reinforced with nanomaterials, carbon nanotubes and nanofibers, to achieve tailored structural and electrical properties for civil infrastructure.

Maria is a Fulbright scholar, a member of the International Academy of Engineering, and the recipient of the A.S. Kobayashi Young Investigator Award in Experimental Science in 2012. She holds 3 US patents for her work on the dispersion of carbon nanofibers and carbon nanotubes and their introduction in reinforcing cementitious nanocomposites. She has published over 90 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings and has been the invited speaker for more than ten symposia internationally in the last five years. She is also the editor of the book “Measuring, Monitoring and Modeling Concrete Properties” published by Springer and the guest editor of several special issues in refereed journals published by Springer and Elsevier.

She is a member of the ACI committees 236 Material Science of Concrete, 241 Nanotechnology of Concrete and currently serves as the chair of the ACI 241 Task Group committee “Nanofibers.” She is also a member of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM). She serves as the Executive Editor in Chief of the Springer International Journal “Frontiers in Structural and Civil Engineering” and is a member of the Editorial Boards of "Cement and Concrete Composites," by Elsevier and the “Journal of Structural Integrity and Maintenance” by Taylor and Francis.

Mark Schluter, PE graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M in 1978. He began his career as an inspector for TxDOT - Witchita Falls District then transferred to TxDOT - Fort Worth Bridge Design Section and worked there for 3.5 years. He then transferred to Advanced Planning and worked on Schematics & Environmental for SH 199, US 67 and other projects. He then transferred to Wise/Jack Area office and worked there as assistant and area engineering for 13 years. He was promoted to Area Egnineer in TxDOT's North Tarrant County Area Office and worked there for 6 years. He was then promted to Director of Transportation Operations for TxDOT Fort Worth and retired in 2006. Since then he has worked for three different consultant firms and is currently the VP of Texas Transportation for Wade Trim doing CEI and Design projects.

Bill Swope, CP is the Survey Business Development Manager for Halff Associates in Richardson, Texas and a Certified Photogrammetrist through the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Bill has been in the photogrammetric industry for over 13 years and is experienced in all aspects of photogrammetry including Aero-Triangulation, compilation, planimetric data collection, map editing, and QA/QC procedures. Bill is well versed in fixed-wing and rotor based photogrammetric and LiDAR data collection along with experience working with UAVs, mobile LiDAR, and high definition 3D scanning. He is a Geospatial Member of the Texas Society for Professional Surveyors, the Secretary/Treasurer for the Dallas chapter, and a state director.

Derek Light is a Technical Promotions Engineer for Rinker Materials in DFW. He is originally from Manitoba Canada, he is a registered professional engineer in the Province of Alberta.