Director Crittenden to be Given Honors in China

BBISS Director, John Crittenden, will be on a whirlwind tour of China during the first part of June.  His travels will begin at the International Conference on Engineering Science and Technology (ICEST 2014) where the theme will be, "Engineering and the Future of Humankind." The event, which is sponsored by UNESCO, will provide a forum for 1,200 engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and government officials from CAETS member academies and the international engineering community. Professor Crittenden will participate in the first plenary session where he will deliver a talk titled, “Developing Sustainable Infrastructures to Solve Gigaton Problems."

Two days later, Professor Crittenden will speak at a forum to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the School of Environment at Tsinghua University.  His talk is entitled, “Advances in Advanced Oxidation Processes for Water Treatment." This will be followed by a meeting of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences which Professor Crittenden will co-chair.  The meeting will focus on an NSF funded pilot project entitled “Ecological Infrastructure Engineering for Sustainable Development of Chinese Cities,” and is organized to facilitate collaboration between Georgia Tech researchers and researchers in China.  This kick-off meeting will also be attended by Georgia Tech faculty members Subhro Guhathakurta, and Perry Yang. The following faculty will be involved over the term of the project:

Godfried L. Augenbroe	College of Architecture	Building energy simulation
Bert Bras	School of Mechanical Engineering	Computer-aided engineering, design and manufacturing; environmentally conscious design, design for recycling and robust design
Marilyn Brown	School of Public Policy	Climate change, market analysis of new and improved energy technology and policy analysis
Miroslav Begovic	School of Electrical and Computer Engineering	Analysis, monitoring and control of voltage stability in electrical power systems
Yongsheng Chen	School of Civil & Environmental Eng.	Membrane technology, nanomaterials, and sustainability
John C. Crittenden	School of Civil & Environmental Eng.	Sustainable systems, pollution prevention, and infrastructure ecology
Steven   French	School of City & Regional Planning	Geographic information systems, planning support systems, sustainability
Richard M. Fujimoto	College of Computing	Execution of discrete-event simulation programs on parallel and distributed computing platforms
Subhrajit Guhathakurta	School of City & Regional Planning	Geographic information systems, planning support systems, sustainability
Haesun Park	College of Computing	Numerical algorithms; data and visual analytics; scientific computing; bioinformatics; missing value estimation; text analysis and parallel computing
Perry Yang	School of City & Regional Planning	Ecological urban planning, landscape ecology, urban ecology, and spatial analysis
Valerie Thomas	School of Industrial & Systems Engineering	Environmental impacts and costs of energy systems, environmental impacts of products and services, and the effects of policies and technologies on energy systems

Crittenden will then travel to Northeast Normal University to establish a collaboration project on chemical oxidation processes for water treatment.

The tour will culminate in the 12th General Assembly of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) scientists and engineers.  Being elected into the Chinese Academy of Engineering is the highest academic title for the field of engineering in China.  "I am deeply honored to be inducted into the Chinese Academy of Engineering," Crittenden said.  "It is my hope that through my involvement in the CAE that I may work with my colleagues to further the development of sustainable cities that will benefit, not only the coming generations of the people of China, but all the future city dwellers in our rapidly urbanizing world." 

This lifelong honor is granted every two years to no more than 60 people per cycle. To date, there are 807 members. This year's group of 51 includes four from the United States (one of which is Crittenden), one from Australia, and one from Denmark, bringing the total number of foreign CAE inductees to date to 45.  The CAE extends membership to prominent scientists from other countries to bolster international collaboration in engineering, science and technology.  560 candidates were considered for the honor during this cycle. The Chinese Academy of Engineering was originally established in 1994 and is an institution of the State Council of China.  The CAE is China’s equivalent to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in the United States, to which Crittenden was elected in 2002.  The current president of the CAE is Zhou Ji.