Topic: ASCE Plot Points Podcast

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Change agents

ASCE PLOT POINTS SEASON 4 EPISODE 11 Wanting to help save the world is an admirable goal. Figuring out just how you can plug that mission into your career path is the first step. Marjorie Bedessem is a senior engineer for Tri Hydro and the vice-president of ASCE’s Environmental and Water Resources Institute. And she's excellent case study in navigating different career tracks to maximize her...

This building might save your life

Season 4, Episode 10: Burçin Becerik-Gerber, a professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Southern California and director of CENTIENTS (Center for Intelligent Environment), discusses her work on intelligent threat-sensing buildings – structures that employ AI technology to keep people safe during emergencies, including maybe most frighteningly, those involving active shooters. We also hear from ASCE's Student Ambassadors about how they've...

Improving the future: structural fire engineering design

ASCE Plot Points Season 4 Episode 9: It's amazing to think that even in the oldest professional in the world, civil engineering, there remain new boundaries to push. Erica Fischer is doing just that in the field of structural fire engineering design. Fischer, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, is an assistant professor of structural engineering at Oregon State University. She’s working on the upcoming ASCE Structural Engineering Institute performance-based...

Are civil engineers doing enough to combat climate change?

ASCE Plot Points Season 4 Episode 8: Are civil engineers doing enough to combat climate change? It's a simple question with a complicated answer. Or maybe it's a complicated question with a simple answer. Either way, Emily Grubert, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, makes sense of the chaos on today's episode. And our ASCE Student Ambassadors play guest DJ,...

Should civil engineers care about cybersecurity?

ASCE Plot Points Season 4 Episode 7: Cybersecurity is a hot topic these days – and one that most people would agree is important for our modern society to regulate and prioritize. But is cybersecurity something civil engineers need to concern themselves with? Brad Allenby says yes, 100-percent yes. Allenby is the president’s professor of sustainable engineering, and the Lincoln professor of engineering and ethics at Arizona...

Helping others ‘Dream Big’

ASCE Plot Points Season 4 Episode 6: Avery Bang is probably most familiar to civil engineers for her star turn in the ASCE movie Dream Big. But by day, she's the president and CEO of Bridges to Prosperity, an organization that collaborates with industry partners and local communities to design, build and maintain bridges that provide crucial lifelines to people in some of the most...

Making media moves

ASCE Plot Points Season 4 Episode 5: Mathew Picardal does a little bit of everything when it comes to popular civil engineering communication. He works as a structural project manager for DCI Engineers. He's also started a YouTube channel called the Structural Engineering Life, posting his own videos where he discusses or explains structural engineering issues and concepts. “A Day in the Life of a...

A ‘novel’ approach to civil engineering

ASCE Plot Points Season 4 Episode 4: Melissa Fischer is a supervising engineer for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. But lately, she’s probably better known as a novelist. Her novel, "The Advocacy," has earned rave reviews – Kirkus Reviews called the protagonist, Louisa Lehmann "a delightful, complicated character" and the Southern Literary Review called the book "profound." Fischer talks about the novel, why it...

Majority minority

S&C Associates is a small engineering firm in Sun Valley, Idaho, providing an array of essential services to the community. Sherri Newland, principal engineer and owner, started the company in 2016 with a plan to create a specific kind of supportive workplace culture.