Impact Report 2025

Letter from the chair

What an amazing and successful year we have had in Iowa State University’s Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. It is great to see our students, faculty, staff and broader CCEE community shine.

In 2025, our research continued to push boundaries – developing new solutions, setting new standards and exploring innovative applications of technology. Faculty secured more than $18 million in funding from local, national and international organizations, fueling innovation and creating meaningful opportunities for graduate students and undergraduate researchers to contribute to high-impact projects. We have an awesome class of new CCEE Distinguished Alumni and Hall of Fame. Please consider nominating an outstanding alumni of our program through our website.

Our students continue to impress with positive career outcomes, valuable internship experiences and strong leadership in student organizations. Each of our programs focus on building industry-relevant skills through doing, and this focus has resulted in a 93% positive career placement at graduation. Many students receive job offers at the start of their senior year, and we represent the top of the college in the number of students with internships or co-ops.

We’re also making steady progress toward our $33 million goal for the Town Engineering Renovation and Expansion project. Thanks to the generosity of industry partners and alumni donors, we’re getting closer to delivering these vital updates for future students and expanding our footprint and offerings. Go to our website to learn more about the exciting student-centered project; please consider joining us in raising the funds!

We continue to have our GOLD: Graduates of the Last Decade alumni group, and have added CORE: CCEE Outreach, Relationships and Engagement. CORE provides a great way for companies to interface and support our department. To find out more about GOLD or CORE, contact Alumni Relations Specialist Linda Dainty at lkdainty@iastate.edu. Go Cyclones!

David H. Sanders
Greenwood Department Chair & Professor

Roy’s current project, with mentorship from Assistant Professor Beena Ajmera, focuses on landslides and the hydromechanical changes triggered by rainfall. Roy is developing a numerical model that accounts for both mechanical and hydrological shifts; an integrated approach designed to predict landslide risk across diverse environments. Her study used a full factorial method, requiring 200 numerical models to capture all possible combinations of rainfall characteristics, and initial soil and terrain conditions on unsaturated clay slopes.

Roy is collaborating with a research team in Croatia conducting experimental fieldwork in tandem with her numerical model. Though separated by nearly 5,000 miles, the teams share a common goal: uncovering the predictability capacity and root causes of these disasters.

 “When we find answers in how environmental factors and forces interact, it enables the development and advancement of early warning systems,” Roy said.

Identifying the variables that lead to a landslide is just the first step, but even that can help communities better understand their risks and recognize warning signs.

“The goal of our work is to open the door for the development of early detection tools, either by us or others in the field,” Roy said. “We’re building the foundation for a safer future.”

Geogrids for gravel roads: Strengthening Iowa’s rural transportation infrastructure

Iowa has more than 71,000 miles of granular county roads. These unpaved roads are essential to rural communities and routinely bear heavy loads. Araz Hasheminezhad, a graduate student with Iowa State University’s Program for Sustainable Pavement Engineering and Research (PROSPER), is addressing the challenge of maintaining these roads with 3D printed geogrids.

This system includes a geogrid made from 100% recycled plastic, bonded to a nonwoven geotextile. So far, the results have been promising: The geogrid’s webbed design enhances stability of the road base, reduces rutting and lateral displacement over time, improves drainage and moisture, and significantly decreases the amount of base aggregate to construct structurally sound gravel roads. These improvements enable major cost and time savings.

The project’s primary focus is infrastructure stability, yet sustainability has remained a guiding principle. Traditional 3D printing involves plastic filament that generates waste throughout the testing and design process. To reduce this environmental footprint, Hasheminezhad sought a filament entirely from recycled plastic.

After nearly a year of searching, a filament producer was finally able to provide a 100% recycled filament for Hasheminezhad’s project. Once delivered, the material underwent extensive testing for durability, strength and reusability.

“A bonus is transforming waste into engineered geosynthetics — materials that would otherwise go to landfills are getting a second life,” Hasheminezhad says. “We even found a way to reuse the filament throughout the design process, reducing waste at every stage.”

Supported by funding from the Iowa Highway Research Board and the Iowa Department of Transportation and his mentor Pitt-Des Moines, Inc. Endowed Professor in Civil Engineering Halil Ceylan, Hasheminezhad will continue monitoring test sites in Buchanan County, Iowa, and exploring scalable manufacturing solutions. His long-term goal is to expand this technology’s reach to rural and urban roads in Iowa and beyond.

The facts of PFAS: Understanding forever chemicals in groundwater

Ruadhri Deans, a concurrent environmental engineering undergraduate and master’s student, is diving deep into the world of “forever chemicals,” investigating contamination levels and raising awareness about their health impacts on the Ames community and beyond.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a group of more than 15,000 synthetic chemicals popular for their strength. Widely used in consumer products and industrial applications since the 1940s, PFAS are now under scrutiny for their potential harm to health and the environment.

Under the guidance of Assistant Professor Joe Charbonnet, Deans, alongside Ph.D. student mentor Russell Brummer is using advanced analytical techniques to test groundwater samples from wells across Ames. Together, they developed a standard operating procedure to identify PFAS contamination, including purification and thermal reaction methods not previously applied to the local wells.

“We’re finding contamination near fire response training sites and biosolid disposal areas,” Deans said. “The part of my research I’m most passionate about is raising awareness of the risks people are exposed to every day.”

Graduate student Mahtab Goudarzi is working with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to change that. Her research focuses on optimizing the structural design of traffic sign supports using real-time monitoring and data analysis.

Goudarzi developed and installed an instrumentation plan across two large-scale sign structures. The support systems were outfitted with advanced sensors, including accelerometers, strain gauges and anemometers, allowing them to continuously stream high-resolution structural data. The monitoring system captured subtle vibrations as well as intense events, enabling both static and dynamic testing.

Using the measurements and footage, Goudarzi calculated how the structures respond to wind loads. The findings informed a revised design and construction plan, including a reduction in shaft length in the foundation, that minimized material use without sacrificing performance.

Goudarzi’s research is part of a broader effort to create transferable digital twin frameworks, allowing engineers to adapt her methods to other infrastructure exposed to dynamic loads, like towers and bridges.

“By converting real-world sensor data into actionable insights through modeling, Mahtab is creating a new way to monitor and assess infrastructure health,” says Alice Alipour, associate professor, and Goudarzi’s advisor.

As the wind continues to shape the future of transportation infrastructure, Goudarzi is helping engineers predict every movement.