Civil and environmental engineering students from multiple universities in Southern California gather at the USC campus to present their research
The COVID-19 pandemic saw the launch of countless new projects, not all of which have stood the test of time. Initially developed at USC Viterbi’s Sonny Astani Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) in 2021 and launched in 2022, the Student SoCal Civil and Environmental Research Symposium (SoCal CEERS) is now an annual event connecting academics and industry in the CEE community.
The 4th SoCal CEERS took place on May 1, 2026, at USC’s Ginsburg Hall. Previous editions of the symposium have been co-hosted by USC and partner universities including UCLA, UC Irvine and UC Riverside. The event is organized primarily by student volunteers who recognize the importance of cultivating knowledge exchange between research institutions, private companies and public agencies.
This year’s event was marked by close collaboration with the American Society of Civil Engineers Metropolitan Los Angeles Branch (ASCE MLAB), represented by Craig Davis, water system resilience program manager and seismic manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).
Industry representatives from the event’s sponsors were also present, including LADWP, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWDSC), SoCalGas, CA Davis Engineering, Lettis Consulting International, Kubota, AECOM, US Pipe, GeoPentech, Geosyntec, Fugro, WSP and SEFT Consulting Group.
CEE connects a region
Since 2014, ASCE has coordinated with USC to host the prestigious Le Val Lund Lecture and Student Symposium on Lifeline Infrastructure and Community Resilience, which alternates between the USC and Caltech campuses. This year, SoCal CEERS and the Le Val Lund Student Symposium were presented as a single event, providing a platform for students to engage with academic peers and industry leaders.
Craig Davis representing ASCE with Professor Burcin Becerik-Gerber
“SoCal CEERS is truly a collective effort, and we are thankful for all of the CEE faculty members and the continued support of ASCE in bringing the civil and environmental community together,” said Burcin Becerik-Gerber, Fred Champion Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Becerik-Gerber initiated the symposium when she took on the role of chair in 2021, and since then the program has been carried forward by PhD students and faculty mentors.
“Many professional engineers attended the symposium from a wide range of companies based in Southern California,” said Craig Davis. “The professionals showed great interest in engaging with the students and learned about their high capabilities in the research that is leading enhancements in the industry and improving our communities.”
Sanaiya Islam, symposium chair and a USC PhD student in environmental engineering, organized the event in collaboration with fellow CEE PhD students Wenwen Han and Lang He.
“Bringing this many CEE researchers together was only possible because of the trust and support we received from the department,” she reflected. “I am so proud to belong to a community that truly champions its students.”
Presentations and prizes
The day’s events were structured around oral presentations and multiple poster presentations contributed by graduate students and select undergraduates from CEE departments in Southern California. ASCE student chapter members from across the region were invited to take part, and the presentations were followed by an award ceremony.
Research topics spanned infrastructure resilience, wildfire and hazard modeling, water and environmental systems, smart buildings, and AI-driven data analytics. There were also notable contributions in materials science and construction, including EICP-based soil improvement and human-centered teleoperation for demolition.
SoCal CEERS participants on stage at Ginsburg Hall
For the oral presentation awards, Allison Tilzey, an environmental engineering PhD student at UC Irvine, received 1st prize for the paper “Microbiome-Contaminant Interactions in Potable Water Distribution Systems Post Wildland Urban Interface Fire”; 2nd place was awarded to Eva-Marie Hamill Martin, a civil engineering PhD student at UC Irvine, for the paper “Storage Effects in Precipitation-driven Fast Flood Models”; Zihao (Steve) Wang, a PhD student in civil engineering at USC, received 3rd place for his paper “Human-Centered Teleoperation in Construction: Prototype Development and Experimental Evaluation in a Simulated Demolition Testbed.”
1st place for the poster presentations was awarded to Jacob Damrow, a PhD student in environmental engineering at USC, for the research topic “Transformation and Fate of Biodegradable Mulch Film Additives in Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) Mesocosms”; 2nd place was awarded to Elizabeth Yoseph, an undergraduate in the USC Viterbi Department of Astronautical Engineering, who presented her research on “Understanding Seismic Amplification of Lunar Regolith using Apollo Mission Data”; 3rd place was received by Sharvari Rajwaday, pursuing a master’s in Transportation Systems Management at USC, for her presentation “Emulating Human Decision-Making in Routing Games using LLMs.”
The presentations were followed by a professional development workshop, “Built for Success: Your Career Roadmap,” with panelists Cris B. Liban, chief sustainability officer at LA Metro; Clint Isa, transportation senior manager at AECOM; Professor Kelly Twomey Sanders and Assistant Professor Audrey Olivier.
Le Val Lund Lectures
The day’s events culminated with the 2026 8th Le Val Lund Lectures on Lifeline Infrastructure and Community Resilience, accompanied by a dinner and networking event intended to promote interaction between infrastructure professionals, community leaders, educational institutions, researchers and students to further expand on infrastructure resiliency and community preparedness.
SoCal CEERS participants attend the Le Val Lund Lectures accompanied by a dinner at USC Town & Gown
The lectures were presented by two recipients of the Le Val Lund Practice Award for Lifeline Risk Reduction, Sunil Sinha (2025 recipient) and Leon Kempner, Jr (2022 recipient). The prize is awarded annually by the ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division, and was established to honor the late Le Val Lund, Jr., a recognized expert on protecting urban lifeline infrastructure systems from natural and human-caused disasters.
Sinha, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and director of the Sustainable Water Infrastructure Management (SWIM) Center, presented his lecture on “Integrated Artificial and Human Intelligence for Improved Water Efficiency. ” Leon Kempner, Jr., principal structural engineer for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), presented “Electric Power Transmission Resilience Challenges of a Legacy Grid.”
The emphasis on risk and resilience parallels the origin of SoCal CEERS, which started as a response to the constraints of social distancing and proceeded to gather momentum beyond the pandemic.
“Now that SoCal CEERS has established its foundation in academia, this year’s symposium demonstrated a greater emphasis on industry collaboration,” said Sanaiya Islam. “It was truly inspiring to see the mutuality between students, researchers and engineering professionals; we learned more about industry priorities, while engineering professionals had a chance to gain new insights from important emerging research that they might not have discovered otherwise.”
The benefits of this type of in-person exchange were evident throughout the day, demonstrating the impact of student-run events like SoCal CEERS to create a pipeline of well-connected and talented engineers trained on the highly complex challenges of Southern California.
Published on May 14th, 2026
Last updated on May 14th, 2026