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Distinguished Professor Emeritus receives honorary degree
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Ralph Haas addresses the University of Alberta's convocation audience.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Ralph Haas of Civil & Environmental Engineering received a Doctor of Science, honoris causa from the University of Alberta on June 13.
Haas received the honorary degree in person and addressed Convocation (PDF).
Haas is the Norman W. McLeod Engineering Professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Civil Engineering.
His award citation reads as follows: "Ralph Haas is known in the engineering world as "the father of pavement asset management." His pioneering concepts and technologies have resulted in better-performing, safer and less costly road networks. The author of 12 books and numerous technical articles on pavement and infrastructure asset management, he is also an educator whose students have become leaders in transportation agencies, consultancies and universities. Haas is a member of the Order of Canada, fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, recipient of the Queen's Golden Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee medals."
Previously, Haas received an University of Alberta Distinguished Alumni award.
Haas is the inaugural Director and Founder of the Centre for Pavement and Transportation Technology at Waterloo and a former chair of the Department of Civil Engineering. His professional service includes roles as past chair of the Pavement Management Committees of the Transportation Research Board and the Transportation Association of Canada, past director of the Applied Science and Engineering Division of Academy III of the Royal Society of Canada, and co‑founder of the Transportation Association of Canada Foundation.
The University of Waterloo officially named “The Ralph Haas Infrastructure and Sensing Analysis Laboratory” in his honour in 2014. That same year he received the US National Academies Transportation Research Board’s highest honour, the Roy W. Crum Award for Outstanding Achievement in Transportation Research.
Civil & Environmental Engineering has the full story on their website.
Protecting watersheds in the Peace-Athabasca Delta
This is an excerpt of an article originally published on the Faculty of Science news site.
Located in northeast Alberta, the Peace-Athabasca Delta (PAD) is one of the most magnificent wetlands in the world. Serving as the junction of four major North American waterfowl migratory routes, millions of ducks and geese descend to feed and nest here each summer.
Mitchell Kay, PhD candidate in the Department of Biology, is determined to preserve these watersheds. As a Collaborative Water Program graduate, He is working to understand how major energy projects are altering the hydrological conditions of lakes in the PAD, and if oil sands development has altered the deposition of contaminants of concern via the Athabasca River.
“Cumulative effects of climate change and industrial development continue to grow, which raises the need to improve stewardship of our water resources to meet the needs of human and ecosystems,” said Kay. “Since there were no monitoring projects before oil sands development, we don’t know what the natural conditions were like. We need long-term data sets to identify the main factors affecting water quantity and quality, and guide improvements for management strategies to protect these water resources.”
Supervised by Water Institute member Roland Hall and Wilfrid Laurier University professor Brent Wolfe, Kay is using the information preserved in sediment cores to create long-term records of past variations in hydrology and contaminant deposition to construct baseline conditions before industrial development, and evaluate the effects of major energy projects on the PAD. This research will help to fill current knowledge gaps and understand the impacts of industrial development.
Read the rest of the article on the Faculty of Science website.
Friday's notes
Food Services is reporting that the University Club will be closed from Saturday, August 11 to Tuesday, September 4, re-opening on Wednesday, September 5.
The Asset Bank (Waterloo Photos) will be under maintenance on Tuesday, August 14 from 9:00 a.m. to noon. The system will be unavailable during this maintenance window. This maintenance involves general and accessibility updates to the system.