Computing and Systems Group Hosts First Research Symposium

On April 22, the Computing and Systems Group held its first Annual Research Symposium in the lobby of Mann Hall. The afternoon kicked off with lunch, and included a student poster competition, keynote address, and award presentations. Nineteen students presented posters including topics such as developing new models, mathematical algorithms, software platforms for applications in construction safety and planning, infrastructure management, water resources sustainability and security, coastal engineering, and energy policy.

Eight judges from local companies, governmental agencies, and NCSU, listened to short presentations by students about their posters and selected recipients for two awards. Tristan Dyer received the Best Research Poster for his project entitled, “SMT: An Interface for Localized Storm Surge Modeling.” Seung Beom Seo was awarded the Most Innovative Research Award for “Understanding the Effects of Groundwater Pumping on Streamflow: Human-Feedback Analysis on Downstream Impacts and Relevance to Reservoir Management.”

PhD candidate Dominic Libera led the student committee in organizing and hosting the event. “I’m excited about being a part of this symposium. Our department is very diverse in the types of research, and this symposium gives us the chance to focus on the modeling side, which is not always easy to present.”

Dan Loughlin (CE PhD ’98) from the Environmental Protection Agency gave the keynote presentation – describing the types of modeling frameworks he has developed to assess environmental impacts of alternative energy policies and state-level climate actions. Loughlin emphasized how his career has been enhanced by his graduate work in the Computing and Systems group at NCSU.

Dr. John Baugh, one of the first members of the Computing and Systems group, remarked, “The symposium is a great opportunity for us to share our interdisciplinary research from a modeling perspective with the department, our alumni, and the visiting judges. The C&S group has been around for a long time, but we are at the point now where we have lots of work to show with multiple dimensions, from the point of view of the modeling, computing, software, and application areas. It’s a great time to share our work within the department.” Dr. Kumar Mahinthakumar emphasized that the student committee did a great job. “They are a phenomenal group of students, who put in lots of time and work to organize the symposium.”