Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

Porter, Hallmark Honored for Their Work

Max L. Porter
Honors are abounding for Iowa State Professor Max L. Porter In October, Porter received The Masonry Society’s John B. Scalzi Research Award and was named the new chairman for the society’s Research Committee.

“Having known Scalzi for thirty-some years, this honor has real personal meaning. He was instrumental in helping masonry research and helped to establish the U.S.-Japan research team for National Science Foundation-sponsored research. He also served as NSF program manager for some of our research projects at ISU,” says Porter, a fellow and recent past president of The Masonry Society (TMS). Porter says he was pleasantly surprised to receive the award at TMS’s annual meeting in Atlanta.

The John B. Scalzi Research Award, named for the National Science Foundation’s research program manager, is presented each year to an individual who has made an outstanding lifetime contribution to masonry research.

For additional information on Porter’s awards, visit www.masonrysociety.org/html/about/awards/scalzi/Porter2006.htm.

Shauna Hallmark
Associate Professor Shauna Hallmark has won the College of Engineering’s Young Engineering Faculty Research Award. “It’s always nice to get an award and be acknowledged for your work,” Hallmark says.

Each year, the departmental faculty council nominates a faculty member for the college-wide award. The award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated the ability to conduct original research, contribute to scholarly literature, and introduce new and/or improved laboratory techniques and instrumentation. It also recognizes faculty whose research has had an impact outside the university.

Hallmark’s research focuses on three main areas: traffic safety, transportation air quality, and traffic engineering and operations. The work that caught the faculty council’s attention was Hallmark’s study on heavy truck operation speeds versus passenger car operation speeds. “Transportation emissions are related to speed, so we looked at 10 sites and quantified the data,” she says. “The Environmental Protection Agency picked up the study and used in rulemaking for heavy trucks.”
Hallmark is excited about her current and upcoming research projects. “I have the most interesting project right now. It’s about traffic calming in small Iowa communities,” she says.

The project is similar to studies done in Europe, but is the first of its kind to be done in the United States. Hallmark is studying small towns that have one main road passing through it where drivers don’t slow down. So far, she’s used various types of treatments, such as pavement markers and tubular markers, to study traffic in the Iowa towns of Dexter, Slater, Gilbert, Union, and Roland. The research project is funded by the Federal Highway Administration Board and the Iowa Highway Research Board.

Hallmark is also working on a project monitoring the effectiveness of red-light cameras. Additionally, Hallmark says she plans to put together an instrumental package to evaluate fuel efficiency and emissions for biofuels, and to study the energy efficiency impacts of E-85 and ethanol gasoline.